Snowdrift: A Story of the Land of the Strong Cold

by James B. Hendryx

ing, elusive memory—always, ever since she had been a little girl there had been the memory, and when it came she would close her eyes, and press her hands to her head and try and try in vain to grasp it—to bring the picture clean-cut to her mind. Then the memory would fade away—but it would return again, in a month—a year—always it would return—a log cabin—wind-tossed waters—a beautiful white woman who held her close—a big man with a beard upon his face like McTavish, the factor. At first she had told Wananebish of the memory, but she had laughed and said that it was the wives of the different factors and traders at the posts who were wont to make much of the little girl when the band came to trade. The explanation never quite satisfied Snowdrift, but she accepted it for want of a better. Was it a flash of memory from another existence? There was the book she had borrowed from Father Ambrose, the peculiar book that she did not understand, and that Father Ambrose said he did not understand, and did not want to understand, for it was all about some heathenish doctrine. She wondered if it could not be possible that people lived over and over again, as the book said, and if so, why couldn't they remember? Maybe last time she had been a white girl, and this time she was a half-breed, and the next time she would be an Indian—she wouldn't wait till next time! She was an Indian now. She hated the white men.

And so it went as hour on hour she worked her plans for the future. She knew that Wananebish was getting old, that she was losing her grip on the band. Many of the older ones had died, and many of the younger ones had deserted, and those who were left were dissatisfied, and always grumbling. There were only eighteen or twenty of them all told, now, and they preferred to hang about along the rivers, trapping just enough fur to make a scanty living and pay for the hooch that the free-traders brought in. They were a degenerate lot and old Wananebish had grown weary in trying to get them back into the barrens where there was gold. They scoffed at the gold. There had been so little of it found in so many years of trying—yet she had not been able to get them to leave the vicinity of the river. But, now, to the river had come news of the great gold strike beyond the mountains to the westward. Snowdrift reasoned that if there were gold to the westward there would be gold also to the eastward, especially as Wananebish knew that it was there—had even found some of it long years ago. Maybe they would go, now—far back into the barrens, far, far away from Henri of the White Water.

Upon the fourth day after her departure from the mission, the girl walked into the camp of the little band of non-treaty Indians. Straight to the tepee of Wananebish, she went—to the only mother she had ever known. The old squaw received her

with open arms, and with much wondering, for upon her last visit to the mission the good Sister Mercedes had told her that Snowdrift would go and continue her studies at the great convent in the far away land of the white man. It was the thing she had most feared to hear, yet, by not so much as the flicker of an eyelash did she betray her soul-hurt. All the long years of deception, during which MacFarlane's note book had lain wrapped in its waterproof wrappings and jealously guarded in the bottom of the moss bag had gone for naught. For it was to guard against the girl's going to the land of the white man that the deception had been practiced. None but she knew that no drop of Indian blood coursed through the veins of the girl, and she knew that once firmly established among her own people she would never return to the North. At that time she had almost yielded to the impulse to tell the truth to them, and to spread the proofs before them—almost, but not quite, for as long as the girl believed herself to be half Indian there was a chance that she would return, and so the squaw had held her peace, and now here was the girl herself—here in the tepee, and she had brought her all her belongings. Wananebish plied her with questions, but the girl's answers were brief, and spoken in the Indian tongue, a thing that greatly surprised and troubled the old woman, for since babyhood, the girl had despised the speech of the Indians.

The two prepared supper in silence, and in silence

they ate it. And for a long time they sat close together and silent beside the mosquito smudge of punk and green twigs. The eyes of the old squaw closed and she crooned softly from pure joy, for here beside her was the only being in the world that she loved. Her own baby, the tiny red mite she had deposited that day upon the blanket in the far away post at Lashing Water, had died during that first winter. The crooning ceased abruptly, and the black, beady eyes flashed open. But why was she here? And for how long? She must know. Why did not the girl speak? The silence became unbearable even to this woman who all her life had been a creature of silence. Abruptly she asked the question: "Are you not going to the land of the white men?"

And quick as a flash came the answer in the Indian tongue: "I hate the white men!" The suppressed passion behind the words brought a low inarticulate cry to the lips of the squaw. She reached for the sheath knife at her belt, and the sinews upon the back of the hand that grasped it stood out like whip cords. The black eyes glittered like the eyes of a snake, and the lips curled back in a snarl of hate, so that the yellow fangs gleamed in the wavering light of a tiny flame that flared from the smouldering fire.

Words came in a hoarse croak: "Who is he? I will cut his heart out!"

Then the hand of the girl was laid soothingly

upon her arm, and again she spoke words in the Indian tongue: "No, no, not that."