THE PENITENT OF CROSS VILLAGE
THE cross cast its shadow around its feet, so high noon stood over Cross Village. It was behind the church, rising above the gable, of silver-colored wood stained by weather to an almost phosphorescent glint. Seen from the lake the cross towered the most conspicuous thing on the bluff. A whitewashed fence stretched between it and the cliff, and on this fence sat Moses Nazagebic, looking across Lake Michigan.
He heard a soft tap on the ground near him and knew that his wife's grandmother had come out to walk there. She was the only villager, except his wife, whose approach he could endure. His wife stood some distance apart, protecting him, as Miriam protected the first Moses. Other women, gathered in the grove along the bluff to spread the festival mid-day meal, said to one another:
“Moses has now mourned a week for Frank Chibam and his shipwrecked boat and the white men. We shall miss Lucy's fish-pie this year.”
“It was at last year's festival that Frank began to notice Catharine. They were like one family, those four and the grandmother, especially after Moses and Frank bought the sail-boat together. No wonder the poor fellow sits on the fence and says nothing while the tribes are racing horses.”
“But it is worst for poor Catharine, who was to have been a bride. See her sit like a stone in the sun! It is little any one can say to comfort Catharine.”
The women, who knew no English, used soft Chippewa or Ottawa gutturals. The men who ventured on the conquerors' language used it shorn and contracted, as white children do.