"My feminine curiosity prompted the question," she replied easily. "Did you?"
"No," he returned, after a rather steady look at her; "none that you could call men."
"A specimen, then?"
"Heaven help the race, if the one I saw was accepted as a specimen," he answered fervently; "a filthy, unkempt individual, living on the outskirts of the village, and much more degraded than any Indian I met; but he had a squaw wife."
"Yes, the most of them have—wives or slaves."
"Slaves?" he asked incredulously.
"Actually slaves, though they do not bring the high prices we used to ask for those of darker skin in the South. Emancipation has not made much progress up here. It is too much an unknown corner as yet."
"Is it those of inferior tribes that are bartered, or prisoners taken in battle?"
"No, I believe not, necessarily," she replied, "though I suppose such a windfall would be welcomed; but if there happens to be any superfluous members in a family, it is a profitable way to dispose of them, among some of the Columbia Basin Indians, anyway. Davy MacDougall can give you more information than I, as most of my knowledge is second-hand. But I believe this tribe of the Kootenais is a grade above that sort of traffic—I mean bartering their own kindred."
"How long have you been out here, Miss Rachel?" he asked, as abruptly as she had questioned him of the white men.