“Too happy? I can ‘thole’ a lot o’ yon,” he answered cheerily. “But,” he added suddenly, letting into his voice a deeper tone, “as for you, you jolly well deserve all there is going. Now a little rest before lunch, while I get out my gun.” He laid her on a lounge, covered her with a wrap and left her, with a smile of pride and ineffable joy illuminating the beauty of her face.
After a hasty lunch Gaspard looked in upon her, found her sleeping quietly and with the adumbration of that same smile still lingering about her, then taking his gun set forth to the completion of the other task he had set himself for the day. A disturbing factor in his day’s problem he had learned from old Jinny. Paul had gone off with the Sleeman children, Asa and Adelina, on their ponies for the day, and the boy had spoken of a visit to the Indian camp. Of course, he could send the children off on some chase, but none the less it was a complication which added to the difficulty of a situation sufficiently complex already. He did not, however, anticipate much trouble with Onawata. Her love for him and her native Indian pride would work together to further his purpose. As to the old chief, he was an uncertain and possibly refractory element. A Chippewayan chief of ancient lineage, proud of his race and rank, he had kept his tribe aloof from the life and manners of the white man. He had seen the degradation of other tribes through contact with white civilisation and, following the tradition of his ancestors, he had built up in his people a fear of the white man’s power and a contempt for his vices. On the plains of the far north land his people could meet with the white man on equal terms without fear, and at the trading post he could hold his own in shrewd bargaining for the products of trap and gun. He permitted no mingling of blood strains in his tribe, no half-breed could find a home in his wigwams. Next to his passion for his people, his love for his daughter held place with him. Her mother, an Athabascan princess of great beauty and intelligence, trained in one of the out-post Anglican mission schools, had captured his youthful fancy and had held his heart in loyal allegiance for twenty years, until her death twenty-two years ago in giving birth to her only child, Onawata, who, growing up into beautiful girlhood, took her mother’s place in her father’s heart and became the very light of his eyes, the joy of his heart.
He had not sent her to the mission school. He wanted her kept pure Indian. But he had cleverly cajoled the missionary into setting up among his tribe a kind of extension branch of his school, the principal pupil of which was the chief’s daughter. Her extraordinary intelligence, stimulated by her father’s ambition for her, enabled her to overcome with remarkable ease and rapidity the initial difficulty of language in acquiring knowledge. She learned to read, to write, to do simple sums, and, not only so, but succeeded in bullying her father into the same knowledge. So that at seventeen she was a sweet, clean, well educated Indian maid of rare intelligence and rarer beauty, the pride of the tribe which she ruled like a queen and the centre and delight of her father’s life.
Frankly, Gaspard was afraid to meet the old chief. He relied upon Onawata’s influence with him, but it was with very considerable trepidation that he strode into the Indian camp.
A strange scene spread itself before his eyes. On a grassy bench, a little removed from the river bank, were pitched two tents before which were grouped two Indians and at a little distance the chief with his daughter, all intent upon the doings of a group of children and their ponies upon the grass plot before them. The children were dismounted, and their ponies standing, held by their trailing reins, all but Paul, who with the little four-year old Indian child in his arms was galloping up and down the sward to the shrieking delight of the children standing by.
“The Sleeman youngsters and Peg Pelham,” he said to himself, as he stood watching. “By Jove! That boy is a rider,” he added as his eyes followed the galloping pony with its double load, careering up and down. Almost as he spoke the pony reached the turn, turned on its hind legs and was swinging back on its return trip, when the Sleeman boy sprang forward with a shout, waving his hat. With a quick side jump the pony’s feet struck the overhanging cut-bank, broke through, plunged wildly and disappeared, crashing into the underbrush some ten feet below.
Swift as a flash of light, the old chief sprang for the bank, but before him was Gaspard who, clearing the bank with a single leap, was at the head of the struggling pony and, with one hand holding it quiet, grasped with the other the Indian child and, sheltering it with his own body from the kicks of the struggling pony, pulled it clear of danger. It was bravely and cleverly done.
“Paul,” he shouted, peering among the underbrush for his son, “where are you?”
“Huh,” grunted the chief, whose quick eye had caught sight of the boy farther down the bank, lying motionless at the root of an old birch stump. With one leap the chief was over the pony and at the boy’s side. Swiftly he lifted the boy, carried him down to the river’s edge and laid him gently down. Then reaching down he scooped up a double handful of water and dashed it into the still, white face. A gasping sob, a shudder of the limbs, and the eyes opened upon the chief’s face, then quietly closed again.
“Huh, Kawin! Good!” grunted the chief, whose hands were swiftly moving over the boy’s legs and arms. “Good,” said the chief again, giving place to the boy’s father who had handed over the Indian child to its mother.