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 E. PAULINE JOHNSON 
 
 (The best photo of her in existence. Taken in 1904.)
 
 THE 
 
 MOCCASIN MAKER 
 
 BY 
 
 E. PAULINE JOHNSON 
 
 le Shagganai)pi 
 Feather," etc. 
 
 Author of "The Shagganai)pi," "Flint and 
 
 WITH INTRODUCTION BV 
 
 SIR GILBERT PARKER 
 
 AND APPRECIATION BY 
 
 CHARLES MAIR 
 
 TORONTO 
 
 WILLIAM BRIGGS 
 
 1913
 
 Copyright, Canada, 1913, by 
 WILLIAM BRIGGS
 
 DEDICATED 
 
 TO 
 
 SIR GILBERT PARKER, M.P. 
 
 WHOSE iWORK IN LITERATURE 
 
 HAS BROUGHT HONOUR 
 
 TO CANADA
 
 INTRODUCTION 
 
 The inducement to be sympathetic in writing a 
 preface to a book like this is naturally very great. 
 The authoress was of Indian blood, and lived the 
 life of the Indian on the Iroquois Reserve with 
 her chieftain father and her white mother for 
 many years; and though she had white blood 
 in her veins was insistently and determinedly 
 Indian to the end. She had the full pride of the 
 aboriginal of pure blood, and she was possessed 
 of a vital joy in the legends, history and language 
 of the Indian race from which she came, crossed 
 by good white stock. But though the induce- 
 ment to be sympathetic in the case of so chival- 
 rous a being who stood by the Indian blood 
 rather than by the white blood in her is great, 
 there is, happily, no necessity for generosity or 
 magnanimity in the case of Pauline Johnson. 
 She was not great, but her work in verse is sure 
 and sincere; and it is alive with the true spirit 
 of poetry. Her skill in mere technique is good, 
 her handling of narrative is notable, and if there 
 is no striking individuality — which might have 
 been expected from her Indian origin — if she was 
 
 5
 
 6 INTRODUCTION 
 
 often reminiscent in her manner, metre, form and 
 expression, it only proves her a minor poet and 
 not a Tennyson or a Browning. That she should 
 have done what she did do, devotedly, with an 
 astonishing charm and the delight of inspired 
 labour, makes her life memorable, as it certainly 
 made both life and work beautiful. The pain 
 and suffering which attended the latter part of 
 her life never found its way into her work save 
 through increased sweetness and pensiveness. 
 No shadow of death fell upon her pages. To 
 the last the soul ruled the body to its will. 
 Phenomenon Pauline Johnson was, though to 
 call her a genius would be to place her among 
 the immortals, and no one w^as more conscious of 
 her limitations than herself Therefore, it would 
 do her memory poor service to give her a crown 
 instead of a coronet. 
 
 Poet she was, lyric and singing and happy, 
 bright-visioned, high-hearted, and with the 
 Indian's passionate love of nature thrilling in all 
 she did, even when from the hunting-grounds of 
 poesy she brought back now and then a poor 
 day's capture. She was never without charm 
 in her writing ; indeed, mere charm was too often 
 her undoing. She could not be impersonal 
 enough, and therefore could not be great ; but she 
 could get very near to human sympathies, to 
 domestic natures, to those who care for pleasant, 
 happy things, to the lovers of the wild.
 
 INTRODUCTION 7 
 
 This is what she has done in this book called 
 " The Moccasin Maker." Here is a good deal 
 that is biographical and autobiographical in its 
 nature ; here is the story of her mother's life told 
 with rare graciousness and affection, in language 
 which is never without eloquence ; and even when 
 the dialogue makes you feel that the real char- 
 acters never talked as they do in this monograph, 
 it is still unstilted and somehow really convinc- 
 ing. Touching to a degree is the first chapter, 
 " My Mother," and it, with all the rest of the 
 book, makes one feel that Canadian literature 
 would have been poorer, that something would 
 have been missed from the story of Indian life 
 if this volume had not been written. It is no 
 argument against the book that Pauline Johnson 
 had not learnt the art of short-story writing ; she 
 was a poetess, not a writer of fiction; but the 
 incidents described in many of these chapter? 
 show that, had she chosen to write fiction instead 
 of verse, and had begun at an early stage in her 
 career to do so, she would have succeeded. Her 
 style is always picturesque, she has a good sense 
 of the salient incident that makes a story, she 
 could give to it the touch of drama, and she is 
 always interesting, even when there is discursive- 
 ness, occasional weakness, and when the picture 
 is not well pulled together. The book had to be 
 written; she knew it, and she did it. The book 
 will be read, not for patriotic reasons, not from
 
 8 INTRODUCTION 
 
 admiration of work achieved by one of the Indian 
 race ; but because it is intrinsically human, in- 
 teresting and often compelling in narrative and 
 event. 
 
 May it be permitted to add one word of per- 
 sonal comment? I never saw Pauline Johnson 
 in her own land, at her own hearthstone, but 
 only in my house in London and at other houses 
 in London, where she brought a breath of the 
 wild ; not because she dressed in Indian costume, 
 but because its atmosphere was round her. The 
 feeling of the wild looked out of her eyes, stirred 
 in her gesture, moved in her footstep. I am glad 
 to have known this rare creature who had the 
 courage to be glad of her origin, without defiance, 
 but with an unchanging, if unspoken, insistence. 
 Her native land and the Empire should be glad 
 of her for what she was and for what she stood ; 
 her native land and the Empire should be glad 
 of her for the work, interesting, vivid and human, 
 which she has done. It will preserve her memory. 
 In an age growing sordid such fresh spirits as 
 she should be welcomed for what they are, for 
 what they do. This book by Pauline Johnson 
 should be welcomed for what she was and for 
 what it is. 
 
 Gilbert Parker.
 
 PAULINE JOHNSON : AN APPRECIATION. 
 By Charles Mair. 
 
 The writer, having contributed a brief "Appre- 
 ciation" of the late Miss E, Pauline Johnson to 
 the July number of The Canadian Magazine, has 
 been asked by the editor of this collection of her 
 hitherto unpublished writings to allow it to be 
 used as a Preface, with such additions or omis- 
 sions as might seem desirable. He has not yet 
 seen any portion of the book, but quite apart 
 from its merits it is eagerly looked for by Miss 
 Johnson's many friends and admirers as a final 
 memorial of her literary life. It will now be read 
 with an added interest, begot of her painfully 
 sad and untimely end. 
 
 In the death of Miss Johnson a poet passed 
 away of undoubted genius; one who wrote with 
 passion, but without extravagance, and upon 
 themes foreign, perhaps, to some of her readers, 
 but, to herself, familiar as the air she breathed. 
 
 When her racial poetry first appeared, its effect 
 upon the reader was as that of something abnor- 
 mal, something new and strange, and certainly 
 unexampled in Canadian verse. For here was a 
 girl whose blood and sympathies were largely 
 drawn from the greatest tribe of the most 
 
 9
 
 10 AN APPEECIATION 
 
 advanced nation of Indians on the continent, who 
 spoke out, " loud and bold," not for it alone, but 
 for the whole red race, and sang of its glories 
 and its wrongs in strains of poetic fire. 
 
 However aloof the sympathies of the ordinary 
 business world may be from the red man's record, 
 even it is moved at times by his fate, and stirred 
 by his persistent, his inev^itable romance. For 
 the Indian's record is the background, and not 
 seldom the foreground, of American history, in 
 which his endless contests with the invader were 
 but a counterpart of the unwritten, or recorded, 
 struggles of all primitive time. 
 
 In that long strife the bitterest charge against 
 him is his barbarity, which, if all that is alleged 
 is to be believed — and much of it is authentic — 
 constitutes in the annals of pioneer settlement 
 and aggression a chapter of horrors. 
 
 But equally vindictive was his enemy ^ the 
 American frontiersman. Burnings at the stake, 
 scalping, and other savageries, were not confined 
 to the red man. But whilst his are depicted by 
 the interested writers of the time in the most 
 lurid colours, those of the frontiersman, equally 
 barbarous, are too often palliated, or entirely 
 passed by. It is manifestly unjust to character- 
 ize a whole people by its worst members. Of 
 such, amongst both Indians and whites, there 
 were not a few ; but it is equally unfair to ascribe 
 to a naturally cruel disposition the infuriated 
 red man's reprisals for intolerable wrongs. As a
 
 AN APPRECIATION 11 
 
 matter of fact, impartial history not seldom leans 
 to the red man's side; for, in his ordinary and 
 peaceful intercourse with the whites, he was, as 
 a rule, both helpful and humane. In the records 
 of early explorers Ave are told of savages who 
 possessed estimable qualities lamentably lacking 
 in many so-called civilized men. The Illinois, an 
 inland tribe, exhibited such tact, courtesy and 
 self-restraint, in a word, such good manners, 
 that the Jesuit Fathers described them as a com- 
 munity of gentlemen. Such traits, indeed, were 
 natural to the primitive Indian, and gave rise, no 
 doubt, to the much-derided phrase — " The Noble 
 Red Man." 
 
 There may be some readers of these lines old 
 enough to remember the great Indians of the 
 plains in times past, who will bear the writer 
 out in saying that such traits were not uncom- 
 mon down to comparatively recent years. Tatou- 
 kanazin the Dahcota, Sapo-Maxika the Black- 
 foot, Atakakoop the Cree, not to speak of Yellow 
 Quill and others, were noted in their day for their 
 noble features and dignified deportment. 
 
 In our history the Indians hold an honoured 
 place, and the average reader need not be told 
 that, at one time, their services were essential to 
 Canada. They appreciated British justice, and 
 their greatest nations produced great men, who, 
 in the hour of need, helped materially to preserve 
 our independence. They failed, however, ;for 
 manifest reasons, to maintain their own. They
 
 12 AN APPRECIATION 
 
 had to yield ; but, before quitting the stage, they 
 left behind them an abiding memory, and an 
 undying tradition. And, thus, " Romanticism," 
 which will hold its own despite its hostile critics, 
 is their debtor. Their closeness to nature, their 
 picturesque life in the past, their mythical reli- 
 gion, social system and fateful history have begot 
 one of the wide world's '■ legends," an ideal not 
 wholly imaginary, which, as a counterpoise to 
 Realism, our literature needs, and probably never 
 shall outgrow. 
 
 These references to the Indian character may 
 seem too extended for their place, yet they are 
 genre to the writer's subject. For Miss John- 
 son's mentality was moulded by descent, by ample 
 knowledge of her people's history, admiration of 
 their character, and profound interest in their 
 fate. 
 
 Hence the oncoming into the field of letters of 
 a real Indian poet had a significance which, aided 
 by its novelty, was immediately appreciated by 
 all that was best in Canadian culture. Hence, 
 too, and by reason of its strength, her work at 
 once took its fitting place without jar or hin- 
 drance; for there are few educated Canadians 
 who do not possess, in some measure, that abor- 
 iginal, historic sense which was the very atmos- 
 phere of Pauline Johnson's being. 
 
 But whilst " the Indian " was never far from 
 her thoughts, she was a poet, and therefore inevit- 
 ably winged her way into the world of art, into
 
 AN APPKECIATION 13 
 
 the realm common to all countries, and to all 
 peoples. Here there was room for her imagin- 
 ings, endowed, as she was, with power to appeal 
 to the heart, with refinement, delicacy, pathos, 
 and, above all, sincerity; an Idealist, who fused 
 the inner and the outer world, and revelled in 
 the unification of scenery and mind. 
 
 The delight of genius in the act of composition 
 has been called the keenest of intellectual pleas- 
 ures ; and this was the poet's almost sole reward 
 in Canada a generation ago, when nothing seemed 
 to catch the popular ear but burlesque, or trivial 
 verse. In strange contrast this with a remoter 
 age ! In old Upper Canada, in its primitive days, 
 there was no lack of educated men and women, 
 of cultivated pioneers who appreciated art and 
 good literature in all its forms. Even the aver- 
 age immigrant brought his favourite books with 
 him from the Old Land, and cherished a love of 
 reading, which unfortunately was not always 
 inherited by his sons. It was a fit audience, no 
 doubt; but in a period when all alike were 
 engrossed in a stern struggle for existence, the 
 poets, and we know there were some, were forced, 
 like other people, to earn, by labour of hand, 
 their daily bread. Thackeray's " dapper " George 
 is credited with the saying, that, " If beebles will 
 be boets they must starve." If in England their 
 struggle was severe, in Canada it was unrelent- 
 ing ; a bald prospect, certainly, which lasted, one 
 is sorry to say, far down in our literary history.
 
 14 AN APPRECIATION 
 
 Probably owing to this, and partly through 
 advice, and partly by inclination, Miss Johnson 
 took to the public platform for a living, and cer- 
 tainly justified her choice of a vocation by her 
 admirable performances. They were not sensa- 
 tional, and therefore not over-attractive to the 
 groundling; but to discerners, who thought 
 highly of her art, they seemed the perfection of 
 monologue, graced by a musical voice, and by 
 gesture at once simple and dignified. 
 
 As this is an appreciation and a tribute to 
 Miss Johnson's memory rather than a criticism, 
 the writer will touch but lightly upon the more 
 prominent features of her productions. Without 
 being obtrusive, not the least of these is her 
 national pride, for nothing worthier, she thought, 
 could be said of a man than 
 
 " That he was bom in Canada, beneath the British flag." 
 
 In her political creed wavering and uncertainty 
 had no place. She saw our national life from its 
 most salient angles, and, in current phrase, she 
 saw it whole. In common, therefore, with every 
 Canadian poet of eminence, she had no fears 
 for Canada, if she be but true to herself. 
 
 Another opinion is not likely to be challenged, 
 viz., that much of her poetry is unique, not only 
 in subject, but also in the sincerity of her treat- 
 ment of themes so far removed from the common 
 range. Intense feeling distinguishes her Indian
 
 AN APPRECIATION 15 
 
 poems from all others; they flow from her very 
 veins, and are stamped with the seal of heredity. 
 This strikes one at every reading, and not less 
 their truth to fact, however idealized. Indeed 
 the wildest of them, " Ojistoh " (The White 
 Wampum), is based upon an actual occurrence, 
 though the incident took place on the Western 
 plains, and the heroine was not a Mohawk. The 
 same intensity marks " The Cattle Thief," and 
 " A Cry From an Indian Wife." Begot of her 
 knowledge of the long-suffering of her race, of 
 iniquities in the past and present, they poured 
 red-hot from her inmost heart. 
 
 One turns, however, with a sense of relief from 
 those fierce dithyrambics to the beauty and pathos 
 of her other poems. Take, for example, that 
 exquisite piece of music, " The Lullaby of the 
 Iroquois," simple, yet entrancing! Could any- 
 thing of its kind be more perfect in structure and 
 expression? Or the sweet idyll, " Shadow 
 River," a transmutation of fancy and fact, which 
 ends with her own philosophy: 
 
 " O pathless world of seeming! 
 O pathless life of mine whose deep ideal 
 Is more my own than ever was the real. 
 For others fame 
 And Love's red flame, 
 And yellow gold: I only claim 
 The shadows and the dreaming." 
 
 And this ideality, the hall-mark of her poetry, 
 has a character of its own, a quality which dis-
 
 16 AN APPRECIATION 
 
 tinguishes it from the general run of subjective 
 verse. Though of the Christian faith, there is 
 yet an almost pagan yearning manifest in her 
 work, which she indubitably drew from her 
 Indian ancestry. That is, she was in constant 
 contact with nature, and saw herself, her every 
 thought and feeling, reflected in the mysterious 
 world around her. 
 
 This sense of harmony is indeed the prime 
 motive of her poetry, and therein we discern a 
 brightness, a gleam, however fleeting, of mystic 
 light— 
 
 " The light that never was on sea or land, 
 The consecration and the poet's dream." 
 
 A suggestion of her attitude and sense of inter- 
 penetration lurks in this stanza: 
 
 " There's a spirit on the river, there's a ghost upon the 
 
 shore, 
 And they sing of love and loving through the starlight 
 
 evermore, 
 As they steal amid the silence and the shadows of the 
 
 shore." 
 
 And in the following verses this " correspond- 
 ence " is more distinctly drawn : 
 
 " O soft responsive voices of the night, 
 I join your minstrelsy, 
 And call across the fading silver light 
 
 As something calls to me; 
 I may not all your meaning understand, 
 But I have touched your soul in Shadow Land."
 
 SIWA.SH Rock 
 
 Near which Miss Johnson wished her ashes to be buried.
 
 AN APPRECIATION 17 
 
 " Sweetness and light " met in Miss Johnson's 
 nature, but free from sentimentality; and even 
 a carping critic will find little to cavil at in her 
 productions. If fault should be found with any 
 of them it would probably be with such a narra- 
 tive as " Wolverine." It " bites," like all her 
 Indian pieces, and conveys a definite meaning. 
 But, written in the conventional slang of the 
 frontier, it jars with her other work, and seems 
 out of form, if not out of place. 
 
 However, no poet escapes a break at times, 
 and Miss Johnson's work is not to be judged, 
 like a chain, by its weakest links. Its beauty, its 
 strength, its originality are unmistakable, and 
 although, had she lived, we might have looked 
 for still higher flights of her genius, yet what we 
 possess is beyond price, and fully justifies the 
 feeling, everywhere expressed, that Canada has 
 lost a true poet. 
 
 Such a loss may not be thought a serious one 
 by the sordid man who decries poetry as the use- 
 less product of an art already in its decay. 
 Should this ever be the case, it would be a mon- 
 strous symptom, a symptom that the noblest 
 impulses of the human heart are decaying also. 
 The truth is, as the greatest of English critics, 
 Hazlitt, has told us, that " poetry is an interest- 
 ing study, for this reason, that it relates to what- 
 ever is most interesting in human life. Whoever, 
 therefore, has a contempt for poetry, has a con- 
 tempt for himself and humanity." 
 2
 
 18 AN APPRECIATION 
 
 Turning from Miss Johnson's verse to her 
 prose, there is ample evidence that, had she 
 applied herself, she would have taken high rank 
 as a writer of fiction. Her " Legends of Van- 
 couver " is a remarkable book, in w^hich she re- 
 lates a number of Coast-Indian myths and tradi- 
 tions with unerring insight and literary skill. 
 These legends had a msin source in the person of 
 the famous old Chief, Capilano, who, for the first 
 time, revealed them to her in Chinook, or in 
 broken English, and, as reproduced in her rich 
 and harmonious prose, belong emphatically to 
 what has been called " The literature of power." 
 Bound together, so to speak, in the retentive 
 memory of the old Chief, they are authentic 
 legends of his people, and true to the Indian 
 nature. But we find in them, also, something 
 that transcends history. Indefinable forms, 
 earthly and unearthly, pass before us in mystical 
 procession, in a world beyond ordinary concep- 
 tion, in which nothing seems impossible. 
 
 The origin of the Indian's myths. East or West, 
 cannot be traced, and must ever remain a mys- 
 tery. But, from his immemorial ceremonies and 
 intense conservatism, we may reasonably infer 
 that many of them have been handed down from 
 father to son, unchanged, from the prehistoric 
 past to the present day; a past contemporary, 
 perhaps, with the mastodon, but certainly far 
 back in the mists of antiquity. The importance 
 of rescuing them from oblivion is plain enough.
 
 AN APPRECIATION 19 
 
 anrl therefore the untimely death of Miss John- 
 son, who was evidently turning with congenital 
 fitness to the task, is doubly to be regretted. For 
 as Mr. Bernard McEvoy well says in his preface 
 to her " Vancouver Legends," she " has linked 
 the vivid present with the immemorial past. . . . 
 In the imaginative power that she has brought to 
 these semi-historic Sagas, and in the liquid flow 
 of her rhythmical prose she has shown herself 
 to be a literary worker of whom we may well 
 be proud." 
 
 It is believed to be the general wish of Miss 
 Johnson's friends that some tribute of a national 
 and permanent character should be paid to her 
 memory; not indeed to preserve it — her own 
 works will do that — but as a visible mark of 
 public esteem. In this regard, what could be 
 better than a bronze statue of life-size, with such 
 accompanying symbols as would naturally sug- 
 gest themselves to a competent artist? Van- 
 couver, in which she spent her latter years, the 
 city she loved, and in which she died, is its proper 
 home ; and, as to its site, the spot in Stanley Park 
 where she wished her ashes to be laid is surely, 
 of all places, the most appropriate. 
 
 But whatever shape, in the opinion of her 
 friends, the memorial should take, it is impor- 
 tant, in any case, that it should be worthy of her 
 genius, and a fitting memento of her services to 
 Tanadian letters. 
 
 Fort Steele, B.C., September, 1913.
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Introduction 5 
 
 Pauline Johnson: An Appreciation .... 9 
 
 My Mother 25 
 
 Catharine of the " Crow's Nest " .... 97 
 
 A Red Girl's Reasoning 116 
 
 The Envoy Extraordinary 144 
 
 A Pagan in St. Paul's Cathedral .... 158 
 
 As It Was in the Beginning 163 
 
 The Legend of Lillooet Falls 178 
 
 Her Majesty's Guest 186 
 
 Mother o' the Men 204 
 
 The Nest Builder 221 
 
 The Tenas Klootchman 227 
 
 The Derelict 239 
 
 21
 
 ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 E. Paulxn'e JoaNSox Frontispiece 
 
 The Grave of PAnxNT: Johlnsox in Stanley Park, 
 
 XEAB SiWASH Rock 10 
 
 SrsvASH Rock 17 
 
 The Spieit of Siwash Ru:k 19 
 
 Miss Johxsox's Isdiajx Graxdfatheb .... 49 
 
 Crow's Nest Pass 97 
 
 Ge.vui-ve Old Red River Cart 128 
 
 The Qu'Appelle Valley 145 
 
 An iKOLix Dog Trait? 208 
 
 23
 
 My Mother 
 
 The Story of a Life of Unusual Experiences 
 
 [AuTHOR^s Note. — This is the story of my 
 mother's life, every incident of which she related 
 to me herself. I have neither exaggerated nor 
 curtailed a single circumstance in relating this 
 story. I have supplied nothing through imag- 
 ination, nor have I heightened the coloring of 
 her unusual experiences. Had I done so I could 
 not possibly feel as sure of her approval as I 
 now do, for she is as near to me to-day as she 
 was before she left me to join her husband, my 
 beloved father, whose feet have long since wan- 
 dered to the " Happy Hunting Grounds " of my 
 dear Red Ancestors.] 
 
 PART I. 
 
 It was a very lonely little girl that stood on 
 the deck of a huge sailing vessel while the shores 
 of England slipped down into the horizon and 
 the great, grey Atlantic yawned desolately 
 westward. She was leaving so much behind her, 
 taking so little with her, for the child was grave 
 and old even at the age of eight, and realized 
 
 25
 
 26 THE MOCCASIN MAKER 
 
 that this day meant the upd ragging of all the 
 tiny roots that clung to the home soil of the 
 older land. Her father was taking his wife and 
 family, his household goods, his fortune and his 
 future to America, which, in the days of 1829, 
 was indeed a venturesome step, for America was 
 regarded as remote as the North Pole, and good- 
 byes were, alas! very real good-byes, when trav- 
 ellers set sail for the New World in those times 
 before steam and telegraph brought the two 
 continents hand almost touching hand. 
 
 So little Lydia Bestman stood drearily watch- 
 ing with sorrow-filled eyes the England of her 
 babyhood fade slowly into the distance — eyes 
 that were fated never to see again the royal old 
 land of her birth. Already the deepest grief 
 that life could hold had touched her young 
 heart. She had lost her own gentle, London- 
 bred mother when she was but two years old. 
 Her father had married again, and on her sixth 
 birthday little Lydia, the youngest of a large 
 family, had been sent away to boarding-school 
 with an elder sister, and her home knew her no 
 more. She was taken from school to the sailing 
 ship; little stepbrothers and sisters had arrived 
 and she was no longer the baby. Years after- 
 wards she told her own little children that her 
 one vivid recollection of England was the exqui- 
 site music of the church chimes as the ship 
 weighed anchor in Bristol harbor — chimes that
 
 MY MOTHER 27 
 
 were ringing for evensong from the towers of 
 the quaint old English churches. Thirteen weeks 
 later that sailing vessel entered New York har- 
 bor, and life in the New World began. 
 
 Like most transplanted Englishmen, Mr. Best- 
 man cut himself completely off from the land of 
 his fathers; his interests and his friends hence- 
 forth were all in the country of his adoption, and 
 he chose Ohio as a site for his new home. He 
 was a man of vast peculiarities, prejudices and 
 extreme ideas — a man of contradictions so glar- 
 ing that even his own children never understood 
 him. He was a very narrow religionist, of the 
 type that say many prayers and quote much 
 Scripture, but he beat his children — both girls 
 and boys — so severely that outsiders were at 
 times compelled to interfere. For years these 
 unfortunate children carried the scars left on 
 their backs by the thongs of cat-o'-nine-tails when 
 he punished them for some slight misdemeanor. 
 They were all terrified at him, all obeyed him 
 like soldiers, but none escaped his severity. The 
 two elder ones, a boy and a girl, had married 
 before they left England. The next girl married 
 in Ohio, and the boys drifted away, glad to es- 
 cape from a parental tyranny that made home 
 anything but a desirable abiding-place. Finally 
 but two remained of the first family — Lydia and 
 her sister Elizabeth, a most lovable girl of seven- 
 teen, whose beauty of character and self-sacrific-
 
 28 THE MOCCASIN MAKER 
 
 ing heart made the one bright memory that 
 remained with these scattered fledglings 
 throughout their entire lives. 
 
 The lady who occupied the undesirable posi- 
 tion of stepmother to these unfortunate child- 
 ren was of the very cold and chilling type of 
 Englishwoman, more frequently met with two 
 generations ago than in this age. She simply 
 let her husband's first family alone. She took 
 no interest in them, neglected them absolutely, 
 but in her neglect was far kinder and more 
 humane than their own father. Yet she saw 
 that all the money, all the pretty clothes, all 
 the dainties, went to her own children. 
 
 Perhaps the reader will think these unpleasant 
 characteristics of a harsh father and a self-cen- 
 tred stepmother might better be omitted from 
 this narrative, particularly as death claimed 
 these two many years ago; but in the light of 
 after events, it is necessary to reveal what the 
 home environment of these children had been, 
 how little of companionship or kindness or 
 spoken love had entered their baby lives. The 
 absence of mother kisses, of father comradeship, 
 of endeavor to understand them individually, to 
 probe their separate and various dispositions — 
 things so essential to the development of all that 
 is best in a child — went far towards governing 
 their later actions in life. It drove the unselfish, 
 sweet-hearted Elizabeth to a loveless marriage;
 
 MY MOTHER 29 
 
 it flung poor, little love-hungry Lydia into alien 
 but, fortunately, loyal and noble arms. Out- 
 siders said, "What strange marriages!" But 
 Lydia, at least, married where the first real kind- 
 ness she had ever known called to her, and not 
 one day of regret for that marriage ever entered 
 into her life. 
 
 It came about so strangely, so inevitably, from 
 such a tiny source, that it is almost incredible. 
 
 One day the stepmother, contrary to her usual 
 custom, went into the kitchen and baked a num- 
 ber of little cakelets, probably what we would 
 call cookies. For what sinister reason no one 
 could divine, but she counted these cakes as she 
 took them from the baking-pans and placed them 
 in the pantry. There were forty-nine, all told. 
 That evening she counted them again ; there were 
 forty-eight. Then she complained to her husband 
 that one of the children had evidently stolen a 
 cake. (In her mind the two negro servants em- 
 ployed in the house did not merit the suspicion.) 
 Mr. Bestman inquired which child was fond of 
 the cakes. Mrs. Bestman replied that she did 
 not know, unless it was Lydia, who always liked 
 them. 
 
 Lydia was called. Her father, frowning, 
 asked if she had taken the cake. The child said 
 no. 
 
 "You are not telling the truth," Mr. Bestman 
 shouted, as the poor little downtrodden girl
 
 30 THE MOCCASIN MAKER 
 
 stood lialf terrified, consequently half guilty- 
 mannered, before him. 
 
 "But I am truthful," she said. ''I know noth- 
 ing of the cake." 
 
 "You are not truthful. You stole it — you 
 know you did. You shall be punished for this 
 falsehood," he stormed, and reached for the cat- 
 o'-nine-tails. 
 
 The child was beaten brutally and sent to her 
 room until she could tell the truth. When she 
 was released she still held that she had not taken 
 the cooky. Another beating followed, then a 
 third, when finally the stepmother interfered and 
 said magnanimously : 
 
 "Don't whip her any more; she has been pun- 
 ished enough." And once during one of the 
 beatings she protested, saying, "Don't strike the 
 child on the head that way." 
 
 But the iron had entered into Lydia's sister's 
 soul. The injustice of it all drove gentle Eliza- 
 beth's gentleness to the winds. 
 
 "Liddy darling," she said, taking the thirteen- 
 year-old girl-child into her strong young arms, 
 "/ know truth when I hear it. You never stole 
 that cake." 
 
 "I didn't," sobbed the child, "I didn't." 
 
 "And you have been beaten three times for 
 it !" And the sweet young mouth hardened into 
 lines that were far too severe for a girl of seven- 
 teen. Then: "Liddy, do you know that Mr. 
 Evans has asked me to marry him?"
 
 MY MOTHER 31 
 
 "Mr. Evans !" exclaimed the child. "Why, you 
 can't marry him^ 'Liza ! He's ever so old, and he 
 lives away up in Canada, among the Indians." 
 
 "That's one of the reasons that I should like 
 to marry him," said Elizabeth, her young eyes 
 starry with zeal. "I want to work among the 
 Indians, to help in Christianizing them, to — oh ! 
 just to help." 
 
 "But Mr. Evans is so old" reiterated Lydia. 
 
 "Only thirty," answered the sister; "and he is 
 such a splendid missionary, dear." 
 
 Love? No one talked of love in that household 
 except the contradictory father, who continually 
 talked of the love of God, but forgot to reflect 
 that love towards his own children. 
 
 Human love was considered a non-essential in 
 that family. Beautiful-spirited Elizabeth had 
 hardly heard the word. Even Mr. Evans had not 
 made use of it. He had selected her as his wife 
 more for her loveliness of character than from 
 any personal attraction, and she in her untaught 
 womanhood married him, more for the reason 
 that she desired to be a laborer in Christ's vine- 
 yard than because of any wish to be the wife 
 of this one man. 
 
 But after the marriage ceremony, this gentle 
 girl looked boldly into her father's eyes and 
 said: 
 
 "I am going to take Liddy with me into the 
 wilds of Canada."
 
 32 THE MOCCASIN MAKER 
 
 "Well, well, well!" said her father, English- 
 fashion. "If she wants to go, she may." 
 
 Go? The child fairly clung to the fingers of 
 this savior-sister — the poor little, inexperienced, 
 seventeen-year-old bride who was giving up her 
 youth and her girlhood to lay it all upon the 
 shrine of endeavor to bring the radiance of the 
 Star that shone above Bethlehem to reflect its 
 glories upon a forest-bred people of the North ! 
 
 It was a long, strange journey that the bride 
 and her little sister took. A stage coach con- 
 veyed them from their home in Ohio to Erie, 
 Pennsylvania, where they went aboard a sailing 
 vessel bound for Buffalo. There they crossed the 
 Niagara River, and at Chippewa, on the Cana- 
 dian side, again took a stage coach for the village 
 of Brantford, sixty miles west. 
 
 At this place they remained over night, and 
 the following day Mr. Evans' own conveyance 
 arrived to fetch them to the Indian Reserve, ten 
 miles to the southeast. 
 
 In after years little Lydia used to tell that 
 during that entire drive she thought she was go- 
 ing through an English avenue leading to some 
 great estate, for the trees crowded up close to 
 the roadway on either side, giant forest trees — 
 gnarled oaks, singing firs, jaunty maples, grace- 
 ful elms — all stretching their branches overhead. 
 But the "avenue" seemed endless. "When do 
 we come to the house?" she asked, innocently. 
 "This lane is very long."
 
 MY MOTHER 33 
 
 But it was three hours, over a rough corduroy 
 road, before the little white frame parsonage 
 lifted its roof through the forest, its broad 
 verandahs and green outside shutters welcoming 
 the travellers with an atmosphere of home at 
 last. 
 
 As the horses drew up before the porch the 
 great front door was noiselessly opened and a 
 lad of seventeen, lithe, clean-limbed, erect, cop- 
 per-colored, ran swiftly down the steps, lifted 
 his hat, smiled, and assisted the ladies to alight. 
 The boy was Indian to the finger-tips, with that 
 peculiar native polish and courtesy, that absolute 
 ease of manner and direction of glance, possessed 
 only by the old-fashioned type of red man of 
 this continent. The missionary introduced him 
 as "My young friend, the church interpreter, Mr. 
 George Mansion, who is one of our household.'' 
 (Mansion, or "Grand Mansion," is the English 
 meaning of this young Mohawk's native name.) 
 
 The entire personality of the missionary 
 seemed to undergo a change as his eyes rested 
 on this youth. His hitherto rather stilted man- 
 ner relaxed, his eyes softened and glowed, he 
 invited confidence rather than repelled it; truly 
 his heart was bound up with these forest people ; 
 he fairly exhaled love for them with every breath. 
 He was a man of marked shyness, and these silent 
 Indians made him forget this peculiarity of 
 which he was sorrowfully conscious. It was 
 probably this shyness that caused him to open 
 
 3
 
 34 THE MOCCASIN MAKER 
 
 the door and turn to his young wife with the ill- 
 selected remark: "Welcome home, madam." 
 
 Madam! The little bride was chilled to the 
 heart with the austere word. She hurried with- 
 in, followed by her wondering child-sister, as 
 soon as possible sought her room, then gave way 
 to a storm of tears. 
 
 "Don't mind me, Liddy," she sobbed. "There's 
 nothing wrong ; we'll be happy enough here, only 
 I think I looked for a little — petting." 
 
 With a wisdom beyond her years, Lydia did 
 not reply, but went to the window and gazed 
 absently at the tiny patch of flowers beyond the 
 door — the two lilac trees in full blossom, the 
 thread of glistening river, and behind it all, the 
 northern wilderness. Just below the window 
 stood the missionary and the Indian boy talking 
 eagerly. 
 
 "Isn't George Mansion splendid F' said the 
 child. 
 
 "You must call him Mr. Mansion ; be very care- 
 ful about the Mister, Liddy dear," said her sister, 
 rising and drying her eyes bravely. " I have al- 
 ways heard that the Indians treat one just as 
 they are treated by one. Respect Mr. Mansion, 
 treat him as you would treat a city gentleman. 
 Be sure he will gauge his deportment by ours. 
 Yes, dear, he is splendid. I like him already." 
 
 "Yes, 'Liza, so do I, and he is a gentleman. He 
 looks it and acts it. I believe he thinks gentle- 
 manly things."
 
 MY MOTHER 35 
 
 Elizabeth laughed. "You dear little soul!" 
 she said. "I know what you mean, and I agree 
 with you." 
 
 That laugh was all that Lydia wanted to hear 
 in this world, and presently the two sisters, with 
 arms entwined, descended the stairway and 
 joined in the conversation between Mr. Evans 
 and young George Mansion. 
 
 "Mrs. Evans," said the boy, addressing her 
 directly for the first time, "T hoped you were 
 fond of game. Yesterday I hunted; it was part- 
 ridge I got, and one fine deer. Will you offer me 
 the compliment of having some for dinner to- 
 night?" 
 
 His voice was low and very distinct, his accent 
 and expressions very marked as a foreigner to 
 the tongue, but his English was perfect. 
 
 "Indeed T shall. Mr. Mansion," smiled the girl- 
 bride, "but I'm afraid that I don't know how to 
 cook it." 
 
 "We have an excellent cook," said Mr. Evans. 
 "She has been with George and me ever since I 
 came here. George is a splendid shot, and keeps 
 her busy getting us game suppers." 
 
 Meanwhile Lydia had been observing the boy. 
 She had never seen an Indian, consequently was 
 trying to reform her ideas regarding them. She 
 had not expected to see anything like this self- 
 poised, scruDulously-dressed, fine-featured, dark 
 stripling. She thought all Indians wore savage- 
 looking clothes, had fierce eyes and stern, set
 
 36 THE MOCCASIN MAKER 
 
 mouths. This boy's eyes were narrow and shrewd, 
 but warm and kindly, his lips were like a Cupid's 
 bow, his hands were narrower, smaller, than her 
 own, but the firmness of those slim fingers, the 
 power in those small palms, as he had helped her 
 from the carriage, remained with her through 
 all the years to come. 
 
 That evening at supper she noted his table 
 deportment; it was correct in every detail. He 
 ate leisurely, silently, gracefully; his knife and 
 fork never clattered, his elbows never were in 
 evidence, he made use of the right plates, spoons, 
 forks, knives; he bore an ease, an unconscious- 
 ness of manner, that amazed her. The mission- 
 ary himself was a stiff man, and his very shy- 
 ness made him angular. Against such a setting 
 young Mansion gleamed like a brown gem. 
 
 For seven years life rolled slowly by. At times 
 Lydia went to visit her two other married sis- 
 ters, sometimes she remained for weeks with a 
 married brother, and at rare intervals made 
 brief trips to her father's house; but she never 
 received a penny from her strange parent, and 
 knew of but one home which was worthy the 
 name. That was in the Canadian wilderness 
 where the Indian Mission held out its arms to 
 her, and the beloved sister made her more wel- 
 come than words could imply. Four pretty
 
 MY MOTHER 37 
 
 children had come to grace this forest household, 
 where Toung George Mansion, still the veriest 
 right hand of the missionary, had grown into a 
 magnificent type of Mohawk manhood. These 
 years had brought him much, and he had accom- 
 plished far more than idle chance could ever 
 throw in his way. He had saved his salary that 
 he earned as interpreter in the church, and had 
 purchased some desirable property, a beautiful 
 estate of two hundred acres, upon which he some 
 day hoped to build a home. He had mastered 
 six Indian languages, which, with his knowledge 
 of English and his wonderful fluency in his own 
 tribal Mohawk, gave him command of eight 
 tongues, an advantage which soon brought him 
 the position of Government interpreter in the 
 Council of the great "Six Nations," composing the 
 Iroquois race. Added to this, through the death 
 of an uncle he came into the younger title of 
 his family, which boasted blood of two noble 
 lines. His father, speaker of the Council, held 
 the elder title, but that did not lessen the im- 
 portance of young George's title of chief. 
 
 Lydia never forgot the first time she saw him 
 robed in the full costume of his office. Hitherto 
 she had regarded him through all her comings 
 and goings as her playmate, friend and boon 
 companion; he had been to her something that 
 had never before entered her life — he had brought 
 warmth, kindness, fellowship and a peculiar
 
 38 THE MOCCASIN MAKER 
 
 confidential humanity that had been entirely 
 lacking in the chill English home of her child- 
 hood. But this day, as he stood beside his vet- 
 eran father, ready to take his place among the 
 chiefs of the Grand Council, she saw revealed 
 another phase of his life and character; she saw 
 that he was destined to be a man among men, 
 and for the first time she realized that her boy 
 companion had gone a little beyond her, perhaps 
 a little above her. They were a strange pair 
 as they stood somewhat apart, unconscious of 
 the picture they made. She, a gentle-born, fair 
 English girl of twenty, her simple blue muslin 
 frock vying with her eyes in color. He, tawny 
 skinned, lithe, straight as an arrow, the royal 
 blood of generations of chiefs and warriors puls- 
 ing through his arteries, his clinging buckskin 
 tunic and leggings fringed and embroidered with 
 countless quills, and endless stitches of colored 
 moosehair. From his small, neat moccasins to 
 his jet black hair tipped with an eagle plume 
 he was every inch a man, a gentleman, a war- 
 rior. 
 
 But he was approaching her with the same 
 ease with which he wore his ordinary "white-' 
 clothes — garments, whether buckskin or broad- 
 cloth, seemed to make but slight impression on 
 him. 
 
 "Miss Bestman," he said, "I should like you 
 to meet my mother and father. They are here,
 
 MY MOTHER 39 
 
 and are old friends of your vsister and Mr. Evans. 
 My mother does not speak the English, but she 
 knows you are my friend." 
 
 And presently Lydia found herself shaking 
 hands with the elder chief, speaker of the coun- 
 cil, who spoke English rather well, and with a 
 little dark woman folded within a "broadcloth" 
 and wearing the leggings, moccasins and short 
 dress of her people. A curious feeling of shy- 
 ness overcame the girl as her hand met that of 
 George Mansion's mother, who herself was the 
 most retiring, most thoroughly old-fashioned 
 woman of her tribe. But Lydia felt that she was 
 in the presence of one whom the young chief held 
 far and away as above himself, as above her, as 
 the best and greatest woman of his world; his 
 very manner revealed it, and Lydia honored him 
 within her heart at that moment more than she 
 had ever done before. 
 
 But Chief George Mansion's mother, small 
 and silent through long habit and custom, had 
 acquired a certain masterful dignity of her own, 
 for within her slender brown fingers she held a 
 power that no man of her nation could wrest 
 from her. She was "Chief Matron" of her entire 
 blood relations, and commanded the enviable 
 position of being the one and only person, man 
 or woman, who could appoint a chief to fill the 
 vacancy of one of the great Mohawk law-makers 
 whose seat in Council had been left vacant when
 
 40 THE MOCCASIN MAKER 
 
 the voice of the Great Spirit called him to the 
 happy hunting grounds. Lydia had heard of this 
 national honor which was the right and title of 
 this frail little moccasined Indian woman with 
 whom she was shaking hands, and the thought 
 flashed rapidly through her girlish mind: "Sup- 
 pose some one lady in England had the marvel- 
 lous power of appointing who the member should 
 be in the British House of Lords or Commons. 
 Wouldn't Great Britain honor and tremble be- 
 fore her?" 
 
 And here was Chief George Mansion's silent, 
 unpretentious little mother possessing all this 
 power among her people, and she, Lydia Best- 
 man, was shaking hands with her! It seemed 
 very marvellous. 
 
 But that night the power of this same slender 
 Indian mother was brought vividly before her 
 when, unintentionally, she overheard young 
 George say to the missionary: 
 
 "I almost lost my new title to-day, after you 
 and the ladies had left the Council." 
 
 "Why, George boy!" exclaimed Mr. Evans. 
 "What have you done?" 
 
 "Nothing, it seems, except to be successful. 
 The Council objected to my holding the title of 
 chief and having a chief's vote in the affairs of 
 the people, and at the same time being Govern- 
 ment interpreter. They said it would give me 
 too much power to retain both positions. I
 
 MY MOTHER 41 
 
 must give up one — my title or my Government 
 position," 
 
 "What did you do?" demanded Mr. Evans, 
 eagerly. 
 
 "Nothing, again," smiled the young chief. 
 " But my mother did something. She took the 
 floor of the Council, and spoke for forty minutes. 
 She said I must hold the position of chief which 
 she had made for me, as well as of interpreter 
 which I had made for myself ; that if the Council 
 objected, she would forever annul the chief's title 
 in her own family; she would never appoint one 
 in my place, and that we proud, arrogant Mo- 
 hawks would then have only eight representa- 
 tives in Council — only be on a level with, as she 
 expressed it, 'those dogs of Senecas.' Then she 
 clutched her broadcloth about her, turned her 
 back on us all, and left the Council." 
 
 "What did the Council do?" gasped Mr. 
 Evans. 
 
 "Accepted me as chief and interpreter," re- 
 plied the young man, smiling. "There was noth- 
 ing else to do." 
 
 "Oh, you royal woman! You loyal, loyal 
 mother!" cried Lydia to herself. "How I love 
 you for it !" 
 
 Then she crept away just as Mr. Evans had 
 sprung forward with both hands extended to- 
 wards the young chief, his eyes beaming with 
 almost fatherly delight.
 
 42 THE MOCCASIN MAKER 
 
 Unconsciously to herself, the English girl's in- 
 terest in the young chief had grown rapidly year 
 after year. She was also unconscious of his aim 
 at constant companionship with herself. His 
 devotion to her sister, whose delicate health 
 alarmed them all, more and more, as time went 
 on, was only another royal road to Lydia's heart. 
 Elizabeth was becoming frail, shadowy, her appe- 
 tite was fitful, her eyes larger and more wistful, 
 her fingers smaller and weaker. No one seemed 
 to realize the insidious oncreepings of "the white 
 man's disease," consumption, that was paling 
 Elizabeth's fine English skin, heightening her 
 glorious English color, sapping her delicate 
 English veins. Only young George would tell 
 himself over and over: "Mrs. Evans is going 
 away from us some day, and Lydia will be left 
 with no one in the world but me — no one but me 
 to understand — or to — care." 
 
 So he scoured the forest for dainties, wild 
 fruits, game, flowers, to tempt the appetite and 
 the eye of the fading wife of the man who had 
 taught him all the English and the white man's 
 etiquette that he had ever mastered. Night after 
 night he would return from day-long hunting 
 trips, his game-bag filled with delicate quail, 
 rare woodcock, snowy-breasted partridge, and 
 when the illusive appetite of the sick woman 
 could be coaxed to partake of a morsel, he felt 
 repaid for miles of tramping through forest 
 trails, for hours of search and skill.
 
 MY MOTHER 43 
 
 PART TI. 
 
 Perhaps it was this grey shadow stealing on 
 the forest mission, the thought of the day when 
 that beautiful mothering sister would leave his 
 little friend Lydia alone with a bereft man and 
 four small children, or perhaps it was a yet more 
 personal note in his life that brought George 
 Mansion to the realization of what this girl had 
 grown to be to him. 
 
 Indian-wise, his parents had arranged a suit- 
 able marriage for him, selecting a girl of his own 
 tribe, of the correct clan to mate with his own, 
 so that the line of blood heritage would be intact, 
 and the sons of the next generation would be of 
 the "Blood Royal," qualified by rightful lineage 
 to inherit the title of chief. 
 
 This Mohawk girl was attractive, young, and 
 had a partial English education. Her parents 
 were fairly prosperous, owners of many acres, 
 and much forest and timber country. The ar- 
 rangement was regarded as an ideal one — the 
 young people as perfectly and diplomatically 
 mated as it was possible to be; but when his 
 parents ajjproached the young chief with the 
 proposition, he met it with instant refusal. - 
 
 "My father, my mother," he begged, "I ask you 
 to forgive me this one disobedience. I ask you to 
 forgive that I have, amid my fight and struggle
 
 44 THE MOCCASIN MAKER 
 
 for English education, forgotten a single custom 
 of my people. I have tried to honor all the an- 
 cient rules and usages of my forefathers, but I 
 forgot this one thing, and I cannot, cannot do it ! 
 My wife I must choose for myself." 
 
 "You will marry — whom, then?" asked the old 
 chief. 
 
 "I have given no thought to it — yet," he fal- 
 tered. 
 
 "Yes," said his mother, urged by the knowing 
 heart of a woman, "yes, George, you have 
 thought of it." 
 
 "Only this hour," he answered, looking directly 
 into his mother's eyes. "Only now that I see 
 you want me to give my life to someone else. 
 But my life belongs to the white girl, Mrs. 
 Evans' sister, if she will take it. I shall offer it 
 to her to-morrow — to-day." 
 
 His mother's face took on the shadow of age. 
 "You would marry a white girl?" she exclaimed, 
 incredulously. 
 
 " Y'es," came the reply, briefly, decidedly. 
 
 "But your children, your sons and hers — they 
 could never hold the title, never be chief," she 
 said, rising to her feet. 
 
 He winced. "I know it. I had not thought 
 of if before — but I know it. Still, I would marrv 
 her." 
 
 "But there would be no more chiefs of the 
 Grand Mansion name," cut in his father. "The
 
 MY MOTHER 45 
 
 title would go to your aunt's sons. She is a 
 Grand Mansion no longer ; she, being married, is 
 merely a Straight-Shot, her husband's name. 
 The Straight-Shots never had noble blood, never 
 wore a title. Shall our family title go to a 
 Straight-Shot f^' and the elder chief mouthed the 
 name contemptuously. 
 
 Again the boy winced. The hurt of it all was 
 sinking in — he hated the Straight-Shots, he 
 loved his own blood and bone. With lightning 
 rapidity he weighed it all mentally, then spoke: 
 "Perhaps the white girl will not marry me," he 
 said slowly, and the thought of it drove the dark 
 red from his cheeks, drove his finger-nails into 
 his palms. 
 
 "Then, then you will marry Dawendine, our 
 choice?" cried his mother, hopefully. 
 
 "I shall marry no one but the white girl," he 
 answered, with set lips. "If she will not marry 
 me, I shall never marry, so the Straight-Shots 
 will have our title, anyway." 
 
 The door closed behind him. It was as if it 
 had shut forever between him and his own. 
 
 But even with this threatened calamity loom- 
 ing before her, the old Indian mother's hurt 
 heart swelled with a certain pride in his wilful 
 actions. 
 
 "What bravery !" she exclaimed. "What cour- 
 age to hold to his own choice! What a man!" 
 
 "Yes," half bemoaned his father, "he is a red
 
 46 THE MOCCASIN MAKER 
 
 man through and through. He defies his whole 
 nation in his fearlessness, his lawlessness. Even 
 I bow to his bravery, his self-will, but that brav- 
 ery is hurting me here, here!" and the ancient 
 chief laid his hand above his heart. 
 
 There was no reply to be made by the proud 
 though pained mother. She folded her "broad- 
 cloth" about her, filled her small carven pipe and 
 sat for many hours smoking silently, silently, 
 silently. Now and again she shook her head 
 mournfully, but her dark eyes would flash at 
 times with an emotion that contradicted her 
 dejected attitude. It was an emotion born of 
 self-exaltation, for had she not mothered a man? 
 — albeit that manhood was revealing itself in 
 scorning the traditions and customs of her an- 
 cient race. 
 
 And young George was returning from his 
 father's house to the Mission with equally mixed 
 emotions. He knew he had dealt an almost un- 
 forgivable blow to those beloved parents whom 
 he had honored and obeyed from his babyhood. 
 Once he almost turned back. Then a vision arose 
 of a fair young English girl whose unhappy child- 
 hood he had learned of years ago, a sweet, home- 
 less face of great beauty, lips that were made 
 for love they had never had, eyes that had al- 
 ready known more of tears than they should have 
 shed in a lifetime. Suppose some other youth 
 should win this girl away from him? Already
 
 MY MOTHER 47 
 
 several of the young men from the town drove 
 over more frequently than they had cause to. 
 Only the week before he had found her seated at 
 the little old melodeon playing and singing a 
 duet with one of these gallants. He locked his 
 teeth together and strode rapidly through the 
 forest path, with the first full realization that 
 she was the only woman in all the world for 
 him. 
 
 Some inevitable force seemed to be driving him 
 towards — circumstances seemed to pave the way 
 to — their ultimate union ; even now chance 
 placed her in the path, literally, for as he 
 threaded his way uphill, across the open, and on 
 to the little log bridge which crossed the ravine 
 immediately behind the Mission, he saw her 
 standing at the further side, leaning upon the 
 unpeeled sapling which formed the bridge guard. 
 She was looking into the tiny stream beneath. 
 He made no sound as he approached. Genera- 
 tions of moccasin-shod ancestors had made his 
 own movements swift and silent. Notwithstand- 
 ing this, she turned, and, with a bright girlish 
 smile, she said : 
 
 "I knew you were coming. Chief." 
 
 "Why? How?" he asked, accepting his new 
 title from her with a graceful indifference almost 
 beyond his four and twenty years. 
 
 " I can hardly say just how — but — " she ended , 
 with only a smile. For a full minute he caught
 
 48 THE MOCCASIN MAKER 
 
 and held her glance. She seemed unable to look 
 away, but her grave, blue English eyes were 
 neither shy nor confident. They just seemed to 
 answer his — then, 
 
 "Miss Bestman, will you be my wife?" he asked 
 gently. She was neither surprised nor dismayed, 
 only stood silent, as if she had forgotten the art 
 of speech. "You knew I should ask this some 
 day," he continued, rather rapidly. "This is the 
 day." 
 
 "I did not really know — I don't know how I 
 feel — " she began, faltering. 
 
 "I did not know how I felt, either, until an 
 hour ago," he explained. "When my father and 
 my mother told me they had arranged my mar- 
 riage with — " 
 
 "With whom?" she almost demanded. 
 
 "A girl of my own people," he said, grudgingly. 
 "A girl I honor and respect, but — " 
 
 "But what?" she said weakly, for the mention 
 of his possible marriage with another had flung 
 her own feelings into her very face. 
 
 "But unless you will be my wife, I shall never 
 marry." He folded his arms across his chest as 
 he said it — the very action expressed finality. 
 For a second he stood erect, dark, slender, lithe, 
 immovable, then with sudden impulse he held 
 out one hand to her and spoke very quietly. "I 
 love you, Lydia. Will you come to me?" 
 
 "Yes," she answered clearly. "I will come."
 
 Miss Johnson's Mohawk Grandfather 
 
 Who was for forty years Speaker of the Council of the Six 
 
 Nations Confederation. Fought for the British 
 
 at Queenston Heights.
 
 MY MOTHER ' 49 
 
 He caught her hands very tightly, bending his 
 head until his fine face rested against her hair. 
 She knew then that she had loved him through 
 all these years, and that come what might, she 
 would love him through all the years to be. 
 
 That night she told her frail and fading sister, 
 whom she found alone resting among her pil- 
 lows. 
 
 " 'Liza dear, you are crying," she half sobbed 
 in alarm, as the great tears rolled slowly down 
 the wan cheeks. "I have made you unhappy, 
 and you are ill, too. Oh, how selfish I am! I 
 did not think that perhaps it might distress 
 you." 
 
 "Liddy, Liddy darling, these are the only tears 
 of joy that I have ever shed!" cried Elizabeth 
 "Joy, joy, girlie! I have so wished this to come 
 before I left you, wished it for years. I love 
 George IMansion better than I ever loved brother 
 of mine. Of all the world T should have chosen 
 him for your husband. Oh ! I am happy, happy, 
 child, and you will be happy with him, too." 
 
 And that night Lydia Bestman laid her down 
 to rest, with her heart knowing the greatest 
 human love that had ever entered into her life. 
 
 Mr. Evans was almost beside himself with 
 joyousness when the young people rather shyly 
 confessed their engagement to him. He was 
 deeply attached to his wife's young sister, and 
 George Mansion had been more to him than many 
 4
 
 50 THE MOCCASIN MAKER 
 
 a man's son ever is. Seemingly cold and unde- 
 monstrative, this reserved Scotch missionary 
 had given all his heart and life to the Indians, 
 and this one boy was the apple of his eye. Far- 
 sighted and cautions, he saw endless trouble 
 shadowing the young lovers — opposition to the 
 marriage from both sides of the house. He could 
 already see Lydia's family smarting under the 
 seeming disgrace of her marriage to an Indian; 
 he could see George's family indignant and hurt 
 to the core at his marriage with a white girl ; he 
 could see how impossible it would be for Lydia's 
 people to ever understand the fierce resentment 
 of the Indian parents that the family title could 
 never continue under the family name. He could 
 see how little George's people would ever under- 
 stand the "white" prejudice against them. But 
 the good man kept his own counsel, determining 
 only that when the war did break out, he would 
 stand shoulder to shoulder with these young 
 lovers and be their friend and helper when even 
 their own blood and kin should cut them off. 
 
 It was two years before this shy and taciturn 
 man fully realized what the young chief and the 
 English girl really were to him, for affliction had 
 laid a heavy hand on his heart. First, his gentle 
 Jind angel-natured wife said her long, last good- 
 night to him. Then an unrelenting scourge of
 
 MY MOTHER 51 
 
 scarlet fever swept three of his children into 
 graves. Then the eldest, just on the threshold of 
 sweet young maidenhood, faded like a flower, 
 until she, too, said good-night and slept beside 
 her mother. Wifeless, childless, the stricken 
 missionary hugged to his heart these two — 
 George and Lydia — and they, who had labored 
 weeks and months, night and day, nursing and 
 tending these loved ones, who had helped fight 
 and grapple with death five times within two 
 years, only to be driven back heartsore and con- 
 quered by the enemy — these two put away the 
 thought of marriage for the time. Joy would 
 have been ill-fitting in that household. Youth 
 was theirs, health was theirs, and duty also was 
 theirs — duty to this man of God, whose house 
 was their home, whose hand had brought them 
 together, ^o the marriage did not take place at 
 once, but the young chief began making prepara- 
 tions on the estate he had purchased to build a 
 fitting home for this homeless girl who was giv- 
 ing her life into his hands. After so many dark 
 days, it was a relief to get Mr. Evans interested 
 in the plans of the house George was to build, to 
 select the proper situation, to arrange for a barn, 
 a carriage house, a stable, for young Mansion 
 had saved money and acquired property of suffi- 
 cient value to give his wife a home that would vie 
 with anything in the large border towns. Like 
 most Indians, he was recklessly extravagant, and
 
 52 THE MOCCASIN MAKER 
 
 many a time the thrifty Scotch blood of the 
 missionary would urge more economy, less ex- 
 penditure. But the building went on; George 
 determined it was to be a "Grand Mansion." His 
 very title demanded that he give his wife an 
 abode worthy of the ancestors who appropriated 
 the name as their own. 
 
 "When you both go from me, even if it is only 
 across the fields to the new home, I shall be very 
 much alone," Mr. Evans had once said. Then in 
 an agony of fear that his solitary life would 
 shadow their happiness, he added quickly, " But 
 I have a very sweet and lovely niece who writes 
 me she will come to look after this desolated 
 home if T wish it, and perhaps her brother will 
 come, too, if I want him. T am afraid I shall 
 want him sorely, George. For though you will 
 be but five minutes walk from me, your face will 
 not be at my breakfast table to help me begin 
 each day with a courage it has always inspired. 
 So T beg that you two will not delay your mar- 
 riage; give no thought to me. You are young 
 but once, and youth has wings of wonderful 
 swiftness. Margaret and Christopher shall come 
 to me; but although they are my own flesh and 
 blood, they will never become to me what you 
 two have been, and always will be." 
 
 Within their recollection, the lovers had never 
 heard the missionary make so long a speech. 
 They felt the earnestness of it, the truth of it,
 
 MY MOTHER 53 
 
 and arranged to be married when the golden days 
 of August came. Lydia was to go to her mar- 
 ried sister, in the eastern part of Canada, whose 
 husband was a clergyman, and at whose home 
 she had spent many of her girlhood years. 
 George was to follow. They were to be quietly 
 married and return by sailing vessel up the lakes, 
 then take the stage from what is now the city of 
 Toronto, arrive at the Indian Reserve, and go 
 direct to the handsome home the young chief 
 had erected for his English bride. So Lydia 
 Bestman set forth on her long journey from 
 which she was to return as the wife of the head 
 chief of a powerful tribe of Indians — a man 
 revered, respected, looked up to by a vast nation, 
 a man of sterling worth, of considerable wealth 
 as riches were counted in those days, a man 
 polished in the usages and etiquette of her own 
 people, who conducted himself with faultless 
 grace, who would have shone brilliantly in any 
 drawing-room (and who in after years was the 
 guest of honor at many a great reception by the 
 governors of the land), a man young, stalwart, 
 handsome, with an aristocratic lineage that bred 
 him a native gentleman, with a grand old title 
 that had come down to him through six hundred 
 years of honor in warfare and the high places 
 of his people. That this man should be despised 
 by her relatives and family connections because 
 of his warm, red skin and Indian blood, never
 
 54 THE MOCCASIN MAKER 
 
 occurred to Lydia. Her angel sister had loved 
 the youth, the old Scotch missionary little short 
 of adored him. Why, then, this shocked amaze- 
 ment of her relatives, that she should wish to 
 wed the finest gentleman she had ever met, the 
 man whose love and kindness had made her erst 
 while blackened and cruel world a paradise of 
 sunshine and contentment? She was but little 
 prepared for the storm of indignation that met 
 her announcement that she was engaged to marry 
 a Mohawk Indian chief. 
 
 Her sister, with whom she never had anything 
 in common, who was years older, and had been 
 married in England when Lydia was but three 
 years of age, implored, entreated, sneered, ridi- 
 culed and stormed. Lydia sat motionless through 
 it all, and then the outraged sister struck a vital 
 spot with: "I don't know what Elizabeth has 
 been thinking of all these years, to let you asso- 
 ciate with Indians on an equality. She is to 
 blame for this." 
 
 Then and only then, did Lydia blaze forth. 
 "Don't you dare speak of 'Liza like that!" flung 
 the girl. "She was the only human being in our 
 whole family, the only one who ever took me in 
 her arms, who ever called me 'dear,' who ever 
 kissed me as if she meant it. I tell you, she 
 loved George Mansion better than she loved her 
 cold, chilly English brothers. She loved me^ and 
 her house was my home, which yours never was
 
 MY MOTHER 55 
 
 Yes, she loved me, angel girl that she was, and 
 she died in a halo of happiness because I was 
 happy and because I was to marry the noblest, 
 kingliest gentleman I ever met." The girl ceased, 
 breathless. 
 
 "Yes," sneered her sister, "yes, marry an 
 Indian !'' 
 
 "Yes," defied Lydia, "an Indian, who can give 
 me not only a better home than this threadbare 
 parsonage of yours" — here she swept scornful 
 eyes about the meagre little, shabby room — "yes, 
 a home that any Bestman would be proud to 
 own; but better than that," she continued rag- 
 ingly, "he has given me love — love, that you in 
 your chilly, inhuman home sneer at, but that I 
 have cried out for; love that my dead mother 
 prayed should come to me, from the moment she 
 left me a baby, alone, in England, until the hour 
 when this one splendid man took me into his 
 heart." 
 
 "Poor mother !" sighed the sister. "I am grate- 
 ful she is spared this/^ 
 
 "Don't think that she doesn't know it!" cried 
 Lydia. "If 'Liza approved, mother does, and she 
 is glad of her child's happiness." 
 
 "Her child — yes, her child," taunted the sister. 
 "Child! child! Yes, and what of the c?iild you 
 will probably mother?" 
 
 The crimson swept painfully down the young 
 girl's face, but she braved it out.
 
 56 THE MOCCASIN MAKER 
 
 "Yes," she stammered, "a child, perhaps a 
 S071, a son of mine, who, poor boy, can never in- 
 herit his father's title." 
 
 "And why not, pray?" remarked her sister. 
 "Because the female line of lineage will be 
 broken," explained the girl. "He should marry 
 someone else, so that the family title could fol- 
 low the family name. His father and mother 
 have practically cast him off because of me. 
 Don't you see? Can't you understand that I am 
 only an untitled commoner to his people? I am 
 only a white girl." 
 
 "Only a white girl I" repeated the sister, sar- 
 castically. "Do you mean to tell me that you 
 believe these wretched Indians don't want him to 
 marry you? You^ a Bestman, and an English 
 girl? Nonsense, Lydia! You are talking utter 
 nonsense." But the sister's voice weakened, 
 nevertheless. 
 
 "But it's true," asserted the girl. "You don't 
 understand the Indian nation as 'Liza did; it's 
 perfectly true — a son of mine can claim no fam- 
 ily title; the honor of it must leave the name of 
 Mansion forever. Oh, his parents have com- 
 pletely shut him out of their lives because I am 
 only a white girl!" and the sweet young voice 
 trembled woefully. 
 
 "I decline to discuss this disgraceful matter 
 with you any further," said the sister coldly. 
 "Perhaps my good husband can bring vou to
 
 MY MOTHER 57 
 
 your senses," and the lady left the room in a 
 fever of indignation. 
 
 But her "good husband," the city clergyman, 
 declined the task of "bringing Lydia to her 
 senses." He merely sent for her to go to his 
 study, and, as she stood timidly in the doorway, 
 he set his small steely eyes on her and said : 
 
 "You will leave this house at once, to-night. 
 To-night, do you hear? I'll have no Indian come 
 here after my wife's sister, I hope you quite 
 understand me?" 
 
 "Quite, sir," replied the girl, and with a stiff 
 bow she turned and went back to her room. 
 
 In the haste of packing up her poor and scanty 
 wardrobe, she heard her sister's voice saying to 
 the clergyman : "Oh ! how could you send her 
 away? You know she has no home, she has no- 
 where to go. How could you do it?" All Lydia 
 caught of his reply was : "Not another night, not 
 another meal, in this house while I am its 
 master." 
 
 Presently her sister came upstairs carrying a 
 plate of pudding. Her eyes were red with tears, 
 and her hands trembled. "Do eat this, my dear ; 
 some tea is coming presently," she said. 
 
 But Lydia only shook her head, strapped her 
 little box, and, putting on her bonnet, she com- 
 manded her voice sufficiently to say: "I am 
 going now. I'll send for this box later." 
 
 "Where are you going to?" her sister's voice 
 trembled.
 
 58 THE MOCCASIN MAKER 
 
 "I — don't know," said the girl. "But where- 
 ever I do go, it will be a kindlier place tlian this. 
 Good-bye, sister.'' She kissed the distressed wife 
 softly on each cheek, then paused at the bedroom 
 door to say, "The man I am to marry loves me, 
 honors me too much to treat me as a mere 
 possession. I know that he will never tell me he 
 is 'master.' George Mansion may have savage 
 blood in his veins, but he has grasped the mean- 
 ing of the word 'Christianity' far more fully than 
 your husband has." 
 
 Her sister could not reply, but stood with 
 streaming eyes and watched the girl slip down 
 the back stairs and out of a side door. 
 
 For a moment Lydia Bestman stood on the 
 pavement and glanced up and down the street. 
 The city was what was known as a garrison 
 town in the days when the British regular troops 
 were quartered in Canada. Far down the street 
 two gay young officers were walking, their bril- 
 liant uniforms making a pleasant splash of color 
 in the sunlight. They seemed to suggest to the 
 girl's mind a more than welcome thought. She 
 knew the major's wife well, a gracious, whole- 
 souled English lady whose kindness had often- 
 times brightened her otherwise colorless life. In- 
 stinctively the girl turned to the quarters of the 
 married officers. She found the major's wife at 
 home, and, burying her drawn little face in the 
 good lady's lap, she poured forth her entire story.
 
 MY MOTHER 59 
 
 " My dear," blazed out the usually placid lady, 
 "if I were only the major for a few moments, 
 instead of his wife, I should — I should — well, I 
 should just swearl There, now I've said it, and 
 I'd do it, too. Why, I never heard of such an 
 outrage! My dear, kiss me, and tell me — when, 
 how, do you expect your young chief to come 
 for you?" 
 
 "Next week," said the girl, from the depths of 
 those sheltering arms. 
 
 "Then here you stay, right here with me. The 
 major and I shall go to the church with you, see 
 you safely married, bring you and your Hia- 
 watha home for a cosy little breakfast, put you 
 aboard the boat for Toronto, and give you both 
 our blessing and our love." And the major's 
 wife nodded her head with such emphasis that 
 her quaint English curls bobbed about, setting 
 Lydia off into a fit of laughter. "That's right, 
 my dear. You just begin to laugh now, and keep 
 it up for all the days to come. I'll warrant 
 you've had little of laughter in your young life," 
 she said knowingly. "From what I've known of 
 your father, he never ordered laughter as a daily 
 ingredient in his children's food. Then that 
 sweet Elizabeth leaving you alone, so terribly 
 alone, must have chased the sunshine far from 
 your little world. But after this," she added 
 brightly, "it's just going to be love and laughter. 
 And now, my dear, we must get back the rosy
 
 60 THE MOCCASIN MAKER 
 
 English color in your cheeks, or your young 
 Hiawatha won't know his little white sweet- 
 heart. Eiin away to my spare room, girlie. The 
 orderly will get a man to fetch your box. Then 
 you can change your frock. Leave yesterday be- 
 hind you forever. Have a little rest; you look 
 as if you had not slept for a week. Then join 
 the major and me at dinner, and we'll toast you 
 and your redskin lover in true garrison style." 
 
 And Lydia, with the glorious recuperation of 
 youth, ran joyously upstairs, smiling and sing- 
 ing like a lark, transformed with the first un- 
 adulterated happiness she had ever felt or 
 known. 
 
 PART III. 
 
 Upon George Mansion's arrival at the garrison 
 town he had been met on the wharf by the major, 
 who took him to the hotel, while hurriedly ex- 
 plaining just why he must not go near Lydia's 
 sister and the clergyman whom George had ex- 
 pected would perform the marriage ceremony. 
 "So," continued the major, "you and Lydia are 
 not to be married at the cathedral after all, but 
 Mrs. Harold and I have arranged that the cere- 
 mony shall take place at little St. Swithin's 
 Church in the West End. So you'll be there at 
 eleven o'clock, eh, boy?"
 
 MY MOTHER 61 
 
 "Yes, major, I'll be there, and before eleven, 
 I'm afraid, I'm so anxious to take her home. I 
 shall not endeavor to thank jou and Mrs. Harold 
 for what you have done for my homeless girl. I 
 can't even — " 
 
 "Tut, tut, tut !" growled the major. "Haven't 
 done anything. Bless my soul. Chief, take my 
 word for it, haven't done a thing to be thanked 
 for. Here's your hotel. Get some coffee to brace 
 your nerves up with, for I can assure you, boy, 
 a wedding is a trying ordeal, even if there is but 
 a handful of folks to see it through. Be a good 
 boy, now — good-bye until eleven — St. Swithin's, 
 remember, and God bless you I" and the big- 
 hearted, blustering major was whisked away in 
 his carriage, leaving the young Indian half over- 
 whelmed with his kindness, but as happy as the 
 golden day. 
 
 An hour or so later he stood at the hotel door 
 a moment awaiting the cab that was to take him 
 to the church. He was dressed in the height of 
 the fashion of the early fifties — very dark wine 
 broadcloth, the coat shaped tightly to the waist 
 and adorned with a silk velvet collar, a pale 
 lavender, flowered satin waistcoat, a dull white 
 silk stock collar, a bell-shaped black silk hat. He 
 carried his gloves, for throughout his entire life 
 he declared he breathed through his hands, and 
 the wearing of gloves was abhorrent to him. 
 Suddenly a gentleman accosted him with :
 
 62 THE MOCCASIN MAKER 
 
 "I hear an Indian chief is in town. Going to 
 be married here this morning. Where is the 
 ceremony to take place? Do you Ivnow anything 
 of it?" 
 
 Like all his race, George Mansion had a subtle 
 sense of humor. It seized upon him now. 
 
 "Certainly I know," he replied. "I happened 
 to come down on the boat with the chief. I in- 
 tend to go to the wedding myself. I understand 
 the ceremony was arranged to be at the cathe- 
 dral." 
 
 "Splendid !" said the gentleman. "And thank 
 you, sir." 
 
 Just then the cab arrived. Young Mansion 
 stepped hastily in, nodded good-bye to his 
 acquaintance, and smilingly said in an under- 
 tone to the driver, "St. Swithin's Church — and 
 quickly." 
 
 "With this ring I thee wed," he found himself 
 saying to a little figure in a soft grey gown at 
 his side, while a gentle-faced old clergyman in a 
 snowy surplice stood before him, and a square- 
 shouldered, soldierly person in a brilliant uni- 
 form almost hugged his elbow. 
 
 "I pronounce you man and wife." At the 
 words she turned towards her husband like a 
 carrier pigeon winging for home. Then some- 
 how the solemnity all disappeared. The major,
 
 MY MOTHER 63 
 
 the major's wife, two handsome young officers, 
 one girl friend, the clergyman, the clergyman's 
 wife, were all embracing her, and she was dimp- 
 ling with laughter and happiness; and George 
 Mansion stood proudly by, his fine dark face 
 eager, tender and very noble. 
 
 "My dear," whispered the major's wife, "he's 
 a perfect prince — he's just as royal as he can 
 be ! I never saw such manners, such ease. Why, 
 girlie, he's a courtier!" 
 
 "Confound the young rogue!" growled the 
 major, in her ear. "I haven't an officer on my 
 staff that can equal him. You're a lucky girl. 
 Yes, confound him, I say!" 
 
 "Bless you, child," said the clergyman's wife. 
 "I think he'll make you happy. Be very sure 
 that you make him happy." 
 
 And to all these whole-hearted wishes and 
 comments, Lydia replied with smiles and care- 
 free words. Then came the major, watch in 
 hand, military precision and promptitude in his 
 very tone. 
 
 "Time's up, everybody! There's a bite to eat 
 at the barracks, then these youngsters must be 
 gone. The boat is due at one o'clock — ^time's 
 up." 
 
 As the little party drove past the cathedral 
 they observed a huge crowd outside, waiting for 
 the doors to be opened. Lydia laughed like a 
 child as George told her of his duplicity of the
 
 64 THE MOCCASIN MAKER 
 
 morning, when he had misled the inquiring- 
 stranger into thinking the Indian chief was to 
 be married there. The little tale furnished fun 
 for all at the pretty breakfast in the major's 
 quarters. 
 
 "Nice way to begin your wedding morning, 
 young man !" scowled the major, fiercely. "Start- 
 ing this great day with a network of falsehoods." 
 
 "Not at all," smiled the Indian. "It was ar- 
 ranged for the cathedral, and I did attend the 
 ceremony." 
 
 "No excuses, you bare-faced scoundrel ! I won't 
 listen to them. Here you are happily married, 
 and all those poor would-be sight-seers sizzling 
 out there in this glaring August sun. I'm. 
 ashamed of you!" But his arm was about 
 George's shoulders, and he was wringing the 
 dark, slender hand with a genuine good fellow- 
 ship that was pleasant to see. "Bless my soul, 
 I love you, boy!" he added, sincerely. "Love 
 you through and through; and remember, I'm 
 your white father from this day forth." 
 
 "And I am your white mother," said the 
 major's wife, placing her hands on his shoulders. 
 
 For a second the bridegroom's face sobered. 
 Before him flashed a picture of a little old In- 
 dian woman with a broadcloth folded about her 
 shoulders, a small carven pipe between her lips, 
 a world of sorrow in her deep eyes — sorrow that 
 he had brought there. He bent suddenly and
 
 MY MOTHER 65 
 
 kissed Mrs. Harold's fingers with a grave and 
 courtly deference. "Thank you," he said simply. 
 
 But motherlike, she knew that his heart was 
 bleeding. Lydia had told of his parents' antag- 
 onism, of the lost Mansion title. So the good 
 lady just gave his hand a little extra, under- 
 standing squeeze, and the good-byes began. 
 
 "Be off with you, youngsters!" growled the 
 major. "The boat is in — poste haste now, or 
 you'll miss it. Begone, both of you !" 
 
 And presently they found themselves once 
 more in the carriage, the horses galloping down 
 to the wharf. And almost before they realized 
 it they were aboard, with the hearty "God bless 
 you's" of the splendid old major and his lovable 
 wife still echoing in their happy young hearts. 
 
 It was evening, five days later, when they ar- 
 rived at their new home. All about the hills, 
 and the woods, above the winding river, and 
 along the edge of the distant forest, brooded that 
 purple smokiness that haunts the late days of 
 August — the smokiness that was born of distant 
 fires, where the Indians and pioneers were "clear- 
 ing" their lands. The air was like amethyst, the 
 setting sun a fire opal. As on the day when she 
 first had come into his life, George helped her 
 to alight from the carriage, and they stood a 
 moment, hand in hand, and looked over the 
 
 5
 
 66 THE MOCCASIN MAKER 
 
 ample acres that composed their estate. The 
 young Indian had worked hard to have most of 
 the land cleared, leaving here and there vast 
 stretches of walnut groves, and long lines of ma- 
 jestic elms, groups of sturdy oaks, and occasion- 
 ally a single regal pine tree. Many a time in 
 later years his utilitarian friends would say, 
 "Chief, these trees you are preserving so jeal- 
 ously are eating up a great deal of your land. 
 Why not cut them away and grow wheat?" But 
 he would always resent the suggestion, saying 
 that his wheat lands lay back from the river. 
 They were for his body, doubtless, but here, by 
 the river, the trees must be — they were for his 
 soul. And Lydia would champion him imme- 
 diately with, "Yes, they were there to welcome 
 me as a bride, those grand old trees, and they 
 will remain there, I think, as long as we both 
 shall live." So, that first evening at home they 
 stood and watched the imperial trees, the long, 
 open flats bordering the river, the nearby lawns 
 which he had taken such pains to woo from the 
 wilderness; stood palm to palm, and that mo- 
 ment seemed to govern all their after life. 
 
 Someone has said that never in the history of 
 the world have two people been perfectly mated. 
 However true this may be, it is an undeniable 
 fact that between the most devoted of life- mates 
 there will come inharmonious moments. Indi- 
 viduality would cease to exist were it not so.
 
 MY MOTHER 67 
 
 These two lived together for upwards of thirty 
 years, and never had one single quarrel, but 
 oddly enough, when the rare inharmonious mo- 
 ments came, these groups of trees bridged the 
 fleeting difference of opinion or any slight antag- 
 onism of will and purpose ; when these unrespon- 
 sive moments came, one or the other would begin 
 to admire those forest giants, to suggest im- 
 provements, to repeat the admiration of others 
 for their graceful outlines — to, in fact, direct 
 thought and conversation into the common chan- 
 nel of love for those trees. This peculiarity was 
 noticeable to outsiders, to their own circle, to 
 their children. At mere mention of the trees 
 the shadow of coming cloud would lessen, then 
 waste, then grow invisible. Their mutual love 
 for these voiceless yet voiceful and kingly crea- 
 tions was as the love of children for a flower — 
 simple, nameless, beautiful and powerful beyond 
 words. 
 
 That first home night, as she stepped within 
 doors, there awaited two inexpressible surprises 
 for her. First, on the dining-room table a silver 
 tea service of seven pieces, imported from Eng- 
 land — his wedding gift to her. Second, in the 
 quaint little drawing-room stood a piano. In 
 the "early fifties" this latter was indeed a lux- 
 ury, even in city homes. She uttered a little cry 
 of delight, and flinging herself before the instru- 
 ment, ran her fingers over the keys, and broke
 
 68 THE MOCCASIN MAKER 
 
 into his favorite song, "Oft in the Stilly Night." 
 She had a beautiful voice, the possession of 
 which would have made her renowned had oppor- 
 tunity afforded its cultivation. She had "picked 
 up" music and read it remarkably well, and he, 
 Indian wise, was passionately fond of melody. 
 So they laughed and loved together over this 
 new luxurious toy, until Milly, the ancient Mo- 
 hawk maid, tapped softly at the drawing-room 
 and bade them come to tea. With that first meal 
 in her new home, the darkened hours and days 
 and years smothered their haunting voices. She 
 had "left yesterday behind her," as the major's 
 royal wife had wished her to, and for the first 
 time in all her checkered and neglected life she 
 laughed with the gladness of a bird at song, flung 
 lier past behind her, and the grim unhappiness 
 of her former life left her forever. 
 
 It was a golden morning in July when the 
 doctor stood grasping George Mansion's slender 
 hands, searching into his dusky, anxious eyes, 
 and saying with ringing cheeriness, "Chief, I 
 congratulate you. You've got the most beautiful 
 son upstairs — the finest boy I ever saw. Hail to 
 the young chief, I say !" 
 
 The doctor was white. He did not know of 
 the broken line of lineage — that "the boy up- 
 stairs" could never wear his father's title. A
 
 MY MOTHER 69 
 
 swift shadow fought for a second with glorious 
 happiness. The battlefield was George Man- 
 sion's face, his heart. His unfilled duty to his 
 parents assailed him like a monstrous enemy, 
 then happiness conquered, came forth a triumph- 
 ant victor, and the young father dashed noise- 
 lessly, fleetly up the staircase, and, despite the 
 protesting physician, in another moment his wife 
 and son were in his arms. Titles did not count 
 in that moment; only Love in its tyrannical ma- 
 jesty reigned in that sacred room. 
 
 The boy was a being of a new world, a new 
 nation. Before he was two weeks old he began 
 to show the undeniable physique of the two 
 great races from whence he came; all the better 
 qualities of both bloods seemed to blend within 
 his small body. He was his father's son, he was 
 his mother's baby. His grey-blue eyes held a 
 hint of the dreaming forest, but also a touch of 
 old England's skies. His hair, thick and black, 
 was straight as his father's, except just above the 
 temples, where a suggestion of his mother's 
 pretty English curls waved like strands of fine 
 silk. His small mouth was thin-lipped ; his nose, 
 which even in babyhood never had the infantile 
 "snub," but grew straight, thin as his Indian an- 
 cestors', yet displayed a half-haughty English 
 nostril; his straight little back — all combined 
 likenesses to his parents. But who could say 
 which blood dominated his tiny person? Only
 
 70 THE MOCCASIN MAKER. 
 
 the exquisite soft, pale brown of his satiny skin 
 called loudly and insistently that he was of a 
 race older than the composite English could ever 
 boast; it was the hallmark of his ancient herit- 
 age — the birthright of his father's son. 
 
 But the odd little half-blood was extraordin- 
 arily handsome even as an infant. In after 
 years when he grew into glorious manhood he 
 was generally acknowledged to be the handsom- 
 est man in the Province of Ontario, but to-day — 
 his first day in these strange, new surroundings 
 — he was but a wee, brown, lovable bundle, whose 
 tiny gossamer hands cuddled into his father's 
 palm, while his little velvet cheek lay rich and 
 russet against the pearly whiteness of his 
 mother's arm. 
 
 "I believe he is like you, George," she mur- 
 mured, with a wealth of love in her voice and 
 eyes. 
 
 "Yes," smiled the young chief, "he certainly 
 has Mansion blood; but your eyes, Lydia, your 
 dear eyes." 
 
 "Which eyes must go to sleep and rest," inter- 
 rupted the physician, severely. "Come, Chief, 
 you've seen your son, you've satisfied yourself 
 that Mrs. Mansion is doing splendidly, so away 
 you go, or I shall scold." 
 
 And George slipped away after one more em- 
 brace, slipped down the staircase, and out into 
 the radiant July sunshine, where his beloved
 
 MY MOTHER 71 
 
 trees arose about him, grand and majestic, seem- 
 ing to understand how full of joy, of exultation, 
 had been this great new dav. 
 
 The whims of women are proverbial, but the 
 whims of men are things never to be accounted 
 for. This beautiful child was but a few weeks 
 old when Mr, Bestman wrote, announcing to his 
 daughter his intention of visiting her for a few 
 days. 
 
 So he came to the Indian Reserve, to the hand- 
 some country home his Indian son-in-law had 
 built. He was amazed, surprised, delighted. His 
 English heart revelled in the trees. "Like an Old 
 Country gentleman's estate in the Counties," he 
 declared. He kissed his daughter with affec- 
 tion, wrung his son-in-law's hand with a warmth 
 and cordiality unmistakable in its sincerity, took 
 the baby in his arms and said over and over, 
 "Oh, you sweet little child! You sweet little 
 child!" Then the darkness of all those harsh 
 years fell away from Lydia. She could afford to 
 be magnanimous, so with a sweet silence, a lov- 
 ing forgetfulness of all the dead miseries and 
 bygone whip-lashes, she accepted her strange 
 parent just as he presented himself, in the guise 
 of a man whom the years had changed from 
 harshness to tenderness, and let herself thor- 
 oughly enjoy his visit.
 
 72 THE MOCCASIN MAKER 
 
 But when he drove away she had but one thing 
 to say; it was, "George, I wonder when your 
 father will come to us, when your mother will 
 come. Oh, I want her to see the baby, for I 
 think my own mother sees him." 
 
 "Some day, dear," he answered hopefully. 
 "They will come some da.y; and when they do, 
 be sure it will be to take you to their hearts." 
 
 She sighed and shook her head unbelievingly. 
 But the "some day" that he prophesied, but 
 which she doubted, came in a manner all too 
 soon — all too unwelcome. The little son had 
 just begun to walk about nicely, when George 
 Mansion was laid low with a lingering fever that 
 he had contracted among the marshes where 
 much of his business as an employee of the Gov- 
 ernment took him. Evils had begun to creep 
 into his forest world. The black and subtle evil 
 of the white man's firewater had commenced to 
 touch with its poisonous finger the lives and 
 lodges of his beloved people. The curse began 
 to spread, until it grew into a menace to the com- 
 munity. It was the same old story: the white 
 man had come with the Bible in one hand, the 
 bottle in the other. George Mansion had striven 
 side by side with Mr. Evans to overcome the 
 dread scourge. Together they fought the enemy 
 hand to hand, but it gained ground in spite of 
 all their efforts. The entire plan of the white 
 liquor dealer's campaign was simply an effort to
 
 MY MOTHER 73 
 
 exchange a quart of bad whiskey for a cord of 
 first-class firewood, or timber, which could be 
 hauled off the Indian Reserve and sold in the 
 nearby town markets for five or six dollars ; thus 
 a hundred dollars worth of bad whisky, if judi- 
 ciously traded, would net the white dealer a 
 thousand dollars cash. And the traffic went on, 
 to the depletion of the Indian forests and the 
 degradation of the Indian souls. 
 
 Then the Canadian Government appointed 
 young Mansion special forest warden, gave him 
 a "V. R." hammer, with which he was to stamp 
 each and every stick of timber he could catch 
 being hauled off the Reserve by white men; lic- 
 ensed him to carry firearms for self-protection, 
 and told him to "go ahead." He "went ahead." 
 Night after night he lay, concealing himself in 
 the marshes, the forests, the trails, the conces- 
 sion lines, the river road, the Queen's highway, 
 seizing all the timber he could, destroying all 
 the whisky, turning the white liquor traders off 
 Indian lands, and fighting as only a young, earn- 
 est and inspired man can fight. These hours and 
 conditions began to tell on his physique. The 
 marshes breathed their miasma into his blood — 
 the dreaded fever had him in its claws. Lydia 
 was a born nurse. She knew little of thermom- 
 eters, of charts, of technical terms, but her abil- 
 ity and instincts in the sick-room were unerring ; 
 and, when her husband succumbed to a raging
 
 74 THE MOCCASIN MAKER 
 
 fever, love lent her hands an inspiration and her 
 brain a clarity that would have shamed many a 
 professional nurse. 
 
 For hours, days, weeks, she waited, tended, 
 watched, administered, labored and loved beside 
 the sick man's bed. She neither slept nor ate 
 enough to carry her through the ordeal, but love 
 lent her strength, and she battled and fought 
 for his life as only an adoring woman can. Her 
 wonderful devotion was the common talk of the 
 country. She saw no one save Mr. Evans and 
 the doctors. She never left the sick-room save 
 when her baby needed her. But it all seemed so 
 useless, so in vain, when one dark morning the 
 doctor said, "We had better send for his father 
 and mother." 
 
 Poor Lydia! Her heart was nearly breaking. 
 She hurriedly told the doctor the cause that had 
 kept them away so long, adding, "Is it so bad 
 as that? Oh, doctor, must I send for them? 
 They don't want to come." Before the good 
 man could reply, there was a muffled knock 
 at the door. Then Milly's old wrinkled face 
 peered in, and Milly's voice said whisperingly, 
 "His people — they here." 
 
 "Whose people? Who are here?" almost 
 gasped Lydia. 
 
 "His father and his mother," answered the old 
 woman. "They downstairs." 
 
 For a brief moment there was silence. Lydia 
 could not trust herself to speak, but ill as he
 
 MY MOTHER 75 
 
 was, George's quick Indian ear had caught 
 Milly's words. He murmured, "Mother ! mother ! 
 Oh, my mother!" 
 
 "Bring her, quickly, quickly!^' said Lydia to 
 the doctor. 
 
 It seemed to the careworn girl that a life- 
 time followed before the door opened noiselessly, 
 and there entered a slender little old Indian 
 woman, in beaded leggings, moccasins, "short 
 skirt," and a blue "broadcloth" folded about her 
 shoulders. She glanced swiftly at the bed, but 
 with the heroism of her race went first towards 
 Lydia, laid her cheek silently beside the white 
 girl's, then looked directly into her eyes. 
 
 "Lydia!" whispered George, "Lydia!" At the 
 word both women moved swiftly to his side. 
 "Lydia," he repeated, "my mother cannot speak 
 the English, but her cheek to yours means that 
 you are her blood relation." 
 
 The effort of speech almost cost him a swoon, 
 but his mother's cheek was now against his own, 
 and the sweet, dulcet Mohawk language of his 
 boyhood returned to his tongue; he was speak- 
 ing it to his mother, speaking it lovingly, rapidly. 
 Yet, although Lydia never understood a word, 
 she did not feel an outsider, for the old mother's 
 hand held her own, and she knew that at last 
 
 the gulf was bridged. 
 
 »»♦#•»»♦♦» 
 
 It was two days later, when the doctor pro- 
 nounced George Mansion out of danger, that the
 
 76 THE MOCCASIN MAKER 
 
 sick man said to his wife: "Lydia, it is all over 
 — the pain, the estrangement. My mother says 
 that you are her daughter. My father says that 
 you are his child. They heard of your love, your 
 nursing, your sweetness. They want to know if 
 you will call them 'father, mother.' They love 
 you, for you are one of their own." 
 
 "At last, at last !" half sobbed the weary girl. 
 "Oh, George, I am so happy! You are going to 
 get well, and thei/ have come to us at last." 
 
 "Yes, dear," he replied. Then with a half 
 humorous yet wholly pathetic smile flitting 
 across his wan face, he added, "And my mother 
 has a little gift for you." He nodded then to- 
 wards the quaint old figure at the further side 
 of the bed. His mother arose, and, drawing 
 from her bosom a tiny, russet-colored object, laid 
 it in Lydia's hand. It was a little moccasin, just 
 three and a quarter inches in length. "Its mate 
 is lost," added the sick man, "but I wore it as a 
 baby. My mother says it is yours, and should 
 have been yours all these years." 
 
 For a second the two women faced each other, 
 then Lydia sat down abruptly on the bedside, 
 her arms slipped about the older woman's 
 shoulders, and her face dropped quickly, heav- 
 ily — at last on a mother's breast. 
 
 George Mansion sighed in absolute happiness, 
 then closed his eyes and slept the great, strong, 
 vitalizing sleep of reviving forces.
 
 MY MOTHER 77 
 
 PART IV. 
 
 How closely the years chased one another 
 after this! But many and many a happy day 
 within each year found Lydia and her husband's 
 mother sitting together, hour upon hour, needle 
 in hand, sewing and harmonizing — the best 
 friends in all the world. It mattered not that 
 " mother " could not speak one word of English, 
 or that Lydia never mastered but a half dozen 
 words of Mohawk, These two were friends in 
 the sweetest sense of the word, and their lives 
 swept forward in a unison of sympathy that 
 was dear to the heart of the man who held them 
 as the two most precious beings in all the world. 
 
 And with the years came new duties, new res- 
 ponsibilities, new little babies to love and care 
 for until a family, usually called " A King's 
 Desire," gathered at their hearthside — four 
 children, the eldest a boy, the second a girl, then 
 another boy, then another girl. These children 
 were reared on the strictest lines of both Indian 
 and English principles. They were taught the 
 legends, the traditions, the culture and the eti- 
 quette of both races to which they belonged ; but 
 above all, their mother instilled into them from 
 the very cradle that they were of their father's 
 people, not of hers. Her marriage had made 
 her an Indian by the laws which govern Canada,
 
 78 THE MOCCASIN MAKER 
 
 as well as by the sympathies and yearnings and 
 affections of her own heart. When she married 
 George Mansion she had repeated to him 
 the centuries-old vow of allegiance, " Thy people 
 shall be my people, and thy God my God." She 
 determined that should she ever be mother to his 
 children, those children should be reared as 
 Indians in spirit and patiiotism, and in loyalty 
 to their father's race as well as by heritage of 
 blood. The laws of Canada held these children 
 as Indians. They were wards of the Govern- 
 ment; they were born on Indian lands, on 
 Indian Reservations. They could own and 
 hold Indian lands, and their mother, English 
 though she was, made it her life service to 
 inspire, foster and elaborate within these chil- 
 dren the pride of race, the value of that copper- 
 tinted skin which they all displayed. When 
 people spoke of blood and lineage and nation- 
 ality, these children would say, " We are In- 
 dians," with the air with which a young Spanish 
 don might say, " I am a Castilian." She wanted 
 them to grow up nationalists, and they did, 
 every mother's son and daughter of them. 
 Things could never have been otherwise, for 
 George Mansion and his wife had so much in 
 common that their offspring could scarcely 
 evince other than inherited parental traits. 
 Their tastes and distastes were so synonymous; 
 they hated hypocrisy, vulgarity, slovenliness, 
 imitations.
 
 MY MOTHER 79 
 
 After forty years spent on a Canadian Indian 
 Reserve, Lydia Mansion still wore real lace, real 
 tortoise shell combs, real furs. If she could not 
 have procured these she would have worn plain 
 linen collars, no combs, and a woven woolen 
 scarf about her throat; but the imitation fab- 
 rics, as well as the "imitation people," had no 
 more part in her life than they had in her hus- 
 band's, who abhorred all such pinchbeck. Their 
 loves were identical. They loved nature — the 
 trees, best of all, and the river, and the birds. 
 They loved the Anglican Church, they loved the 
 British flag, they loved Queen Victoria, they 
 loved beautiful, dead Elizabeth Evans, they 
 loved strange, reticent Mr. Evans. They loved 
 music, pictures and dainty china, with which 
 George Mansion filled his beautiful home. They 
 loved books and animals, but, most of all, these 
 two loved the Indian people, loved their legends, 
 their habits, their customs — loved the people 
 themselves. Small wonder, then, that their chil- 
 dren should be born with pride of race and heri- 
 tage, and should face the world with that 
 peculiar, unconquerable courage that only a 
 fighting ancestry can give. 
 
 As the years drifted on, many distinctions 
 came to the little family of the " Grand Man- 
 sions." The chief's ability as an orator, his 
 fluency of speech, his ceaseless war against the 
 inroads of the border white men and their law- 
 lessness among his own people — all gradually
 
 80 THE MOCCASIN MAKER 
 
 but surely brought him, inch by inch, before the 
 notice of those who sat in the " seats of the 
 mighty " of both church and state. His presence 
 was frequently demanded at Ottawa, fighting 
 for the cause of his people before the House of 
 Commons, the Senate, and the Governor-General 
 himself. At such times^ he would always wear 
 his native buckskin costume, and his amazing 
 rhetoric, augmented by the gorgeous trappings 
 of his office and his inimitable courtesy of man- 
 ner, won him friends and followers among the 
 lawmakers of the land. He never fought for a 
 cause and lost it, never returned to Lydia and 
 his people except in a triumph of victory. Social 
 honors came to him as well as political distinc- 
 tions. Once, soon after his marriage, a special 
 review of the British troops quartered at 
 Toronto was called in his honor and he rode 
 beside the general, making a brilliant picture, 
 clad as he was in buckskins and scarlet blanket 
 and astride his pet black pony, as he received 
 the salutes of company after company of Eng- 
 land's picked soldiers as they wheeled past. And 
 when King Edward of England visited Canada 
 as Prince of Wales, he fastened with his own 
 royal hands a heavy silver medal to the buckskin 
 covering George Mansion's breast, and the royal 
 words were very sincere as they fell from the 
 prince's lips : " This medal is for recognition of 
 your loyalty in battling for your own people, 
 even as your ancestors battled for the British
 
 MY MOTHER 81 
 
 Crown." Then in later years, when Prince 
 Arthur of Connaught accepted the title of 
 " Chief," conferred upon him with elaborate 
 ceremony by the chiefs, braves and warriors of 
 the great Iroquois Council, it was George Man- 
 sion who was chosen as special escort to the royal 
 visitor — George Mansion and his ancient and 
 honored father, who, hand-in-hand with the 
 young prince, walked to and fro, chanting the 
 impressive ritual of bestowing the title. Even 
 Bismarck, the " Iron Chancellor " of Germany, 
 heard of this young Indian warring for the wel- 
 fare of his race, and sent a few kindly words, 
 with his own photograph, from across seas to 
 encourage the one who was fighting, single- 
 handed, the menace of white man's greed and 
 white man's firewater. 
 
 And Lydia, with her glad and still girlish 
 heart, gloried in her husband's achievements 
 and in the recognition accorded him by the great 
 world beyond the Indian Reserve, beyond the 
 wilderness, beyond the threshold of their own 
 home. In only one thing were their lives at all 
 separated. She took no part in his public life. 
 She hated the glare of the fierce light that beat 
 upon prominent lives, the unrest of fame, the 
 disquiet of public careers. 
 
 " No," she would answer, when oftentimes he 
 begged her to accompany him and share his suc- 
 cess and honors, "no, I was homeless so long 
 
 6
 
 82 THE MOCCASIN MAKER 
 
 that 'home' is now my ambition. My babies 
 need me here, and you need me here when you 
 return, far more than you need me on platform 
 or parade. Go forth and fight the enemy, storm 
 the battlements and win the laurels, but let me 
 keep the garrison — here at home, with our babies 
 all about me and a welcome to our warrior hus- 
 band and father when he returns from war," 
 
 Then he would laugh and coax again, but 
 always with the same result. Every day, 
 whether he went forth to the Indian Council 
 across the river, or when more urgent duties 
 called him to the Capital, she always stood at 
 the highest window waving her handkerchief 
 until he was out of sight, and that dainty flag 
 lent strength to his purpose and courage to his 
 heart, for he knew the home citadel was there 
 awaiting his return — kncAV that she would be 
 at that selfsame window, their children clustered 
 about her skirts, her welcoming hands waving 
 a greeting instead of a good-bye, as soon as he 
 faced the home portals once more, and in his heart 
 of hearts George Mansion felt that his wife had 
 chosen the wiser, greater part; that their chil- 
 dren would some day arise and call her blessed 
 because she refused to wing away from the home 
 nest, even if by so doing she left him to take his 
 flights alone. 
 
 But in all their world there was no one 
 prouder of his laurels and successes than his
 
 MY MOTHER 83 
 
 home-loving, little English wife, and the mother- 
 heart of her must be forgiven for welcoming each 
 new honor as a so much greater heritage for 
 their children. Each distinction won by her 
 husband only established a higher standard for 
 their children to live up to. She prayed and 
 hoped and prayed again that they would all be 
 worthy such a father, that they would never fall 
 short of his excellence. To this end she taught, 
 labored for, and loved them, and they, in turn, 
 child-wise, responded to her teaching, imitating 
 her allegiance to their father, reflecting her 
 fealty, and duplicating her actions. So she 
 molded these little ones with the mother-hand 
 that they felt through all their after lives, which 
 were but images of her own in all that con- 
 cerned their father. 
 
 The first great shadow that fell on this united 
 little circle was when George Mansion's mother 
 quietly folded her " broadcloth " about her shoul- 
 ders for the last time, when the little old tobacco 
 pipe lay unfilled and unlighted, when the finely- 
 beaded moccasins were empty of the dear feet 
 that had wandered so gentl,y, so silently into the 
 Happy Hunting Grounds. George Mansion was 
 bowed with woe. His mother had been to him 
 the queen of all women, and her death left a 
 desolation in his heart that even his wife could 
 not assuage. It was a grief he really never over-
 
 84 THE MOCCASIN MAKER 
 
 came. Fortunately his mother had grown so 
 attached to Lydia that his one disobedience — 
 that of his marriage — never reproached him. 
 Had the gentle little old Indian woman died 
 before the episode of the moccasin which brought 
 complete reconciliation, it is doubtful if her son 
 would ever have been quite the same again. As 
 it was, with the silence and stoicism of his race 
 he buried his grief in his own heart, without 
 allowing it to cast a gloom over his immediate 
 household. 
 
 But after that the ancient chief, his father, 
 came more frequently to George's home, and was 
 always an honored guest. The children loved 
 him, Lydia had the greatest respect and affection 
 for him, the greatest sympathy for his loneli- 
 ness, and she ever made him welcome and her 
 constant companion when he visited them. He 
 used to talk to her much of George, and once or 
 twice gave her grave warnings as to his reckless- 
 ness and lack of caution in dealing with the ever- 
 growing menace of the whisky traffic among the 
 Indians. The white men who supplied and 
 traded this liquor were desperadoes, a lawless 
 set of ruffians who for some time had determined 
 to rid their stamping-ground of George Mansion, 
 as he was the chief opponent to their business, 
 and with the way well cleared of him and his 
 unceasing resistance, their scoundrelly trade 
 would be an easy matter.
 
 MY MOTHER 85 
 
 " Use all your influence, Lydia," the old father 
 would say, " to urge him never to seize the ill- 
 gotten timber or destroy their whisky, unless he 
 has other Indian wardens with him. They'll kill 
 him if they can, those white men. They have 
 been heard to threaten." 
 
 For some time this very thing had been crowd- 
 ing its truth about his wife's daily life. Threat- 
 ening and anonymous letters had more than once 
 been received by her husband — letters that said 
 he would be " put out of the way " unless he 
 stopped interfering in the liquor trade. There 
 was no ignoring the fact that danger was grow- 
 ing, daily, that the fervent young chief was 
 allowing his zeal to overcome his caution, was 
 hazarding his life for the protection of his people 
 against a crying evil. Once a writer of these 
 unsigned letters threatened to burn his house 
 down in the dead of night, another to maim his 
 horses and cattle, others to " do away " with him. 
 His crusade was being waged under the weight 
 of a cross that was beginning to fall on his loyal 
 wife, and to overshadow his children. Then one 
 night the blow fell. Blind with blood, crushed 
 and broken, he staggered and reeled home, 
 unaided, unassisted, and in excruciating torture. 
 Nine white men had attacked him from behind 
 in a border village a mile from his home, where 
 he had gone to intercept a load of whisky that 
 was being hauled into the Indian Reserve. Eight
 
 86 THE MOCCASIN MAKER 
 
 of those lawbreakers circled about him, while 
 the ninth struck him from behind with a leaden 
 plumb attached to an elastic throw-string. The 
 deadly thing crushed in his skull; he dropped 
 where he stood, as if shot. Then brutal boots 
 kicked his face, his head, his back, and, with 
 curses, his assailants left him — for dead. 
 
 With a vitality born of generations of war- 
 riors, he regained consciousness, staggered the 
 mile to his own gate, where he met a friend, who, 
 with extreme concern, began to assist him into 
 his home. But he refused the helping arm with, 
 " No, I go alone ; it would alarm Lydia if I could 
 not walk alone." These, with the few words he 
 spoke as he entered the kitchen, where his wife 
 was overseeing old Milly get the evening meal, 
 were the last intelligent words he spoke for many 
 a day. 
 
 " Lydia, they've hurt me at last," he said, 
 gently. 
 
 She turned at the sound of his strained voice. 
 A thousand emotions overwhelmed her at the 
 terrifying sight before her. Love, fear, horror, 
 all broke forth from her lips in a sharp, hysteri- 
 cal cry, but above this cry sounded the gay 
 laughter of the children w^ho were playing in 
 the next room, their shrill young voices raised 
 in merriment over some new sport. In a second 
 the mother-heart asserted itself. Their young 
 eyes must not see this ghastly thing.
 
 MY MOTHER 87 
 
 " Milly I" she cried to the devoted Indian ser- 
 vant, " help Chief George." Then dashing into 
 the next room, she half sobbed, " Children, chil- 
 dren I hush, oh, hush I Poor father — " 
 
 She never finished the sentence. With a turn 
 of her arm she swept them all into the drawing- 
 room, closed the door, and flew back to her 
 patriot husband. 
 
 For weeks and w^eeks he lay fighting death as 
 only a determined man can — his upper jaw broken 
 on both sides, his lower jaw splintered on one 
 side, his skull so crushed that to the end of his 
 days a silver dollar could quite easily be laid 
 flat in the cavity, a jagged and deep hole in his 
 back, and injuries about the knees and leg bones. 
 And all these weeks Lydia hovered above his pil- 
 low, night and day, nursing, tending, helping, 
 cheering. What effort it cost her to be bright 
 and smiling no tongue can tell, for her woman's 
 heart saw that this was but the beginning of the 
 end. She saw it when in his delirium he raved 
 to get better, to be allowed to get up and go on 
 with the fight; saw that his spirit never rested, 
 for fear that, now he was temporarily inactive, 
 the whisky dealers would have their way. She 
 knew then that she must school herself to endure 
 this thing again ; that she must never ask him to 
 give up his life work, never be less courageous 
 than he, though that courage would mean never 
 a peaceful moment to her w^hen he w^as outside 
 their own home.
 
 88 THE MOCCASIN MAKER 
 
 Mr. Evans was a great comfort to her during 
 those terrible weeks. Hour after hour he would 
 sit beside the injured man, never speaking or 
 moving, only watching quietly, while Lydia 
 barely snatched the necessary sleep a nurse must 
 have, or attended to the essential needs of the 
 children, who, however, were jealously cared for 
 by faithful Milly. During those times the chil- 
 dren never spoke except in whispers, their rigid 
 Indian-English training in self-effacement and 
 obedience being now of untold value. 
 
 But love and nursing and bravery all counted 
 in the end, and one day George Mansion walked 
 downstairs, the doctor's arm on one side, Lydia's 
 on the other. He immediately asked for his pistol 
 and his dagger, cleaned the one, oiled and sharp- 
 ened the other, and said, " I'll be ready for them 
 again in a month's time." 
 
 But while he lay injured his influential white 
 friends and the Government at Ottawa had not 
 been idle. The lawless creature who dealt those 
 unmerited blows was tried, convicted and sent 
 to Kingston Penitentiary for seven years. So 
 one enemy was out of the way for the time being. 
 It was at this time that advancing success lost 
 him another antagonist, who was placed almost 
 in the rank of an ally. 
 
 George Mansion was a guest of the bishop of 
 his diocese, as he was a lay delegate accompany- 
 ing Mr. Evans to the Anglican Synod. The
 
 MY MOTHER 89 
 
 chief's work had reached other ears than those 
 of the Government at Ottawa, and the bishop was 
 making much of the patriot, when in the See 
 House itself an old clergyman approached him 
 with outstretched hand and the words, " I would 
 like you to call bygones just bygones." 
 
 " I don't believe I have the honor of knowing 
 you, sir," replied the Indian, with a puzzled but 
 gracious look. 
 
 " I am your wife's brother-in-law," said the 
 old clergyman, " the man who would not allow 
 her to be married from my house — that is, mar- 
 ried to you" * 
 
 The Indian bit his lip and instinctively stepped 
 backward. Added to his ancestral creed of never 
 forgiving such injury, came a rush of memory — 
 the backward-surging picture of his homeless 
 little sweetheart and all that she had endured. 
 Then came the memory of his dead mother's 
 teaching — teaching she had learned from her 
 own mother, and she in turn from her mother: 
 " Always forget yourself for old people, always 
 honor the old." 
 
 Instantly George Mansion arose — arose above 
 the prejudices of his blood, above the traditions 
 of his race, arose to the highest plane a man can 
 reach — the memory of his mother's teaching. 
 
 " I would hardly be here as a lay delegate of 
 my church were I not willing to let bygones be 
 bygones," he said, simply, and laid his hand in
 
 90 THE MOCCASIN MAKER 
 
 that of the old clergyman, about whose eyes 
 there was moisture, perhaps because this oppor- 
 tunity for peacemaking had come so tardily. 
 
 The little family of the " Grand Mansions " 
 were now growing to very " big childhood," and 
 the inevitable day came when Lydia's heart must 
 bear the wrench of having her firstborn say good- 
 bye to take his college course. She was not the 
 type of mother who would keep the boy at home 
 because of the heartache the good-byes must 
 bring, but the parting was certainly a hard one, 
 and she watched his going with a sense of loss 
 that was almost greater than her pride in him. 
 He had given evidence of the most remarkable 
 musical talent. He played classical airs even 
 before he knew a note, and both his parents were 
 in determined unison about this talent being cul- 
 tivated. The following year the oldest daughter 
 also entered college, having had a governess at 
 home for a year, as some preparation. But 
 these changes brought no difference into the 
 home, save that George Mansion's arm grew 
 stronger daily in combat against the old foe. 
 Then came the second attack of the enemy, when 
 six white men beset him from behind, again 
 knocking him insensible, with a heavy blue beech 
 hand-spike. They broke his hand and three 
 ribs, knocked out his teeth, injured his side and
 
 MY MOTHER 91 
 
 head; then seizing his pistol, shot at him, the 
 ball fortunately not reaching a vital spot. As 
 his senses swam he felt them drag his poor 
 maimed body into the middle of the road, so it 
 would appear as if horses had trampled him, 
 then he heard them say, " This time the devil is 
 dead." But hours afterwards he again arose, 
 again walked home, five interminable miles, 
 again greeted his ever watchful and anxious wife 
 with, " Lydia, they've hurt me once more." 
 Then came weeks of renewed suffering, of 
 renewed care and nursing, of renewed vitality, 
 and at last of conquered health. 
 
 These two terrible illnesses seemed to raise 
 Lydia into a peculiar, half-protecting attitude 
 towards him. In many ways she " mothered " 
 him almost as though he were her son — he who 
 had always been the leader, and so strong and 
 self-reliant. After this, when he went forth on 
 his crusades, she watched his going with the 
 haunting fear with which one would watch a 
 child wandering on the edge of a chasm. She 
 waited on him when he returned, served him 
 with the tenderness with which one serves a 
 cripple or a baby. Once he caught her arm, as 
 she carried to him a cup of broth, after he had 
 spent wearisome hours at the same old battle, 
 and turning towards her, said softly : " You are 
 like my mother used to be to me." She did not 
 ask him in wha,t way — she knew — and carried
 
 92 THE MOCCASIN MAKER 
 
 broth to him when next he came home half 
 exhausted. Gradually he now gathered about 
 him a little force of zealous Indians who became 
 enthusiastic to take up arms with him against 
 the whisky dealers. He took greater precau- 
 tions in his work, for the growing mist of haunt- 
 ing anxiety in Lydia's eyes began to call to him 
 that there were other claims than those of the 
 nation. His splendid zeal had brought her many 
 a sleepless night, when she knew he was scouring 
 the forests for hidden supplies of the forbidden 
 merchandise, and that a whole army of desper- 
 adoes would not deter him from fulfilling his 
 duty of destroying it. He felt, rather than saw, 
 that she never bade him good-bye but that she 
 was prepared not to see him again alive. Added 
 to this he began to suffer as she did — to find that 
 in his good-byes was the fear of never seeing her 
 again. He, who had always been so fearless, 
 was now afraid of the day when he should not 
 return and she would be once more alone. 
 
 So he let his younger and eager followers do 
 some of the battling, though he never relaxed 
 his vigilance, never took off his armor, so to 
 speak. But now he spent long days and quiet 
 nights with Lydia and his children. They enter- 
 tained many guests, for the young people were 
 vigorous and laughter-loving, and George and 
 Lydia never grew old, never grew weary, never 
 grew commonplace. All the year round guests
 
 MY MOTHER 93 
 
 came to the hospitable country house — men and 
 women of culture, of learning, of artistic tastes, 
 of congenial habits. Scientists, authors, artists, 
 all made their pilgrimages to this unique house- 
 hold, where refinement and much luxury, and 
 always a glad welcome from the chief and his 
 English wife, made their visits long remembered. 
 And in some way or other, as their children grew 
 up, those two seemed to come closer together once 
 more. They walked among the trees they had 
 loved in those first bridal days, they rested by 
 the river shore, they wandered over the broad 
 meadows and bypaths of the old estate, they 
 laughed together frequently like children, and 
 always and ever talked of and acted for the good 
 of the Indian people who were so unquestionably 
 the greatest interest in their lives, outside their 
 own children. But one day, when the beautiful 
 estate he was always so proud of was getting 
 ready to smile under the suns of spring, he left 
 her just when she needed him most, for their 
 boys had plunged forward into the world of busi- 
 ness in the large cities, and she wanted a strong 
 arm to lean on. It was the only time he failed 
 to respond to her devoted nursing, but now she 
 could not bring him back from the river's brink, 
 as she had so often done before. Cold had settled 
 in all the broken places of his poor body, and 
 he slipped away from her, a sacrifice to his fight 
 against evil on the altar of his nation's good. In
 
 94 THE MOCCASIN MAKER 
 
 his feverish wanderings he returned to the 
 tongue of his childhood, the beautiful, dulcet 
 Mohawk. Then recollecting and commanding 
 himself, he would weakly apologize to Lydia 
 with : " I forgot ; I thought it was my mother,'^ 
 and almost his last words were, " It must be by 
 my mother's side," meaning his resting-place. 
 So his valiant spirit went fearlessly forth. 
 
 " Do you ever think, dear," said Lydia to her 
 youngest child, some years later, " that you are 
 writing the poetry that always lived in an unex- 
 pressed state here in my breast?" 
 
 " No, Marmee," answered the girl, who was 
 beginning to mount the ladder of literature, " I 
 never knew you wanted to write poetry, although 
 I knew you loved it." v 
 
 " Indeed, I did," answered the mother, " but I 
 never could find expression for it. I was made 
 just to sing, I often think, but I never had the 
 courage to sing in public. But I did want to 
 write poetry, and now you, dear, are doing it for 
 me. How proud your father would have been 
 of you !" 
 
 " Oh, he knows I I'm sure he knows all that I 
 have written," answered the girl, with the sub- 
 lime faith that youth has in its own convictions. 
 " And if you like my verses, Marmee, I am sure 
 he does, for he knows."
 
 MY MOTHER 95 
 
 " Perhaps," murmured the older woman. " I 
 often feel that he is very near to us. I never 
 have felt that he is really gone very far away 
 from me." 
 
 " Poor little Marmee !" the girl would say to 
 herself. " She misses him yet. I believe she will 
 always miss him." 
 
 Which was the truth. She saw constantly his 
 likeness in all her children, bits of his character, 
 shades of his disposition, reflections of his gifts 
 and talents, hints of his bravery, and she always 
 spoke of these with a commending air, as though 
 they were characteristics to be cultivated, to be 
 valued and fostered. 
 
 At first her fear of leaving her children, even 
 to join him, was evident, she so believed in a 
 mother's care and love being a necessity to a 
 child. She had sadly missed it all out of her 
 own strange life, and she felt she must live until 
 this youngest daughter grew to be a woman. Per- 
 haps this desire, this mother-love, kept her longer 
 beside her children than she would have stayed 
 without it, for the years rolled on, and her hair 
 whitened, her once springing step halted a little, 
 the glorious blue of her English eyes grew very 
 dreamy, and tender, and wistful. Was she seeing 
 the great Hereafter unfold itself before her as 
 her steps drew nearer and nearer? 
 
 And one night the Great Messenger knocked 
 softly at her door, and with a sweet, gentle sigh
 
 96 THE MOCCASIN MAKER 
 
 she turned and followed where he led — joining 
 gladly the father of her children in the land that 
 holds both whites and Indians as one. 
 
 And the daughter who writes the verses her 
 mother always felt, but found no words to 
 express, never puts a last line to a story, or a 
 sweet cadence into a poem, but she says to her- 
 self as she holds her mother's memory within 
 her heart : 
 
 " She knows — she knows."
 
 Chow's Nest Pass.
 
 Catharine of the "Crow's 
 
 Nest" 
 
 The great transcontinental railway had been 
 in running order for years before the managers 
 thereof decided to build a second line across the 
 Kocky Mountains. But " passes " are few and 
 far between in those gigantic fastnesses, and the 
 fearless explorers, followed by the equally fear- 
 less surveyors, were many a toilsome month con- 
 quering the heights, depths and dangers of the 
 " Crow's Nest Pass." 
 
 Eastward stretched the gloriously fertile plains 
 of southern " Sunny Alberta," westward lay the 
 limpid blue of the vast and indescribably beau- 
 tiful Kootenay Lakes, but between these two 
 arose a barrier of miles and miles of granite and 
 stone and rock, over and through which a rail- 
 way must be constructed. Tunnels, bridges, 
 grades must be bored, built and blasted out. It 
 was the work of science, endurance and indomit- 
 able courage. The summers in the caiions were 
 seething hot, the winters in the mountains per- 
 ishingly cold, with apparently inexhaustible 
 7 97
 
 98 THE MOCCASIN MAKER 
 
 snow clouds circling forever about the rugged 
 peaks — snows in which many a good, honest 
 laborer was lost until the eagles and vultures 
 came with the April thaws, and wheeled slowly 
 above the pulseless sleeper, if indeed the wolves 
 and mountain lions had permitted him to lie 
 thus long unmolested. Those were rough and 
 rugged days, through which equally rough and 
 rugged men served and suffered to find founda- 
 tions whereon to lay those two threads of steel 
 that now cling like a cobweb to the walls of the 
 wonderful " gap " known as Crow's Nest Pass. 
 
 Work progressed steadily, and before Avinter 
 set in construction camps were built far into 
 " the gap," the furthermost one being close to 
 the base of a majestic mountain, which was also 
 named " The Crow's Nest." It arose beyond the 
 camp with almost overwhelming immensity. 
 Dense forests of Douglas fir and bull pines shoul- 
 dered their way up one-third of its height, but 
 above the timber line the shaggy, bald rock 
 reared itself thousands of feet skyward, desolate, 
 austere and deserted by all living things; not 
 even the sure-footed mountain goat travelled up 
 those frowning, precipitous heights; no bird 
 rested its wing in that frozen altitude. The 
 mountain arose, distinct, alone, isolated, the 
 most imperial monarch of all that regal Pass. 
 
 The construction gang called it " Old Baldy," 
 for after working some months around its base,
 
 CATHARINE OF THE "CROW'S NEST" 99 
 
 it began to grow into their lives. Not so, how- 
 ever, with the head engineer from Montreal, who 
 regarded it always with baleful eye, and half 
 laughingly, half seriously, called it his " Jonah." 
 
 " Not a thing has gone right since we worked 
 in sight of that old monster," he was heard to 
 say frequently; and it did seem as if there were 
 some truth in it. There had been deaths, acci- 
 dents and illness among the men. Once, owing 
 to transportation difficulties, the rations were 
 short for days, and the men were in rebellious 
 spirit in consequence. Twice whiskey had been 
 smuggled in, to the utter demoralization of 
 the camp; and one morning, as a last straw, 
 " Cookee " had nearly severed his left hand from 
 his arm with a meat axe. Young Wingate, the 
 head engineer, and Mr. Brown, the foreman, took 
 counsel together. For the three meals of that 
 day they tried three different men out of the 
 gang as " cookees." No one could eat the atro- 
 cious food they manufactured. Then Brown 
 bethought himself. " There's an Indian woman 
 living up the canon that can cook like a French 
 chef," he announced, after a day of unspeakable 
 gnawing beneath his belt. " How about getting 
 her? I've tasted pork and beans at her shack, 
 and flapjacks, and — " 
 
 " Get her ! get her !" clamored Wingate. " Even 
 if she poisons us, it's better than starving. I'll 
 ride over to-night and offer her big wages."
 
 100 THE MOCCASIN MAKER 
 
 " How about her staying here?" asked Brown. 
 " The boys are pretty rough and lawless at times, 
 you know." 
 
 " Get the axe men to build her a good, roomy 
 shack — the best logs in the place. We'll give 
 her a lock and key for it, and you. Brown, report 
 the very first incivility to her that you hear of," 
 said Wingate, crisply. 
 
 That evening Mr. Wingate himself rode over 
 to the canon; it was a good mile, and the trail 
 was rough in the extreme. He did not dismount 
 when he reached the lonely log lodge, but rap- 
 ping on the door with the butt of his quirt, he 
 awaited its opening. There was some slight stir- 
 ring about inside before this occurred; then the 
 door slowly opened, and she stood before him — 
 a rather tall woman, clad in buckskin garments, 
 with a rug made of coyote skins about her shoul- 
 ders; she wore the beaded leggings and mocca- 
 sins of her race, and her hair, jet black, hung in 
 ragged plaits about her dark face, from which 
 mournful eyes looked out at the young Mont- 
 realer. 
 
 Yes, she would go for the wages he offered, she 
 said in halting English; she would come to-mor- 
 row at daybreak ; she would cook their breakfast. 
 
 " Better come to-night," he urged. " The men 
 get d<iwn the grade to work very early; break- 
 fast must be on time."
 
 CATHARINE OP THE "CROW'S NEST" 101 
 
 " I be on time," she replied. " I sleep here 
 this night, every night. I not sleep in camp." 
 
 Then he told her of the shack he had ordered, 
 and that was even now being built. 
 
 She shook her head. " I sleep here every 
 night," she reiterated. 
 
 Wingate had met many Indians in his time, so 
 dropped the subject, knowing well that persua- 
 sion or argument would be utterly useless. 
 
 " All right," he said ; " you must do as you like; 
 only remember, an early breakfast to-morrow." 
 
 " I 'member," she replied. 
 
 He had ridden some twenty yards, when he 
 turned to call back : " Oh, what's your name, 
 please?" 
 
 " Catharine," she answered, simply. 
 
 " Thank you," he said, and, touching his hat 
 lightly, rode down towards the canon. Just as 
 he was dipping over its rim he looked back. She 
 was still standing in the doorway, and above and 
 about her were the purple shadows, the awful 
 solitude, of Crow's Nest Mountain. 
 
 Catharine had been cooking at the camp for 
 weeks. The meals were good, the men respected 
 her, and she went her way to and from her shack 
 at the canion as regularly as the world went 
 around. The autumn slipped by, and the nip- 
 ping frosts of early winter and the depths of
 
 102 THE MOCCASIN MAKER 
 
 early snows were already daily occurrences. The 
 big group of solid log shacks that formed the con- 
 struction camp were all made weather-tight 
 against the long mountain winter. Trails were 
 beginning to be blocked, streams to freeze, and 
 " Old Baldy " already wore a canopy of snow 
 that reached down to the timber line. 
 
 " Catharine," spoke young Wingate, one morn- 
 ing, when the clouds hung low and a soft snow 
 fell, packing heavily on the selfsame snows of 
 the previous night, " you had better make up 
 your mind to occupy the shack here. You won't 
 be able to go to your home much longer now at 
 night; it gets dark so early, and the snows are 
 too heavy." 
 
 " I go home at night," she repeated. 
 
 " But you can't all winter," he exclaimed. 
 " If there was one single horse we could spare 
 from the grade work, I'd see you got it for your 
 journeys, but there isn't. We're terribly short 
 now; every animal in the Pass is overworked 
 as it is. You'd better not try going home any 
 more." 
 
 " I go home at night," she repeated. 
 
 Wingate frowned impatiently; then in after- 
 thought he smiled. " All right, Catharine," he 
 said, " but I warn you. You'll have a search- 
 party out after you some dark morning, and you 
 know it won't be pleasant to be lost in the snows 
 up that canon."
 
 CATHARINE OF THE "CROW'S NEST" 103 
 
 " But I go home, night-time," she persisted, 
 and that ended the controversy. 
 
 But the catastrophe he predicted was inevit- 
 able. Morning after morning he would open the 
 door of the shack he occupied with the other 
 officials, and, looking up the white wastes 
 through the gray-blue dawn, he would watch the 
 distances with an anxiety that meant more than 
 a consideration for his breakfast. The woman 
 interested him. She was so silent, so capable, so 
 stubborn. What was behind all this strength 
 of character? What had given that depth of 
 mournfulness to her eyes? Often he had sur- 
 prised her watching him, with an odd longing 
 in her face; it was something of the expression 
 he could remember his mother wore when she 
 looked at him long, long ago. It was a vague, 
 haunting look that always brought back the one 
 great tragedy of his life — a tragedy he was even 
 now working night and day at his chosen pro- 
 fession to obliterate from his memory, lest he 
 should be forever unmanned — forever a prey to 
 melancholy. 
 
 He was still a young man, but when little more 
 than a boy he had married, and for two years 
 was transcendently happy. Then came the cry 
 of " Kootenay Gold " ringing throughout Can- 
 ada — of the untold wealth of Kootenay mines. 
 Like thousands of others he followed the beck- 
 oning of that yellow finger, taking his young wife
 
 104 THE MOCCASIN MAKER 
 
 and baby daughter West with him. The little 
 town of Nelson, crouching on its beautiful hills, 
 its feet laved by the waters of Kootenay Lake, 
 was then in its first robust, active infancy. Here 
 he settled, going out alone on long prospecting 
 expeditions; sometimes he was away a week, 
 sometimes a month, with the lure of the gold 
 forever in his veins, but the laughter of his child, 
 the love of his wife, forever in his heart. Then 
 — the day of that awful home-coming ! For three 
 weeks the fascination of searching for the golden 
 pay-streak had held him in the mountains. No 
 one could find him when it happened, and now 
 all they could tell him was the story of an 
 upturned canoe found drifting on the lake, of 
 a woman's light summer shawl caught in the 
 thwarts, of a child's little silken bonnet washed 
 ashore.* The great-hearted men of the West had 
 done their utmost in the search that followed. 
 Miners, missionaries, prospectors, Indians, set- 
 tlers, gamblers, outlaws, had one and all turned 
 out, for they liked young Wingate, and they 
 adored his loving wife and dainty child. But the 
 search was useless. The wild shores of Kootenay 
 Lake alone held the secret of their resting-place. 
 Young Wingate faced the East once more. 
 There was but one thing to do with his life — 
 work, work, work ; and the harder, the more diflS- 
 cult, that work, the better. It was this very 
 
 * Fact.
 
 CATHARINE OF THE "CROW'S NEST" 105 
 
 difficulty that made the engineering on the 
 Crow's Nest Pass so attractive to him. So here 
 he was building grades, blasting tunnels, with 
 Catharine's mournful eyes following him daily, 
 as if she divined something of that long-ago sor- 
 row that had shadowed his almost boyish life. 
 
 He liked the woman, and his liking quickened 
 his eye to her hardships, his ear to the hint of 
 lagging weariness in her footsteps ; so he was the 
 first to notice it the morning she stumped into 
 the cook-house, her feet bound up in furs, her 
 face drawn in agony. 
 
 " Catharine," he exclaimed, " your feet have 
 been frozen !" 
 
 She looked like a culprit, but answered : " Not 
 much; I get lose in storm las' night." 
 
 "I thought this would happen," he said, indig- 
 nantly. " After this you sleep here." 
 
 " I sleep home," she said, doggedly. 
 
 " I won't have it," he declared. " I'll cook for 
 the men myself first." 
 
 " Allight," she replied. " You cookee ; I go 
 home — me." 
 
 That night there was a terrible storm. The 
 wind howled down the throat of the Pass, and 
 the snow fell like bales of sheep's wool, blanket- 
 ing the trails and drifting into the railroad cuts 
 until they attained their original level. But 
 after she had cooked supper Catharine started 
 for home as usual. The only unusual thing
 
 106 THE MOCCASIN MAKER 
 
 about it was that the next morning she did not 
 return. It was Sunday, the men's day " off." 
 Wingate ate no breakfast, but after swallowing 
 some strong tea he turned to the foreman. " Mr. 
 Brown, will you come with me to try and hunt 
 up Catharine?" he asked. 
 
 " Yes, if we can get beyond the door," assented 
 Brown. " But I doubt if we can make the canon, 
 sir." 
 
 " We'll have a try at it, anyway," said the 
 young engineer. " I almost doubt myself if she 
 made it last night." 
 
 " She's a stubborn woman," commented 
 Brown. 
 
 " And has her own reasons for it, I suppose," 
 replied Wingate. " But that has nothing to do 
 with her being lost or frozen. If something 
 had not happened I'm sure she would have come 
 to-day, notwithstanding I scolded her yesterday, 
 and told her I'd rather cook myself than let her 
 run such risks. How will we go, Mr. Brown; 
 horses or snowshoes?" 
 
 "Shoes," said the foreman decidedly. "That 
 snow'll be above the middle of the biggest horse 
 in the outfit." 
 
 So they set forth on their tramp up the slopes, 
 peering right and left as they went for any in- 
 dication of the absent woman. Wingate's old 
 grief was knocking at his heart once more. A 
 woman lost in the appalling vastness of this
 
 CATHARINE OF THE "CROW'S NEST" 107 
 
 great Western land was entering into his life 
 again. It took them a full hour to go that mile, 
 although both were experts on the shoes, but as 
 they reached the rim of the eaiion they were re- 
 warded by seeing a thin blue streak of smoke 
 curling up from her lodge "chimney." Wingate 
 sat down in the snows weakly. The relief had 
 unmanned him. 
 
 "I didn't know how much I cared," he said, 
 ^'until I knew she was safe. She looks at me as 
 my mother used to; her eyes are like mother's, 
 and I loved my mother." 
 
 It was a simple, direct speech, but Brown 
 caught its pathos. 
 
 "She's a good woman," he blurted out, as they 
 trudged along towards the shack. They knocked 
 on the door. There was no reply. Then just as 
 Wingate suggested forcing it in case she were ill 
 and lying helpless within, a long, low call from 
 the edge of the canon startled them. They turned 
 and had not followed the direction from which 
 the sound came more than a few yards when they 
 met her coming towards them on snowshoes; in 
 her arms she bore a few faggots, and her face, 
 though smileless, was very welcoming. 
 
 She opened the door, bidding them enter. It 
 was quite warm inside, and the air of simple com- 
 fort derived from crude benches, tables and 
 shelves, assured them that she had not suffered. 
 Near the fire was drawn a rough home-built
 
 108 THE MOCCASIN MAKER 
 
 couch, and on it lay in heaped disorder a pile of 
 gray blankets. As the two men warmed their 
 hands at the grateful blaze, the blankets stirred. 
 Then a small hand crept out and a small arm 
 tossed the covers a little aside. 
 
 "Catherine/^ exclaimed Wingate, "have you a 
 child here?" 
 
 "Yes," she said simply. 
 
 " How long is it that you have had it here?" 
 he demanded. 
 
 " Since before I work at your camp." she re- 
 plied. 
 
 " Whew !" said the foreman, "I now under- 
 stand why she came home nights." 
 
 " To think I never guessed it !" murmured 
 Wingate. Then to Catherine : " Why didn't you 
 bring it into camp and keep it there day and 
 night with you, instead of taking these danger- 
 ous tramps night and morning?" 
 
 " It is a girl child," she answered. 
 
 " Well what of it?" he asked impatiently. 
 
 " Your camp no place for girl child," she re- 
 plied, looking directly at him. " Your men they 
 rough, they get whisky sometimes. They fight. 
 They speak bad words, what you call swear. I 
 not want her hear that. I not want her see 
 whisky man." 
 
 " Oh, Brown !" said W^ingate, turning to his 
 companion. " What a reproach ! What a re- 
 proach ! Here our gang is — the vanguard of the
 
 CATHARINE OF THE "CROW'S NEST" 109 
 
 highest civilization, but unfit for association with 
 a little Indian child !" 
 
 Brown stood speechless, although in his rough, 
 honest mind he was going over a list of those very 
 ^'swears" she objected to, but they were mentally 
 directed at the whole outfit of his ruffianly con- 
 struction gang. He was silently swearing at 
 them for their own shortcomings in that very 
 thing. 
 
 The child on the couch stirred again. This 
 time the firelight fell full across the little arm. 
 Wingate stared at it, then his eyes widened. He 
 looked at the woman, then back at the bare arm. 
 It was the arm of a white child. 
 
 " Catharine, was your husband whiter^ he 
 asked, in a voice that betrayed anxiety. 
 
 " I got no husban'," she replied, somewhat 
 defiantly. 
 
 " Then — " he began, but his voice faltered. 
 
 She came and stood between him and the couch. 
 Something of the look of a she-panther came into 
 her face, her figure, her attitude. Her eyes lost 
 their mournfulness and blazed a black-red at him. 
 Her whole body seemed ready to spring. 
 
 " You not touch the girl child !" she half 
 snarled. " I not let you touch her ; she mine, 
 though I have no husban' !" 
 
 " I don't want to touch her, Catharine," he 
 said gently, trying to pacify her. " Believe me, 
 I don't want to touch her."
 
 110 THE MOCCASIN MAKER 
 
 The woman's whole being changed. A thou- 
 sand mother- lights gleamed from her eyes, a thou- 
 sand measures of mother-love stormed at her 
 heart. She stepped close, very close to him and 
 laid her small brown hand on his, then drawing 
 him nearer to her said : " Yes you do want to 
 touch her ; you not speak truth when you say ^no.^ 
 You do want to touch her!" With a rapid move- 
 ment she flung back the blankets, then slipping 
 her bare arm about him she bent his form until 
 he was looking straight into the child's face — a 
 face the living miniature of his own! His 
 eyes, his hair, his small kindly mouth, his fair, 
 perfect skin. He staggered erect. 
 
 "Catharine! what does it mean? What does 
 it mean?" he cried hoarsely. 
 
 ^' Your child — " she half questioned, half 
 affirmed. 
 
 " Mine? Mine?" he called, without human 
 understanding in his voice. " Oh, Catharine ! 
 Where did you get her?" 
 
 " The shores of Kootenay Lake," she answered. 
 
 " Was — was — she alone f' he cried. 
 
 The woman looked away, slowly shaking her 
 head, and her voice was very gentle as she 
 replied : " No, she alive a little, but the other, 
 whose arms 'round her, she not alive ; my people, 
 the Kootenay Indians, and I — we — we bury that 
 other." 
 
 For a moment there was a speaking silence,
 
 CATHARINE OP THE "CROW'S NEST" 111 
 
 then young Wingate, with the blessed realiza- 
 tion that half his world had been saved for him, 
 flung himself on his knees, and, with his arms 
 locked about the little girl, was calling: 
 
 " Margie ! Margie ! Papa's little Margie girl ! 
 Do you remember papa? Oh, Margie! Do you? 
 Do you?" 
 
 Something dawned in the child's eyes — some- 
 thing akin to a far-off memory. For a moment 
 she looked wonderingly at him, then put her 
 hand uj) to his forehead and gently pulled a lock 
 of his fair hair that always curled there — an 
 old trick of hers. Then she looked down at his 
 vest pocket, slowly pulled out his watch and held 
 it to her ear. The next minute her arms slipped 
 round his neck. 
 
 " Papa," she said, " papa been away from 
 Margie a long time." 
 
 Young Wingate was sobbing. He had not 
 
 noticed that the big, rough foreman had gone 
 
 out of the shack with tear-dimmed eyes, and had 
 
 quietly closed the door behind him. 
 *******♦«» 
 
 It was evening before Wingate got all the story 
 from Catharine, for she was slow of speech, and 
 found it hard to explain her feelings. But 
 Brown, who had returned alone to the camp 
 in the morning, now came back, packing an 
 immense bundle of all the tinned delicacies he 
 could find, which, truth to tell, were few. He
 
 112 THE MOCCASIN MAKER 
 
 knew some words of Kootenay, and led Cath- 
 arine on to reveal the strange history that 
 sounded like some tale from fairyland. It 
 appeared that the reason Catharine did not 
 attempt to go to the camp that morning was 
 that Margie was not well, so she would not leave 
 her, but in her heart of hearts she knew young 
 Wingate would come searching to her lodge. 
 She loved the child as only an Indian woman 
 can love an adopted child. She longed for him 
 to come when she found Margie was ill, yet 
 dreaded that coming from the depths of her soul. 
 She dreaded the hour he would see the child and 
 take it away. For the moment she looked upon 
 his face, the night he rode over to engage her 
 to cook, months ago, she had known he was 
 Margie's father. The little thing was the per- 
 fect mirror of him, and Catharine's strange wild 
 heart rejoiced to find him, yet hid the child from 
 him for very fear of losing it out of her own life. 
 After finding it almost dead in its dead 
 mother's arms on the shore, the Indians had 
 given it to Catharine for the reason that she 
 could speak some English. They were only a 
 passing band of Kootenays, and as they jour- 
 neyed on and on, week in and week out, they 
 finally came to Crow's Nest Mountain. Here 
 the child fell ill, so they built Catharine a log 
 shack, and left her with plenty of food, sufficient 
 to last until the railway gang had worked that
 
 CATHARINE OF THE "CROW'S NEST" 113 
 
 far up the Pass, when more food would be avail- 
 able. When she had finished the strange history, 
 Wingate looked at her long and lovingly. 
 
 " Catharine," he said, " you were almost going 
 to fight me once to-day. You stood between the 
 couch and me like a panther. What changed you 
 so that you led me to my baby girl yourself?" 
 
 " I make one last fight to keep her," she said, 
 haltingly. " She mine so long, I want her ; I 
 want her till I die. Then I think many times I 
 see your face at camp. It look like sky when sun 
 does not shine — all cloud, no smile, no laugh. I 
 know you think of your baby then. Then I 
 watch you many times. Then after while my 
 heart is sick for you, like you are my own boy, 
 like I am your own mother. I hate see no sun 
 in your face. I think I not good mother to you ; 
 if I was good mother I would give you your 
 child; make the sun come in your face. To-day 
 I make last fight to keep the child. She's mine 
 so long, I want her till I die. Then somet'ing 
 in my heart say, ' He's like son to you, as if he 
 your own boy ; make him glad — happy. Oh, ver' 
 glad! Be like his own mother. Find him his 
 baby.' " 
 
 " Bless the mother heart of her !" growled the 
 big foreman, frowning to keep his face from 
 twitching. 
 
 It was twilight when they mounted the horses 
 one of the men had brought up for them to ride
 
 114 THE MOCCASIN MAKER 
 
 home on, Wingate with his treasure-child hugged 
 tightly in his arms. Words were powerless to 
 thank the woman who had saved half his world 
 for him. His voice choked when he tried, but 
 she understood, and her woman's heart was very, 
 very full. 
 
 Just as they reached the rim of the canon 
 Wingate turned and looked back. His arms 
 tightened about little Margie as his eyes rested 
 on Catharine — as once before she was standing 
 in the doorway, alone; alone, and above and 
 about her were the purple shadows, the awful 
 solitude of Crow's Nest Mountain. 
 
 " Brown !" he called. " Hold on, Brown ! / 
 can^t do it! I can't leave her like that!" 
 
 He wheeled his horse about and, plunging back 
 through the snow, rode again to her door. Her 
 eyes radiated as she looked at him. Years had 
 been wiped from his face since the morning. He 
 was a laughing boy once more. 
 
 " You are right," he said, " I cannot keep my 
 little girl in that rough camp. You said it was 
 no place for a girl child. You are right. I will 
 send her into Calgary until my survey is over. 
 Catharine, will you go with her, take care of 
 her, nurse her, guard her for me? You said I 
 was as your own son; will you be that good 
 mother to me that you want to be? Will you 
 do this for your white boy?"
 
 CATHARINE OF THE "CROW'S NEST" 115 
 
 He had never seen her smile before. A moment 
 ago her heart had be< n breaking, but now she 
 knew with a great gladness that she was not only 
 going to keep and care for Margie, but that this 
 laughing boy would be as a son to her for all 
 time. No wonder that Catharine of the Crow's 
 Nest smiled!
 
 A Red Girl's Reasoning 
 
 " Be pretty good to her, Charlie, my boy, or 
 she'll balk sure as shooting." 
 
 That was what old Jimmy Kobinson said to 
 his brand new son-in-law, while they waited for 
 the bride to reappear. 
 
 " Oh ! you bet, there's no danger of much else. 
 I'll be good to her, help me Heaven," replied 
 Charlie McDonald, brightly. 
 
 " Yes, of course you will," answered the old 
 man, " but don't you forget, there's a good big 
 bit of her mother in her, and," closing his left 
 eye significantly, " you don't understand these 
 Indians as I do." 
 
 " But I'm just as fond of them, Mr. Robin- 
 son," Charlie said assertively, " and I get on 
 with them too, now, don't I?" 
 
 " Yes, pretty well for a town boy ; but when 
 you have lived forty years among these people, 
 as I have done; when you have had your wife 
 as long as I have had mine — for there's no get- 
 ting over it, Christine's disposition is as native 
 as her mother's, every bit — and perhaps when 
 you've owned for eighteen years a daughter as 
 
 116
 
 A RED GIRL'S REASONING 117 
 
 dutiful, as loving, as fearless, and, alas! as 
 obstinate as that little piece you are stealing 
 away from me to-day — I tell you, youngster, 
 you'll know more than you know now. It is kind- 
 ness for kindness, bullet for bullet, blood for 
 blood. Remember, what you are, she will be," 
 and the old Hudson Bay trader scrutinized 
 Charlie McDonald's face like a detective. 
 
 It was a happy, fair face, good to look at, with 
 a certain ripple of dimples somewhere about the 
 mouth, and eyes that laughed out the very sun- 
 niness of their owner's soul. There was not a 
 severe nor yet a weak line anywhere. He was 
 a well-meaning young fellow, happily disposi- 
 tioned, and a great favorite with the tribe at 
 Robinson's Post, whither he had gone in the ser- 
 vice of the Department of Agriculture, to assist 
 the local agent through the tedium of a long 
 census- taking. 
 
 As a boy he had had the Indian relic-hunting 
 craze, as a youth he had studied Indian archae- 
 ology and folk-lore, as a man he consummated 
 his predilections for Indianology by loving, win- 
 ning and marrying the quiet little daughter of 
 the English trader, who himself had married a 
 native woman twenty years ago. The country- 
 was all backwoods, and the Post miles and miles 
 from even the semblance of civilization, and the 
 lonely young Englishman's heart had gone out to 
 the girl who, apart from speaking a very few
 
 118 THE MOCCASIN MAKER 
 
 words of English, was utterly uncivilized and 
 uncultured, but had withal that marvellously 
 innate refinement so universally possessed by the 
 higher tribes of North American Indians. 
 
 Like all her race, observant, intuitive, having 
 a horror of ridicule, consequently quick at 
 acquirement and teachable in mental and social 
 habits, she had developed from absolute pagan 
 indifference into a sweet, elderly Christian 
 woman, whose broken English, quiet manner, 
 and still handsome copper-colored face, were the 
 joy of old Robinson's declining years. 
 
 He had given their daughter Christine all the 
 advantages of his own learning — which, if truth- 
 fully told, was not universal; but the girl had a 
 fair common education, and the native adapta- 
 bility to progress. 
 
 She belonged to neither and still to both types 
 of the cultured Indian. The solemn, silent, 
 almost heavy manner of the one so commingled 
 with the gesticulating Frenchiness and vivacity 
 of the other, that one unfamiliar with native 
 Canadian life would find it difiicult to determine 
 her nationality. 
 
 She looked very pretty to Charles McDonald's 
 loving eyes, as she reappeared in the doorway, 
 holding her mother's hand and saying some 
 happy words of farewell. Personally she looked 
 much the same as her sisters, all Canada through, 
 who are the offspring of red and white parent-
 
 A BED GIRL'S REASONING 119 
 
 age — olive-complexioned, gray-eyed, black-haired, 
 with figure slight and delicate, and the wistful, 
 unfathomable expression in her whole face that 
 turns one so heart-sick as they glance at the 
 young Indians of to-day — it is the forerunner 
 too frequently of " the white man's disease," 
 consumption — but McDonald was pathetically 
 in love, and thought her the most beautiful 
 woman he had ever seen in his life. 
 
 There had not been much of a wedding cere- 
 mony. The priest had cantered through the ser- 
 vice in Latin, pronounced the benediction in 
 English, and congratulated the " happy couple " 
 in Indian, as a compliment to the assembled tribe 
 in the little amateur structure that did service 
 at the post as a sanctuary. 
 
 But the knot was tied as firmly and indis- 
 solubly as if all Charlie McDonald's swell city 
 friends had crushed themselves up against the 
 chancel to congratulate him, and in his heart he 
 was deeply thankful to escape the flower-pelt- 
 ing, white gloves, rice-throwing, and ponderous 
 stupidity of a breakfast, and indeed all the regu- 
 lation gimcracks of the usual marriage celebra- 
 tions, and it was with a hand trembling with 
 absolute happiness that he assisted his little 
 Indian wife into the old muddy buckboard that, 
 hitched to an underbred-looking pony, was to 
 convey them over the first stages of their jour- 
 ney. Then came more adieus, some hand-clasp-
 
 120 THE MOCCASIN MAKER 
 
 ing, old Jimmy Robinson looking very serious 
 just at the last, Mrs. Jimmy, stout, stolid, betray- 
 ing nothing of visible emotion, and then the pony, 
 rough-shod and shaggy, trudged on, while mutual 
 hand-waves were kept up until the old Hudson 
 Bay Post dropped out of sight, and the buck- 
 board with its lightsome load of hearts, deliri- 
 ously happy, jogged on over the uneven trail. 
 
 She was " all the rage " that winter at the 
 provincial capital. The men called her a 
 " deuced fine little woman." The ladies said 
 she was " just the sweetest wildflower." Whereas 
 she was really but an ordinary, pale, dark girl 
 who spoke slowly and with a strong accent, who 
 danced fairly well, sang acceptably, and never 
 stirred outside the door without her husband. 
 
 Charlie was proud of her; he was proud that 
 she had " taken " so well among his friends, 
 proud that she bore herself so complacently in 
 the drawing-rooms of the wives of pompous 
 Government officials, but doubly proud of her 
 almost abject devotion to him. If ever human 
 being was worshipped that being was Charlie 
 McDonald; it could scarcely have been other- 
 wise, for the almost godlike strength of his 
 passion for that little wife of his would have 
 mastered and melted a far more invincible 
 citadel than an already affectionate woman's 
 heart.
 
 A RED GIRL'S REASONING 121 
 
 Favorites socially, McDonald and his wife 
 went everywhere. In fashionable circles she 
 was " new " — a potent charm to acquire popu- 
 larity, and the little velvet-clad figure was 
 always the centre of interest among all the 
 women in the room. She always dressed in 
 velvet. No woman in Canada, has she but the 
 faintest dash of native blood in her veins, but 
 loves velvets and silks. As beef to the English- 
 man, wine to the Frenchman, fads to the Yankee, 
 so are velvet and silk to the Indian girl, be she 
 wild as prairie grass, be she on the borders of 
 civilization, or, having stepped within its boun- 
 dary, mounted the steps of culture even under its 
 superficial heights. 
 
 " Such a dolling little appil blossom," said 
 the wife of a local M.P., who brushed up her 
 etiquette and English once a year at Ottawa. 
 " Does she always laugh so sweetly, and gobble 
 you up with those great big gray eyes of hers, 
 when you are togetheah at home, Mr. McDonald? 
 If so, I should think youah pooah brothah would 
 feel himself terribly de tropf 
 
 He laughed lightly. " Yes, Mrs. Stuart, there 
 are not two of Christie ; she is the same at home 
 and abroad, and as for Joe, he doesn't mind us 
 a bit ; he's no end fond of her." 
 
 " I'm very glad he is. I always fancied he did 
 not care for her, d'you know." 
 
 If ever a blunt woman existed it was Mrs. 
 Stuart. She really meant nothing, but her
 
 122 THE MOCCASIN MAKER 
 
 remark bothered Charlie. He was fond of his 
 brother, and jealous for Christie's popularity. 
 So that night when he and Joe were having a 
 pipe he said: 
 
 " I've never asked you yet what you thought 
 of her, Joe." A brief pause, then Joe spoke. 
 " I'm glad she loves you.'' 
 
 " Why?" 
 
 " Because that girl has but two possibilities 
 regarding humanity — love or hate." 
 
 " Humph ! Does she love or hate youf" 
 
 " Ask her." 
 
 " You talk bosh. If she hated you, you'd get 
 out. If she loved you I'd make you get out." 
 
 Joe McDonald whistled a little, then laughed. 
 
 " Now that we are on the subject, I might as 
 well ask — honestly, old man, wouldn't you and 
 Christie prefer keeping house alone to having 
 me always around?" 
 
 " Nonsense, sheer nonsense. Why, thunder, 
 man, Christie's no end fond of you, and as for 
 me — you surely don't want assurances from 
 me?" 
 
 " No, but I often think a young couple — " 
 
 " Young couple be blowed ! After a while 
 when they want you and your old surveying 
 chains, and spindle-legged tripod telescope kick- 
 shaws, farther west, I venture to say the little 
 woman will cry her eyes out — won't you, Chris- 
 tie?" This last in a higher tone, as through
 
 A RED GIEL'S REASONING 123 
 
 clouds of tobacco smoke he caught sight of his 
 wife passing the doorway. 
 
 She entered. " Oh, no, I would not cry ; I 
 never do cry, but I would be heart-sore to lose 
 you, Joe, and apart from that " — a little wick- 
 edly — " you may come in handy for an exchange 
 some day, as Charlie does always say when he 
 hoards up duplicate relics." 
 
 " Are Charlie and I duplicates?" 
 
 " Well — not exactly " — her head a little to 
 one side, and eyeing them both merrily, while 
 she slipped softly on to the arm of her husband's 
 chair — " but, in the event of Charlie's failing 
 me " — everyone laughed then. The " some day " 
 that she spoke of was nearer than they thought. 
 It came about in this wise. 
 
 There was a dance at the Lieutenant-Gover- 
 nor's, and the world and his wife were there. The 
 nobs were in great feather that night, particu- 
 larly the women, who flaunted about in new 
 gowns and much splendor. Christie McDonald 
 had a new gown also, but wore it with the utmost 
 unconcern, and if she heard any of the flattering 
 remarks made about her she at least appeared 
 to disregard them. 
 
 " I never dreamed you could wear ])lue so 
 splendidly," said Captain Logan, as they sat out 
 a dance together. 
 
 " Indeed she can, though," interposed Mrs. 
 Stuart, halting in one of her gracious sweeps
 
 124 THE MOCCASIN MAKER 
 
 down the room with her husband's private 
 secretary. 
 
 " Don't shout so, captain. I can hear every 
 sentence you uttah — of course Mrs. McDonald 
 can wear blue — she has a morning gown of cadet 
 blue that she is a picture in." 
 
 " You are both very kind," said Christie. " I 
 like blue; it is the color of all the Hudson's Bay 
 posts, and the factor's residence is always decor- 
 ated in blue." 
 
 "Is it really? How interesting — do tell us some 
 more of your old home, Mrs. McDonald; you so 
 seldom speak of your life at the post, and we 
 fellows so often wish to hear of it all," said 
 Logan eagerly. 
 
 " Why do you not ask me of it, then?" 
 
 "Well — er, I'm sure I don't know; I'm fully 
 interested in the Ind — in your people — your 
 mother's people, I mean, but it always seems so 
 personal, I suppose; and — a — a — " 
 
 " Perhaps you are, like all other white people, 
 afraid to mention my nationality to me." 
 
 The captain winced, and Mrs. Stuart laughed 
 uneasily. Joe McDonald was not far off, and he 
 was listening, and chuckling, and saying to him- 
 self, " That's you, Christie, lay 'em out ; it won't 
 hurt 'em to know how they appear once in a 
 while." 
 
 " Well, Captain Logan," she was saying, 
 " what is it you would like to hear — of my 
 people, or my parents, or myself?"
 
 A RED GIRL'S REASONING 125 
 
 "All, all, my dear," cried Mrs. Stuart clamor- 
 ously. " I'll speak for him — tell us of yourself 
 and your mother — your father is delightful, I 
 am sure — but then he is only an ordinary Eng- 
 lishman, not half as interesting as a foreigner, 
 or — or, perhaps I should say, a native." 
 
 Christie laughed. " Yes," she said, " my father 
 often teases my mother now about how very 
 native she was when he married her; then, how 
 could she have been otherwise? She did not know 
 a word of English, and there was not another 
 English-speaking person besides my father and 
 his two companions within sixty miles." 
 
 " Two companions, eh? one a Catholic priest 
 and the other a wine merchant, I suppose, and 
 with your father in the Hudson Bay, they were 
 good representatives of the pioneers in the New 
 World," remarked Logan, waggishly. 
 
 " Oh, no, they were all Hudson Bay men. 
 There were no rumsellers and no missionaries in 
 that part of the country then." 
 
 Mrs. Stuart looked puzzled. " No mission- 
 aeries f'^ she repeated with an odd intonation. 
 
 Christie's insight was quick. There was a 
 peculiar expression of interrogation in the eyes 
 of her listeners, and the girl's blood leapt angrily 
 up into her temples as she said hurriedly, " I 
 know what you mean ; I know what you are 
 thinking. You are wondering how my parents 
 were married — "
 
 126 THE MOCCASIN MAKER 
 
 " Well — er, my dear, it seems peculiar — if 
 there was no priest, and no magistrate, why — 
 a — " Mrs. Stuart paused awkwardly. 
 
 " The marriage was performed by Indian 
 rites," said Christie. 
 
 " Oh, do tell me about it ; is the ceremony very 
 interesting and quaint — are your chieftains any- 
 thing like Buddhist priests?" It was Logan who 
 spoke. 
 
 " Why, no," said the girl in amazement at that 
 gentleman's ignorance. " There is no ceremony 
 at all, save a feast. The two people just agree to 
 live only with and for each other, and the man 
 takes his wife to his home, just as you do. There 
 is no ritual to bind them; they need none; an 
 Indian's word was his law in those days, you 
 know." 
 
 Mrs. Stuart stepped backwards. " Ah !" was 
 all she said. Logan removed his eye-glass and 
 stared blankly at Christie. " And did McDonald 
 marry you in this singular fashion?" he ques- 
 tioned. 
 
 " Oh, no, we were married by Father O'Leary. 
 Why do you ask?" 
 
 " Because if he had, I'd have blown his brains 
 out to-morrow." 
 
 Mrs. Stuart's partner, who had hitherto been 
 silent, coughed and began to twirl his cuff stud 
 nervously, but nobody took any notice of him. 
 Christie had risen, slowly, ominously — risen, 
 with the dignity and pride of an empress.
 
 A RED GIRL'S REASONING 127 
 
 " Captain Logan," she said, " what do you dare 
 to say to me? What do you dare to mean? Do 
 you presume to think it would not have been law- 
 ful for Charlie to marry me according to my 
 people's rites? Do you for one instant dare to 
 question that my parents were not as legally — " 
 " Don't, dear, don't," interrupted Mrs. Stuart 
 hurriedly ; " it is bad enough now, goodness 
 knows; don't make — " Then she broke off 
 blindly. Christie's eyes glared at the mumbling 
 woman, at her uneasy partner, at the horrified 
 captain. Then they rested on the McDonald 
 brothers, who stood within earshot, Joe's face 
 scarlet, her husband's white as ashes, with some- 
 thing in his eyes she had never seen before. 
 It was Joe who saved the situation. Stepping 
 quickly across towards his sister-in-law, he 
 offered her his arm, saying, " The next dance is 
 ours, I think, Christie." 
 
 Then Logan pulled himself together, and 
 attempted to carry Mrs. Stuart off for the waltz, 
 but for once in her life that lady had lost her 
 head. " It is shocking !" she said, " outrageously 
 shocking! I wonder if they told Mr. McDonald 
 before he married her!" Then looking hurriedly 
 round, she too saw the young husband's face — 
 and knew that they had not. 
 
 " Humph ! deuced nice kettle of fish — and poor 
 old Charlie has always thought so much of hon- 
 orable birth."
 
 128 THE MOCCASIN MAKER 
 
 Logan thought he spoke in an undertone, but 
 " poor old Charlie " heard him. He followed his 
 wife and brother across the room. " Joe/' he 
 said, " will you see that a trap is called?" Then 
 to Christie, " Joe will see that you get home all 
 right." He wheeled on his heel then and left the 
 ball-room. 
 
 Joe did see. 
 
 He tucked a poor, shivering, pallid little 
 woman into a cab, and wound her bare throat 
 up in the scarlet velvet cloak that was hanging 
 uselessly over her arm. She crouched down 
 beside him, saying, " I am so cold, Joe ; I am so 
 cold," but she did not seem to know enough to 
 wrap herself up. Joe felt all through this long 
 drive that nothing this side of Heaven would be 
 so good as to die, and he was glad when the poor 
 little voice at his elbow said, " What is he so 
 angry at, Joe?" 
 
 " I don't know exactly, dear," he said gently, 
 " but I think it was what you said about this 
 Indian marriage." 
 
 " But why should I not have said it? Is there 
 anything wrong about it?" she asked pitifully. 
 
 " Nothing, that I can see — there was no other 
 way ; but Charlie is very angry, and you must be 
 brave and forgiving with him, Christie, dear." 
 
 " But I did never see him like that before, did 
 you?" 
 
 " Once." 
 
 "When?"
 
 A RED GIRL'S REASONING 129 
 
 " Oh, at college, one day, a boy tore his prayer- 
 book in half, and threw it into the grate, just to 
 be mean, you know. Our mother had given it to 
 him at his confirmation," 
 
 " And did he look so?" 
 
 " About, but it all blew over in a day — 
 Charlie's tempers are short and brisk. Just 
 don't take any notice of him ; run off to bed, and 
 he'll have forgotten it by the morning." 
 
 They reached home at last. Christie said good- 
 night quietly, going directly to her room. Joe 
 went to his room also, filled a pipe and smoked 
 for an hour. Across the passage he could hear 
 her slippered feet pacing up and down, up and 
 down the length of her apartment. There was 
 something panther-like in those restless foot- 
 falls, a meaning velvetyness that made him 
 shiver, and again he wished he were dead — or 
 elsewhere. 
 
 After a time the hall door opened, and some- 
 one came upstairs, along the passage, and to the 
 little woman's room. As he entered, she turned 
 and faced him. 
 
 " Christie," he said harshly, " do you know 
 what you have done?" 
 
 " Yes," taking a step nearer him, her whole 
 soul springing up into her eyes, " I have angered 
 you, Charlie, and — " 
 
 "Angered me? You have disgraced me; and, 
 moreover, you have disgraced yourself and both 
 your parents." 
 
 9
 
 130 THE MOCCASIN MAKER 
 
 " Disgracedr' 
 
 " Yes, disgraced; you have literally declared 
 to the whole city that your father and mother 
 were never married, and that you are the child 
 of — what shall we call it — love? certainly not 
 legality." 
 
 Across the hallway sat Joe McDonald, his 
 blood freezing; but it leapt into every vein like 
 fire at the awful anguish in the little voice that 
 cried simply, " Oh ! Charlie !" 
 
 " How could you do it, how could you do it, 
 Christie, without shame either for yourself or 
 for me, let alone your parents?" ^ 
 
 The voice was like an angry demon's — not a 
 trace was there in it of the yellow-haired, blue- 
 eyed, laughing-lipped boy who had driven away 
 so gaily to the dance five hours before. 
 
 " Shame? Why should I be ashamed of the 
 rites of my people any more than you should be 
 ashamed of the customs of yours — of a marriage 
 more sacred and holy than half of your white 
 man's mockeries." 
 
 It was the voice of another nature in the girl 
 — the love and the pleading were dead in it. 
 
 "Do you mean to tell me, Charlie — ^you who 
 have studied my race and their laws for years — 
 do you mean to tell me that, because there was 
 no priest and no magistrate, my mother was not 
 married? Do you mean to say that all my fore- 
 fathers, for hundreds of years back, have bewi
 
 A KED GIRL'S REASONING 131 
 
 illegally born? If so, you blacken my ancestry 
 beyond — beyond — beyond all reason." 
 
 " No, Christie, I would not be so brutal as 
 that; but your father and mother live in more 
 civilized times. Father O'Leary has been at the 
 post for nearly twenty years. Why was not 
 your father straight enough to have the cere- 
 mony performed when he did get the chance?" 
 
 The girl turned upon him with the face of a 
 fury. " Do you suppose," she almost hissed, 
 " that my mother would be married according 
 to your white rites after she had been five years 
 a wife, and I had been born in the meantime? 
 No, a thousand times I say, no. When the priest 
 came with his notions of Christianizing, and 
 talked to them of re-marriage by the Church, 
 my mother arose and said, " Never — never — I 
 have never had but this one husband ; he has had 
 none but me for wife, and to have you re-marry 
 us would be to say as much to the whole world 
 as that we had never been married before.* You 
 go away ; / do not ask that your people be re-mar- 
 ried ; talk not so to me. I am married, and you 
 or the Church cannot do or undo it." 
 
 " Your father was a fool not to insist upon the 
 law, and so was the priest." 
 
 " Law? 3Iy people have no priest, and my 
 nation cringes not to law. Our priest is purity, 
 and our law is honor. Priest? Was there a 
 
 ♦Pa«t
 
 132 THE MOCCASIN MAKER 
 
 priest at the most holy marriage known to 
 humanity — that stainless marriage whose off- 
 spring is the God you white men told my pagan 
 mother of?" 
 
 " Christie — you are worse than blasphemous ; 
 such a profane remark shows how little you 
 understand the sanctity of the Christian faith — " 
 
 " I know what I do understand ; it is that you 
 are hating me because I told some of the beauti- 
 ful customs of my people to Mrs. Stuart and 
 those men." 
 
 " Pooh! who cares for them? It is not them; 
 the trouble is they won't keep their mouths shut. 
 Logan's a cad and will toss the whole tale about 
 at the club before to-morrow night; and as for 
 the Stuart woman, I'd like to know how I'm 
 going to take you to Ottawa for presentation 
 and the opening, while she is blabbing the whole 
 miserable scandal in every drawing-room, and 
 I'll be pointed out as a romantic fool, and you — 
 as worse; I can't understand why your father 
 didn't tell me before we were married ; I at least 
 might have warned you to never mention it." 
 Something of recklessness rang up through his 
 voice, just as the panther-likeness crept up from 
 her footsteps and couched herself in hers. She 
 spoke in tones quiet, soft, deadly. 
 
 " Before we were married ! Oh ! Charlie, 
 would it have — made — any — difference?" 
 
 " God knows," he said, throwing himself into
 
 A RED GIRL'S REASONING 133 
 
 a chair, his blonde hair rumpled and wet. It 
 was the only boyish thing about him now. 
 
 She walked towards him, then halted in the 
 centre of the room. " Charlie McDonald," she 
 said, and it was as if a stone had spoken, " look 
 up." He raised his head, startled by her tone. 
 There was a threat in her eyes that, had his rage 
 been less courageous, his pride less bitterly 
 wounded, would have cowed him. 
 
 " There was no such time as that before our 
 marriage, for we are not married noio. Stop," 
 she said, outstretching her palms against him as 
 he sprang to his feet, " I tell you we are not mar- 
 ried. Why should I recognize the rites of your 
 nation when you do not acknowledge the rites of 
 mine? According to your own words, ray par- 
 ents should have gone through your church cere- 
 mony as well as through an Indian contract; 
 according to my words, we should go through 
 an Indian contract as well as through a church 
 marriage. If their union is illegal, so is ours. 
 If you think my father is living in dishonor with 
 my mother, my people will think I am living in 
 dishonor with you. How do I know when another 
 nation will come and conquer you as you white 
 men conquered us? And they will have another 
 marriage rite to perform, and they will tell us 
 another truth, that you are not my husband, that 
 you are but disgracing and dishonoring me, that 
 you are keeping me here, not as your wife, but 
 as your — your — squaw/'
 
 134 THE MOCCASIN MAKER 
 
 The terrible word had never passed her lips 
 before, and the blood stained her face to her 
 very temples. She snatched off her wedding ring 
 and tossed it across the room, saying scornfully, 
 " That thing is as empty to me as the Indian rites 
 to you." 
 
 He caught her by the wrists; his small white 
 teeth were locked tightly, his blue eyes blazed 
 into hers. 
 
 " Christine, do you dare to doubt my honor 
 towards you? you, whom I should have died for; 
 do you dare to think I have kept you here, not 
 as my wife, but — " 
 
 " Oh, God ! You are hurting me ; you are 
 breaking my arm," she gasped. 
 
 The door was flung open, and Joe McDonald's 
 sinewy hands clinched like vices on his brother's 
 shoulders. 
 
 " Charlie, you're mad, mad as the devil. Let 
 go of her this minute." 
 
 The girl staggered backwards as the iron 
 fingers loosed her wrists. " Oh ! Joe," she cried, 
 " I am not his wife, and he says I am born — 
 nameless." 
 
 " Here," said Joe, shoving his brother towards 
 the door. " Go downstairs till you can collect 
 your senses. If ever a being acted like an infernal 
 fool, you're the man." 
 
 The young husband looked from one to the 
 other, dazed by his wife's insult, abandoned to
 
 A BED GIRL'S REASONING 135 
 
 a fit of ridiculously childish temper. Blind as he 
 was with passion, he remembered long after- 
 wards seeing them standing there, his brother's 
 face darkened with a scowl of anger — his wife, 
 clad in the mockery of her ball dress, her scarlet 
 velvet cloak half covering her bare brown neck 
 and arms, her eyes like flames of fire, her face 
 like a piece of sculptured graystone. 
 
 Without a word he flung himself furiously 
 from the room, and immediately afterwards they 
 heard the heavy hall door bang behind him. 
 
 " Can I do anything for you, Christie?" asked 
 her brother-in-law calmly. 
 
 " No, thank you — unless — I think I would like 
 a drink of water, please." 
 
 He brought her up a goblet filled with wine; 
 her hand did not even tremble as she took it. 
 As for Joe, a demon arose in his soul as he 
 noticed she kept her wrists covered. 
 
 " Do you think he will come back?" she said. 
 
 " Oh, yes, of course ; he'll be all right in the 
 morning. Now go to bed like a good little girl, 
 and — and, I say, Christie, you can call me if you 
 want anything; I'll be right here, you know." 
 
 " Thank you, Joe ; you are kind — and good." 
 
 He returned then to his apartment. His pipe 
 was out, but he picked up a newspaper instead, 
 threw himself into an armchair, and in a half- 
 hour was in the land of dreams.
 
 136 THE MOCCASIN MAKER 
 
 When Charlie came home in the morning, after 
 a six-mile walk into the country and back again, 
 his foolish anger was dead and buried. Logan's 
 " Poor old Charlie " did not ring so distinctly 
 in his ears. Mrs. Stuart's horrified expression 
 had faded considerably from his recollection. 
 He thought only of that surprisingly tall, dark 
 girl, whose eyes looked like coals, whose voice 
 pierced him like a flint-tipped arrow. Ah, well, 
 they would never quarrel again like that, he told 
 himself. She loved him so, and would forgive 
 him after he had talked quietly to her, and told 
 her what an ass he was. She was simple-minded 
 and awfully ignorant to pitch those old Indian 
 laws at him in her fury, but he could not blame 
 her; oh, no, he could not for one moment blame 
 her. He had been terribly severe and unreason- 
 able, and the horrid McDonald temper had got 
 the better of him; and he loved her so. Oh! he 
 loved her so! She would surely feel that, and 
 forgive him, and — He went straight to his 
 wife's room. The blue velvet evening dress lay 
 on the chair into which he had thrown himself 
 when he doomed his life's happiness by those two 
 words, " God knows." A bunch of dead daffo- 
 dils and her slippers were on the floor, every- 
 thing — but Christie. 
 
 He went to his brother's bedroom door. 
 
 " Joe," he called, rapping nervously thereon ; 
 " Joe, wake up; where's Christie, d'you know?"
 
 A RED GIRL'S REASONING 137 
 
 " Good Lord, no/' gasped that youth, spring- 
 ing out of his armchair and opening the door. 
 As he did so a note fell from off the handle. 
 Charlie's face blanched to his very hair while 
 Joe read aloud, his voice weakening at every 
 word : — 
 
 " Dear Old Joe_, — I went into your room at 
 daylight to get that picture of the Post on your 
 bookshelves. I hope you do not mind, but I 
 kissed your hair while you slept ; it was so curly, 
 and yellow, and soft, just like his. Good-bye, 
 Joe. 
 
 " Christie." 
 
 And when Joe looked into his brother's face and 
 saw the anguish settle in those laughing blue 
 eyes, the despair that drove the dimples away 
 from that almost girlish mouth; when he real- 
 ized that this boy was but four-and-twenty years 
 old, and that all his future was perhaps dark- 
 ened and shadowed for ever, a great, deep sorrow 
 arose in his heart, and he forgot all things, all 
 but the agony that rang up through the voice of 
 the fair, handsome lad as he staggered forward, 
 crying, " Oh ! Joe — what shall I do — what shall 
 I do r 
 ********** 
 
 It was months and months before he found 
 her, but during all that time he had never known 
 a hopeless moment; discouraged he often was.
 
 138 THE MOCCASIN MAKER 
 
 but despondent, never. The sunniness of his ever- 
 boyish heart radiated with a warmth that would 
 have flooded a much deeper gloom than that 
 which settled within his eager young life. Suf- 
 fer? ah! yes, he suffered, not with locked teeth 
 and stony stoicism, not with the masterful self- 
 command, the reserve, the conquered bitterness 
 of the still- water sort of nature, that is supposed 
 to run to such depths. He tried to be bright, 
 and his sweet old boyish self. He would laugh 
 sometimes in a pitiful, pathetic fashion. He took 
 to petting dogs, looking into their large, solemn 
 eyes with his wistful, questioning blue ones; 
 he would kiss them, as women sometimes do, 
 and call them " dear old fellow," in tones that 
 had tears; and once in the course of his travels, 
 while at a little way-station, he discovered a huge 
 St. Bernard imprisoned by some mischance in 
 an empty freight car ; the animal was nearly dead 
 from starvation, and it seemed to salve his own 
 sick heart to rescue back the dog's life. Nobody 
 claimed the big starving creature, the train 
 hands knew nothing of its owner, and gladly 
 handed it over to its deliverer. " Hudson," he 
 called it, and afterwards when Joe McDonald 
 would relate the story of his brother's life he in- 
 variably terminated it with, "And I really believe 
 that big lumbering brute saved him." From 
 what, he was never known to say.
 
 A RED GIEL'S REASONING 139 
 
 But all things end, and he heard of her at last. 
 She had never returned to the Post, as he at first 
 thought she would, but had gone to the little 
 
 town of B , in Ontario, where she was making 
 
 her living at embroidery and plain sewing. 
 
 The September sun had set redly when at last 
 he reached the outskirts of the town, opened up 
 the wicket gate, and walked up the weedy, unkept 
 path leading to the cottage where she lodged. 
 
 Even through the twilight, he could see her 
 there, leaning on the rail of the verandah — oddly 
 enough she had about her shoulders the scarlet 
 velvet cloak she wore when he had flung himself 
 so madly from the room that night. 
 
 The moment the lad saw her his heart swelled 
 with a sudden heat, burning moisture leapt into 
 his eyes, and clogged his long, boyish lashes. He 
 bounded up the steps — " Christie," he said, and 
 the word scorched his lips like audible flame. 
 
 She turned to him, and for a second stood mag- 
 netized by his passionately wistful face; her 
 peculiar grayish eyes seemed to drink the very 
 life of his unquenchable love, though the tears 
 that suddenly sprang into his seemed to absorb 
 every pulse in his body through those hungry, 
 pleading eyes of his that had, oh! so often been 
 blinded by her kisses when once her whole world 
 lay in their blue depths, 
 
 " You will come back to me, Christie, my wife? 
 My wife, you will let me love you again?"
 
 140 THE MOCCASIN MAKER 
 
 She gave a singular little gasp, and shook her 
 head. " Don't, oh ! don't," he cried piteously. 
 " You wdll come to me, dear? it is all such a 
 bitter mistake — I did not understand. Oh! 
 Christie, I did not understand, and you'll forgive 
 me, and love me again, won't you — won't you?" 
 
 " No," said the girl with quick, indrawn breath. 
 
 He dashed the back of his hand across his wet 
 eyelids. His lips were growing numb, and he 
 bungled over the monosyllable " Why?" 
 
 " I do not like you,'' she answered quietly. 
 
 " God ! Oh : God, what is there left?" 
 
 She did not appear to hear the heart-break in 
 his voice; she stood like one wrapped in sombre 
 thought; no blaze, no tear, nothing in her eyes; 
 no hardness, no tenderness about her mouth. The* 
 wind was blowing her cloak aside, and the only 
 visible human life in her whole body was once 
 when he spoke the muscles of her brown arm 
 seemed to contract. 
 
 "But, darling, you are mine — mine — we are 
 husband and wife! Oh, heaven, you must love 
 me, you must come to me again." 
 
 " You cannot make me come," said the icy 
 voice, " neither church, nor law, nor even " — and 
 the voice softened — " nor even love can make a 
 slave of a red girl." 
 
 " Heaven forbid it," he faltered. " No, Chris- 
 tie, I will never claim you without your love. 
 What reunion would that be? But oh, Christie,
 
 A RED GIRL'S REASONING 141 
 
 you are lying to me, you are lying to yourself, 
 you are lying to heaven." 
 
 She did not move. If only he could touch her 
 he felt as sure of her yielding as he felt sure 
 there was a hereafter. The memory of times 
 when he had but to lay his hand on her hair to 
 call a most passionate response from her filled 
 his heart with a torture that choked all words 
 before they reached his lips; at the thought of 
 those days he forgot she was unapproachable, for- 
 got how forbidding were her eyes, how stony her 
 lips. Flinging himself forward, his knee on the 
 chair at her side, his face pressed hardly in the 
 folds of the cloak on her shoulder, he clasped 
 his arms about her with a boyish petulance, say- 
 ing, " Christie, Christie, my little girl wife, I 
 love you, I love you, and you are killing me." 
 
 She quivered from head to foot as his fair, 
 wavy hair brushed her neck, his despairing face 
 sank lower until his cheek, hot as fire, rested on 
 the cool, olive flesh of her arm. A warm moisture 
 oozed up through her skin, and as he felt its glow 
 he looked up. Her teeth, white and cold, were 
 locked over her under lip, and her eyes were as 
 gray stones. 
 
 Not murderers alone know the agony of a 
 death sentence, 
 
 " Is it all useless? all useless, dear?" he said, 
 with lips starving for hers.
 
 142 THE MOCCASIN MAKEK 
 
 " All useless," she repeated. " I have no love 
 for you now. You forfeited me and my heart 
 months ago, when you said those two words" 
 
 His arms fell away from her wearily, he arose 
 mechanically, he placed his little gray checked 
 cap on the back of his yellow curls, the old-time 
 laughter was dead in the blue eyes that now 
 looked scared and haunted, the boyishness and 
 the dimples crept away for ever from the lips 
 that quivered like a child's ; he turned from her, 
 but she had looked once into his face as the Law 
 Giver must have looked at the land of Canaan 
 outspread at his feet. She watched him go down 
 the long path and through the picket gate, she 
 watched the big yellowish dog that had waited 
 for him lumber up on to its feet — stretch — then 
 follow him. She was conscious of but two 
 things, the vengeful lie in her soul, and a little 
 space on her arm that his wet lashes had brushed. 
 
 It was hours afterwards when he reached his 
 room. He had said nothing, done nothing — what 
 use were words or deeds? Old Jimmy Robinson 
 was right ; she had " balked " sure enough. 
 
 What a bare, hotelish room it was ! He tossed 
 off his coat and sat for ten minutes looking 
 blankly at the sputtering gas jet. Then his whole 
 life, desolate as a desert, loomed up before him 
 with appalling distinctness. Throwing himself
 
 A RED GIRL'S REASONING 143 
 
 on the floor beside his bed, with clasped hands 
 and arms outstretched on the white counterpane, 
 he sobbed. " Oh ! God, dear God, I thought you 
 loved me ; I thought you'd let me have her again, 
 but you must be tired of me, tired of loving me 
 too. I've nothing left now, nothing! it doesn't 
 seem that I even have you to-night." 
 
 He lifted his face then, for his dog, big and 
 clumsy and yellow, was licking at his sleeve.
 
 The Envoy Extraordinary 
 
 There had been a great deal of trouble in the 
 Norris family, and for weeks old Bill Norris had 
 gone about scowling as blackly as a thunder- 
 cloud, speaking to no one but his wife and daugh- 
 ter, and oftentimes muttering inaudible things 
 that, however, had the tone of invective; and 
 accompanied, as these mutterings were, with a 
 menacing shake of his burly head, old Bill finally 
 grew to be an acquaintance few desired. 
 
 Mrs. Norris showed equal, though not similar, 
 signs of mental disturbance ; for, womanlike, she 
 clothed her worry in placidity and silence. Her 
 kindly face became drawn and lined ; she laughed 
 less frequently. She never went " neighboring " 
 or " buggy-riding " with old Bill now. But the 
 trim farmhouse was just as spotless, just as beau- 
 tifully kept, the cooking just as wholesome and 
 homelike, the linen as white, the garden as green, 
 the chickens as fat, the geese as noisy, as in the 
 days when her eyes were less grave and her lips 
 unknown to sighs. x4nd what was it all about 
 but the simple matter of a marriage — Sam's mar- 
 riage? Sam, the big, genial, curly-headed only 
 
 144
 
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 THE ENVOY EXTKAORDINARY 145 
 
 son of the house of Norris, who saw fit to take 
 uuto himself as a life partner tiny, delicate, col- 
 lege-bred Delia Kennedy, who taught school over 
 on the Sixth Concession, and knew more about 
 making muslin shirtwaists than cooking for the 
 threshers, could quote from all the mental and 
 moral philosophers, could wrestle w^th French 
 and Latin verbs, and had memorized half the 
 things Tennyson and Emerson had ever written, 
 but could not milk a cow or churn up a week's 
 supply of butter if the executioner stood ready 
 with his axe to chop off her pretty yellow mop of 
 a head in case she failed. How old Billy stormed 
 when Sam started " keeping company " with her ! 
 
 " Nice young goslin' fer you to be a-goin' 
 with!" he scowled when Sam would betake him- 
 self towards the red gate every evening after 
 chores were done. " Nice gal fer you to bring 
 home to help yer mother ; all she'll do is to play 
 May Queen and have the hull lot of us a-trottin' 
 to wait on her. You'll marry a farmer's gal, / 
 say, one that's brung up like yerself and yer 
 mother and me, or I tell 3^er yer shan't have one 
 consarned acre of this place. I'll leave the hull 
 farm to yer sister Jane's man. She married 
 somethin' like — decent, stiddy, hard-working 
 man is Sid Sampson, and he'll git what land I 
 have to leave." 
 
 " I quite know that, dad," Sam blazed forth, 
 irritably ; " so does he. That's what he married 
 
 10
 
 146 THE MOCCASIN MAKER 
 
 Janie for — the whole township knows that. He's 
 never given her a kind word, or a holiday, or a 
 new dress, since they were married — eight years. 
 She slaves and toils, and he rich as any man need 
 be; owns three farms already, money in the bank, 
 cattle, horses — everything. But look at Janie; 
 she looks as old as mother. I pity his son, if he 
 ever has one. Thank heaven, Janie has no chil- 
 dren !" 
 
 " Come, come, father — Sam !'' a patient voice 
 would interrupt, and Mrs. Norris would appear 
 at the door, vaiuly endeavoring to make peace. 
 " I'll own up to both of you I'd sooner have a 
 farmer's daughter for mine-in-law than Delia 
 Kennedy. But, father, he ain't married yet, 
 and—" ^ 
 
 " Ain't married, eh?" blurted in old Bill. 
 " But he's a-goin' to marry her. But I'll tell you 
 both right here, she'll never set foot in my house, 
 ner I in her'n. Sam ken keep her, but what on, I 
 don't know. He gits right out of this here farm 
 the day he marries her, and he don't come back, 
 not while I'm a-livin'.'' 
 
 It was all this that made old Billy Norris mor- 
 ose, and Mrs. Norris silent and patient and 
 laughless, for Sam married the despised " gos- 
 ling " right at harvest time, when hands were so 
 scarce that farmers wrangled and fought, day in 
 and day out, to get one single man to go into the 
 field.
 
 THE ENVOY EXTRAORDINARY 147 
 
 This was Sam's golden opportunity. His 
 father's fields stood yellow with ripening grain to 
 be cut on the morrow, but he deliberately hired 
 himself out to a neighbor, where he would get 
 good wages to start a little home with; for, 
 farmer-like, old Billy Norris never paid his son 
 wages. Sam was supposed to work for nothing 
 but his clothes and board as reward, and a pos- 
 sible slice of the farm when the old man died, 
 while a good harvest hand gets board and high 
 wages, to boot. This then was the hour to strike, 
 and the morning the grain stood ready for the 
 reaper Sam paused at the outside kitchen door 
 at sunrise. 
 
 " Mother," he said, " I've got to have her. I'm 
 going to marry her to-day, and to-morrow start 
 working for Mr. Willson, who will pay me 
 enough to keep a wife. I'm sorry, mother, but — 
 well, I've got to have her. Some day you'll know 
 her, and you'll love her, I know you will; and 
 if there's ever any children — " 
 
 But Mrs. Norris had clutched him by the arm. 
 " Sammy," she whispered, " your father will be 
 raging mad at your going, and harvest hands so 
 scarce. I knotv he'll never let me go near you, 
 never. But if there's ever any children, Sammy, 
 you just come for your mother, and I'll go to you 
 and her without his letting." 
 
 Then with one of the all too few kisses that 
 are ever given or received in a farmhouse life,
 
 148 THE MOCCASIN MAKER 
 
 she let him go. The storm burst at breakfast 
 time when Sam did not appear, and the poor 
 mother tried to explain his absence, as only a 
 mother will. Old Billy waxed suspicious, then 
 jumped at facts. The marriage was bad enough, 
 but this being left in the lurch at the eleventh 
 hour, his son's valuable help transferred from the 
 home farm to Mr. Willson's, with whom he al- 
 ways quarreled in church, road, and political 
 matters, was too much. 
 
 " But, father, you never paid him wages," ven- 
 tured the mother. 
 
 "Wages? Wages to one's own son, that one 
 has raised and fed and shod from the cradle? 
 Wages, when he knowed he'd come in fer part of 
 the farm when I'd done with it? Who in con- 
 sarnation ever gives their son wages?" 
 
 " But, father, you told him if he married her 
 he was never to have the farm — that you'd leave 
 it to Sid, that he was to get right off the day he 
 married her. " 
 
 " An' Sid'll get it— bet yer life he will— fer I 
 ain't got no son no more. A sneakin' hulk that 
 leaves me with my wheat standin' an' goes over to 
 help that Methodist of a Willson is no son of 
 mine. I ain't never had a son, and you ain't, 
 neither ; remember that, Marthy — don't you ever 
 let me ketch you goin' a-near them. We're done 
 with Sam an' his missus. You jes' make a note 
 of that." And old Billy flung out to his fields 
 like a general whose forces had fled.
 
 THE ENVOY EXTKAORDINARY 149 
 
 It was but a tiny, two-room shack, away up in 
 the back lots, that Sam was able to get for Delia, 
 but no wayfarer ever passed up the side road but 
 they heard her clear, young voice singing like a 
 thrush ; no one ever met Sam but he ceased whis- 
 tling only to greet them. He proved invaluable 
 to Mr. Willson, for after the harvest was in and 
 the threshing over, there was the root crop and 
 the apple crop, and eventually Mr. Willson hired 
 him for the entire year. Delia, to the surprise 
 of the neighborhood, kept on with her school until 
 Christmas. 
 
 " She's teachin' instid of keepin' Sam's house, 
 jes' to git money fer finery, you bet !" sneered old 
 Billy. But he never knew that every copper for 
 the extra term was put carefully away, and was 
 paid out for a whole year's rent in advance on a 
 gray little two-room house, and paid by a very 
 proud little yellow-haired bride. She had in- 
 sisted upon this before her marriage, for she 
 laughingly said, " No wife ever gets her way 
 afterwards." 
 
 " I'm not good at butter-making, Sam," she 
 said, " but I can make money teaching, and for 
 this first year / pay the rent." And she did. 
 
 And the sweet, brief year swung on through its 
 seasons, until one brown September morning the 
 faint cry of a little human lamb floated through 
 the open window of the small gray house on the 
 back lots. Sam did not go to Willson's to work 
 that day, but stayed at home, playing the part of
 
 150 THE MOCCASIN MAKEK 
 
 a big, joyful, clumsy nurse, his roughened hands 
 gentle and loving, his big rugged heart bursting 
 with happiness. It was twilight, and the gray 
 shadows were creeping into the bare little room, 
 touching with feathery fingers a tangled mop of 
 yellow curls that aureoled a pillowed head that 
 was not now filled with thoughts of Tennyson 
 and Emerson and frilly muslin shirtwaists. 
 That pretty head held but two realities — Sammy, 
 whistling robin-like as he made tea in the kitchen, 
 and the little human lamb hugged up on her arm. 
 
 But suddenly the whistling ceased, and 
 Sammy's voice, thrilling with joy, exclaimed : 
 
 " Oh, mother !" 
 
 " Mrs. Willson sent word to me. Your father's 
 gone to the village, and I ran away, Sammy boy," 
 whispered Mrs. Norris, eagerly. " I just ran 
 away. Where's Delia and — the baby?" 
 
 " In here, mother, and — bless you for coming!" 
 said the big fellow, stepping softl}' tow^ards the 
 bedroom. But his mother was there before him, 
 her arms slipping tenderly about the two small 
 beings on the bed. 
 
 " It wasn't my fault, daughter," she said, trem- 
 ulously. 
 
 " I know it," faintly smiled Delia. " Just 
 these last few hours I know I'd stand by this 
 baby boy of mine here until the Judgment Day, 
 and so I now know it must have nearly broken 
 your heart not to stand by Sammy."
 
 THE ENVOY EXTRAOKDINARY 151 
 
 "Well, grandmother!" laughed Sam, "what 
 do you think of the new Norris?" 
 
 " Grandmother?" gasped Mrs. Norris. " Why, 
 Sammy, am I a grandmother? Grandmother to 
 this little sweetheart?" And the proud old arms 
 lifted the wee "new Norris" right up from its 
 mother's arms, and every tiny toe and finger was 
 kissed and crooned over, while Sam shyly winked 
 at Delia and managed to whisper, " You'll see, 
 girl, that dad will come around now; but he can 
 just keep out of our house. There are two of us 
 that can be harsh. I'm not going to come at his 
 first whistle. " 
 
 Delia smiled to herself, but said nothing. Much 
 wisdom had come to her within the last year, 
 within the last day — wisdom not acquired within 
 the covers of books, nor yet beneath college roofs, 
 and one truth she had mastered long ago — that 
 
 " To help and to heal a sorrow 
 Love and silence are always best." 
 
 But late that night, when Martha Norris re- 
 turned home, another storm broke above her hap- 
 less head. Old Billy sat on the kitchen steps 
 waiting for her, frowning, scowling, muttering. 
 "Where have you been?" he demanded, glaring 
 at her, although some inner instinct told him 
 what her answer would be. 
 
 " I've been to Sammy's," she said, in a pecu- 
 liarly still voice, " and I'm going again to-mor- 
 row." Then with shoulders more erect and eves
 
 152 THE MOCCASIN MAKER 
 
 calmer than they had been for many months, she 
 continued : " And I'm going again the next day, 
 and the next. Billy, you and I've got a grand- 
 son — a splendid, fair, strong boy, and — " 
 
 " What !" snapped old Billy. " A grandson ! I 
 got a grandson, an' no person told me afore? 
 Not even that there sneak Sam, cuss him! He 
 always was too consarned mean to live. A grand- 
 son? I'm a-goin' over termorrer, sure's I'm 
 alive." 
 
 " No use for you to go, Billy," said Mrs. Nor- 
 ris, with marvellous diplomacy for such a simple, 
 unworldly farmer's wife to suddenly acquire. 
 " Sammy wouldn't let you set foot on his place. 
 He wouldn't let you put an eye or a finger on 
 that precious baby — not for the whole earth." 
 
 " What ! Not me, the little chap's grand- 
 father?" blurted old Billy in a rage. " I'm a-goin' 
 to see that baby, that's all there is to it. I tell 
 yer, I'm a-goin'." 
 
 " No use, father ; you'll only make things 
 worse," sighed Sam's mother, plaintively ; but in 
 her heart laughter gurgled like a spring. To the 
 gift of diplomacy Mrs. Norris was fast adding 
 the art of being an actress. " If you go there 
 Sam'll set the dog on you. I knoio he will, from 
 the way he was talking," she concluded. 
 
 " Oh I got a dog, have they? Well, I bet they've 
 got no coid/' sneered Billy. Then after a mean- 
 ing pause : " I say, Marthy, have they got a 
 cow?"
 
 THE ENVOY EXTRAORDINARY 153 
 
 " No," replied. Mrs. Norris, shortly. 
 
 ^' No cow, an' a sick woman and a baby — my 
 grandchild — in the house? Now ain't that jes' 
 like that sneak Sam? They'll jes' kill that baby 
 atween them, they're that igner'nt. Hev they 
 got enny milk fer them two babbling kids, Delia 
 an' the baby — my grandchild?" 
 
 " No !" snapped Mrs. Norris, while through her 
 mind echoed some terrifying lines she had heard 
 as a child : 
 
 " All liars dwell with him in hell, 
 And many more who cursed and swore." 
 
 " An' there's that young Shorthorn of ours. 
 Mar thy. Couldn't we spare her?" he asked with 
 a pathetic eagerness. " We've got eight other 
 cows to milk. Can't we spare her? If you think 
 Sam'll set the dog on me, I'll have her driv over 
 in the mornin'. Jim'll take her.'' 
 
 " I don't think it's any use. Bill ; but you can 
 try it," remarked Mrs. Norris, her soul singing 
 within her like a celestial choir. 
 
 " Where are you driving that cow to?" yelled 
 Sam from the kitchen door, at sunrise the follow- 
 ing morning. " Take her out of there ! You're 
 driving her into my yard, right over my cab- 
 bages." 
 
 But Jim, the Norris' hired man, only grinned, 
 and proceeding with his driving, yelled back:
 
 154 THE MOCCASIN MAKER 
 
 " Cow's yourn, Sam. Yer old man sent it — a 
 present to yer missus and the babby." 
 
 " You take and drive that cow back again !" 
 roared Sam. " And tell my dad I won't have hide 
 nor hair of her on my place." 
 
 Back went the cow. 
 
 " Didn't I tell you?" mourned Mrs. Norris. 
 " Sam's that stubborn and contrary. It's no use, 
 Billy; he just doesn't care for his poor old father 
 nor mother any more." 
 
 " By the jumping Jiminy Christmas ! I'll 
 make him care !" thundered old Billy. " I'm 
 a-goin' ter see that grandchild of mine." Then 
 followed a long silence. 
 
 " I say, Marthy, how arer they fixed in the 
 house?" he questioned, after many moments of 
 apparently brown study. 
 
 " Pretty poor," answered Sam's mother, truth- 
 fully this time. 
 
 " Got a decent stove, an' bed, an' the like?" he 
 finally asked. 
 
 " Stove seems to cook all right, but the bed 
 looks just like straw tick — not much good, I'd 
 say," responded Mrs. Korris, drearily. 
 
 "A straio tick!" fairly yelled old Billy. "A 
 straw tick fer my grandson ter sleep on? Jim, 
 you fetch that there cow here, right ter the side 
 door." 
 
 " What are you going to do?" asked Martha, 
 anxiously.
 
 THE ENVOY EXTKAORDINARY 155 
 
 " I'll show yer !" blurted old Billy. And going 
 to his own room, he dragged off all the pretty 
 patchwork quilts above his neatly-made bed, 
 grabbed up the voluminous feather-bed, stag- 
 gered with it in his arms down the hall, through 
 the side door, and flung it on to the back of the 
 astonished cow. 
 
 " Now you, Jim, drive that there cow over to 
 Sam's, and if you dare bring her back agin, I'll 
 hide yer with the flail till yer can't stand up." 
 
 " Me drive that lookin' circus over to Sam's?" 
 sneered Jim. " I'll quit yer place first. Yer kin 
 do it yerself ;" and the hired man turned on his 
 lordly heel and slouched over to the barn. 
 
 " That'll be the best way, Billy," urged Sam's 
 mother. " Do it yourself." 
 
 " I'll do it, too," old Billy growled. " I ain't 
 afraid of no dog on four legs. Git on there, 
 bossy ! Git on, I say !" and the ridiculous caval- 
 cade started forth. 
 
 For a moment Martha Norris watched the re- 
 ceding figure through blinding tears. " Oh, 
 Sammy, I'm going to have you back again ! I'm 
 going to have my boy once more !"she half sobbed. 
 Then sitting down on the doorsill, she laughed 
 like a schoolgirl until the cow with her extraor- 
 dinary burden, and old Billy in her wake, dis- 
 appeared up the road.* 
 
 * This incident actually occurred on an Ontario farm 
 within the circle of the author's acquaintance.
 
 156 THE MOCCASIN MAKER 
 
 From the pillow, pretty Delia could just see out 
 of the low window, and her wide young eyes grew 
 wider with amazement as the gate swung open 
 and the " circus," as Jim called it, entered. 
 
 " Sammy !" she called, " Sammy ! For good- 
 ness sake, what's that coming into our yard?" 
 
 Instantly Sam was at the door. 
 
 " Well, if that don't beat anything I ever saw !" 
 he exclaimed. Then " like mother, like son," he, 
 too, sat down on the doorsill and laughed as 
 only youth and health and joy can laugh, for, 
 heading straight for the door was the fat young 
 Shorthorn, saddled with an enormous feather- 
 bed, and plodding at her heels was old Billy 
 Norris, grinning sheepishly. 
 
 It took just three seconds for the hands of 
 father and son to meet. " How's my gal an' my 
 grandson?" asked the old farmer, excitedly. 
 
 " Bully, just bully, both of them!" smiled Sam, 
 proudly. Then more seriously, " Ah, dad, you 
 old tornado, you ! Here you fired thunder at us 
 for a whole year, pretty near broke my mother's 
 heart, and made my boy's little mother old be- 
 fore she ought to be. But you've quit storming 
 now, dad. I know it from the look of you." 
 
 " Quit forever, Sam," replied old Billy, " fer 
 these mother-wimmen don't never thrive where 
 there's rough weather, somehow. They're all fer 
 peace. They're worse than King Edward an' 
 Teddy Eoosevelt fer patchin' up rows, an' if they 
 can't do it no other way, they jes' hike along with
 
 THE ENVOY EXTRAORDINARY 157 
 
 a baby, sort o' treaty of peace like. Yes, I guess 
 I thundered some; but, Sam, boy, there ain't a 
 deal of harm in thunder — but Ughtnin', now 
 that's the worst, but I once heard a feller say 
 that feathers was non-conductive." Then with a 
 sly smile, " An' Sam, you'd better hustle an' git 
 the gal an' the baby on ter this here feather-bed, 
 or they may be in danger of gittin' struck, fer 
 there's no tellin' but I may jes' start an' storm 
 thunder an' lightnin' this time."
 
 A Pagan in St. Paul's Cathedral 
 
 Iroquois Poetess' Impressions in London's 
 Cathedral 
 
 It is a far cry from a wigwam to Westminster, 
 from a prairie trail to the Tower Bridge, and 
 London looks a strange place to the Red Indian 
 whose eves still see the myriad forest trees, even 
 as they gaze across the Strand, and whose feet 
 still feel the clinging moccasin even among the 
 scores of clicking heels that hurry along the 
 thoroughfares of this camping-ground of the 
 paleface. 
 
 So this is the place where dwells the Great 
 White Father, ruler of many lands, lodges, and 
 tribes, in the hollow of whose hands is the peace 
 that rests between the once hostile red man and 
 white. They call him the King of England, but 
 to us, the powerful Iroquois nation of the north, 
 he is always the " Great White Father." For 
 once he came to us in our far-off Canadian re- 
 serves, and with his o^ti hand fastened decora- 
 tions and medals on the buckskin coats of our 
 oldest chiefs, just because they and their fathers 
 used their tomahawks in battle in the cause of 
 England. 
 
 158
 
 A PAGAN IN ST. PAUL'S CATHEDRAL 159 
 
 So I, one of his loyal allies, have come to see 
 his camp, known to the white man as London, 
 his council which the whites call his Parliament, 
 where his sachems and chiefs make the laws of 
 his tribes, and to see his wigwam, known to the 
 palefaces as Buckingham Palace, but to the red 
 man as the " Tepee of the Great White Father." 
 And this is what I see : — 
 
 What the Indian Sees. 
 
 Lifting toward the sky are vast buildings of 
 stone, not the same kind of stone from which 
 my forefathers fashioned their carven pipes and 
 corn-pounders, but a grayer, grimier rock that 
 would not take the polish we give by fingers 
 dipped in sturgeon oil, and long days of friction 
 with fine sand and deer-hide. 
 
 I stand outside the great palace wigwam, the 
 huge council-house by the river. My seeing eyes 
 may mark them, but my heart's eyes are looking 
 beyond all this wonderment, back to the land I 
 have left behind njie. I picture the tepees by the 
 far Saskatchewan; there the tent poles, too, are 
 lifting skyward, and the smoke ascending 
 through them from the smouldering fires within 
 curls softly on the summer air. Against the 
 blurred sweep of horizon other camps etch their 
 outlines, other bands of red men with their herds 
 of wild cattle have sought the river lands. I hear 
 the untamed hoofs thundering up the prairie 
 trail.
 
 160 THE MOCCASIN MAKER 
 
 But the prairie sounds are slipping away, and 
 my ears catch other voices that rise above the 
 ceaseless throb about me — voices that are clear, 
 high, and calling; they float across the city like 
 the music of a thousand birds of passage beating 
 their wings through the night, crying and mur- 
 muring plaintively as they journey northward. 
 They are the voices of St. Paul's calling, calling 
 me — St. Paul's where the paleface worships the 
 Great Spirit, and through whose portals he hopes 
 to reach the happy hunting grounds. 
 
 The Great Spirit. 
 
 As I entered its doorways it seemed to me to 
 be the everlasting abiding-place of the white 
 man's Great Spirit. 
 
 The music brooded everywhere. It beat in my 
 ears like the far-off cadences of the Sault Ste. 
 Marie rapids, that rise and leap and throb — like 
 a storm hurling through the fir forest — like the 
 distant rising of an Indian war-song; it swept 
 up those mighty archways until the gray dome 
 above me faded, and in its place the stars came 
 out to look down, not on these paleface kneeling 
 worshippers, but on a band of stalwart, sinewy, 
 copper-coloured devotees, my own people in my 
 own land, who also assembled to do honour to the 
 Manitou of all nations. 
 
 The deep-throated organ and the boys' voices 
 were gone ; I heard instead the melancholy incan-
 
 A PAGAN IN ST. PAUL'S CATHEDRAL 161 
 
 tations of our own pagan religionists. The beau- 
 tiful dignity of our great sacrificial rites seemed 
 to settle about me, to enwrap me in its garment 
 of solemnity and primitive stateliness. 
 
 Beat of the Drum. 
 
 The atmosphere pulsed with the beat of the 
 Indian drum, the eerie penetrations of the turtle 
 rattle that set the time of the dancers' feet. 
 Dance? It is not a dance, that marvellously 
 slow, serpentine-like figure with the soft swish, 
 swish of moccasined feet, and the faint jingling of 
 elks'-teeth bracelets, keeping rhythm with every 
 footfall. It is not a dance, but an invocation of 
 motion. Why may we not worship with the 
 graceful movement of our feet? The paleface 
 worships by moving his lips and tongue ; the dif- 
 ference is but slight. 
 
 The altar-lights of St. Paul's glowed for me 
 no more. In their place flared the camp fires of 
 the Onondaga " long-house, " and the resinous 
 scent of the burning pine drifted across the fetid 
 London air. I saw the tall, copper-skinned fire- 
 keeper of the Iroquois council enter, the circle of 
 light flung fitfully against the black surrounding 
 woods. I have seen their white bishops, but none 
 so regal, so august as he. His garb of fringed 
 buckskin and ermine was no more grotesque than 
 the vestments worn by the white preachers in 
 high places ; he did not carry a book or a shining 
 11
 
 162 THE MOCCASIN MAKER 
 
 golden symbol, but from his splendid shoulders 
 was suspended a pure white lifeless dog. 
 
 Into the red flame the strong hands gently low- 
 ered it, scores of reverent, blanketed figures stood 
 silent, awed, for it is the highest, holiest festival 
 of the year. Then the wild, strange chant arose — 
 the great pagan ritual was being intoned by the 
 fire-keeper, his weird, monotonous tones voicing 
 this formula: 
 
 " The Great Spirit desires no human sacrifice, 
 but we, His children, must give to Him that 
 which is nearest our hearts and nearest our lives. 
 Only the spotless and stainless can enter into His 
 presence, only that which is purified by fire. So 
 do we offer to Him this spotless, innocent animal 
 — this white dog — a member of our household, a 
 co-habitant of our wigwam, and on the smoke 
 that arises from the purging fires will arise also 
 the thanksgivings of all those who desire that 
 the Great Spirit in His happy hunting grounds 
 will forever smoke His pipe of peace, for peace 
 is between Him and His children for all time." 
 
 The mournful voice ceases. Again the hollow 
 pulsing of the Indian drum, the purring, flexible 
 step of cushioned feet. I lift my head, which has 
 been bowed on the chair before me. It is St. 
 Paul's after all — and the clear boy-voices rise 
 above the rich echoes of the organ.
 
 As It Was in the Beginning 
 
 They account for it by the fact that I am a 
 Redskin, but I am something else, too — I am a 
 woman. 
 
 I remember the first time I saw him. He came 
 up the trail with some Hudson's Bay trappers, 
 and they stopped at the door of my father's tepee. 
 He seemed even then, fourteen years ago, an old 
 man ; his hair seemed just as thin and white, his 
 hands just as trembling and fleshless as they were 
 a month since, when I saw him for what I pray 
 his God is the last time. 
 
 My father sat in the tepee, polishing bulfalo 
 horns and smoking; my mother, wrapped in her 
 blanket, crouched over her quill-work, on the 
 buffalo-skin at his side; I was lounging at the 
 doorway, idling, watching, as I always watched, 
 the thin, distant line of sky and prairie ; wonder- 
 ing, as I always wondered, what lay beyond it. 
 Then he came, this gentle old man with his white 
 hair and thin, pale face. He wore a long black 
 coat, which I now know was the sign of his office, 
 and he carried a black leather-covered book, 
 which, in all the years T have known him, I have 
 never seen him without. 
 
 163
 
 164 THE MOCCASIN MAKER 
 
 The trappers explained to my father who he 
 was, the Great Teacher, the heart's Medicine Man, 
 the "Blackcoaf w^e had heard of, who brought 
 peace where there was war, and the magic of 
 whose black book brought greater things than 
 all the Happy Hunting Grounds of our ancestors. 
 
 He told us many things that day, for he could 
 speak the Cree tongue, and my father listened, 
 and listened, and when at last they left us, my 
 father said for him to come and sit within the 
 tepee again. 
 
 He came, all the time he came, and my father 
 welcomed him, but my mother always sat in 
 silence at work with the quills ; my mother never 
 liked the Great "Blackcoat." 
 
 His stories fascinated me. I used to listen in- 
 tently to the tale of the strange new place he 
 called "heaven," of the gold crown, of the 
 white dress, of the great music; and then 
 he would tell of that other strange place 
 — hell. My father and I hated it ; we 
 feared it, we dreamt of it, we trembled at 
 it. Oh, if the "Blackcoat" would only cease to 
 talk of it I Now I know he saw its effect upon us, 
 and he used it as a whip to lash us into his new 
 religion, but even then my mother must have 
 known, for each time he left the tepee she would 
 watch him going slowly away across the prairie ; 
 then when he was disappearing into the far hori- 
 zon she would laugh scornfully, and say :
 
 AS IT WAS IN THE BEGINNING 165 
 
 "If the white man made this Blackcoat's hell, 
 let him go to it. It is for the man who found it 
 first. No hell for Indians, just Happy Hunting 
 Grounds. Blackcoat can't scare me." 
 
 And then, after weeks had passed, one day as 
 he stood at the tepee door he laid his white, old 
 hand on my head and said to my father : "Give me 
 this little girl, chief. Let me take her to the 
 mission school ; let me keep her, and teach her of 
 the great God and His eternal heaven. She will 
 grow to be a noble woman, and return perhaps 
 to bring her people to the Christ." 
 
 My mother's eyes snapped. "No," she said. It 
 was the first word she ever spoke to the "Black- 
 coat." My father sat and smoked. At the end 
 of a half-hour he said : 
 
 "I am an old man, Blackcoat. I shall not leave 
 the God of my fathers. I like not your strange 
 God's ways — all of them. I like not His two new 
 places for me when I am dead. Take the child, 
 Blackcoat, and save her from hell." 
 
 The first grief of my life was when we reached 
 the mission. They took my buckskin dress off, 
 saying I was now a little Christian girl and must 
 dress like all the white people at the mission. 
 Oh, how I hated that stiff new calico dress and 
 those leather shoes. But, little as I was, I 
 said nothing, only thought of the time when I
 
 166 THE MOCCASIN MAKER 
 
 should be grown, and do as my mother did, and 
 wear the buckskins and the blanket. 
 
 My next serious grief was when I began to 
 speak the English, that the^' forbade me to use 
 any Oee words whatever. The rule of the school 
 was that any child heard using its native tongue 
 must get a slight punishment. I never under- 
 stood it, I cannot understand it now, why the 
 use of my dear Cree tongue could be a matter 
 for correction or an action deserving punishment. 
 
 She was strict, the matron of the school, but 
 only justly so, for she had a heart and a face 
 like her brother's, the "Blackcoat." I had long 
 since ceased to call him that. The trappers at 
 the post called him "St. Paul," because, they 
 told me, of his self-sacrificing life, his kindly 
 deeds, his rarely beautiful old face; so I, too, 
 called him "St. Paul," though oftener "Fathei- 
 Paul," though he never liked the latter title, for 
 he w^as a Protestant. But as I was his pet, his 
 darling of the whole school, he let me speak of 
 him as I would, knowing it was but my heart 
 speaking in love. His sister was a widow, and 
 mother to a laughing yellow-haired little boy of 
 about my own age, who was my constant play- 
 mate and who taught me much of English in his 
 own childish way. I used to be fond of this child, 
 just as I was fond of his mother and of his uncle, 
 my "Father Paul," but as my girlhood passed 
 away, as womanhood came upon me, I got 
 strangely wearied of them all ; I longed, oh, God,
 
 AS IT WAS IN THE BEGINNING 167 
 
 how I longed for the old wild life I It came with 
 my womanhood, with my years. 
 
 What mattered it to me now that they had 
 taught me all their ways? — their tricks of dress, 
 their reading, their writing, their books. What 
 mattered it that " Father Paul " loved me, that 
 the traders at the post called me pretty, that I 
 was a pet of all, from the factor to the poorest 
 trapper in the service? I wanted my own people, 
 my own old life, my blood called out for it, but 
 they always said I must not return to my father's 
 tepee, I heard them talk amongst themselves of 
 keeping me away from pagan influences; they 
 told each other that if I returned to the prairies, 
 the tepees, I would degenerate, slip back to 
 paganism, as other girls had done; marry, per- 
 haps, with a pagan— and all their years of labor 
 and teaching would be lost. 
 
 I said nothing, but I waited. And then one 
 night the feeling overcame me. I was in the 
 Hudson's Bay store when an Indian came in 
 from the north with a large pack of buckskin. 
 As they unrolled it a dash of its insinuating odor 
 filled the store. I went over and leaned above 
 the skins a second, then buried my face in them, 
 swallowing, drinking the fragrance of them, that 
 went to my head 14ke wine. Oh, the wild wonder 
 of that wood-smoked tan, the subtilty of it, the 
 untamed smell of it I I drank it into my lungs, 
 my innermost being was saturated with it, till 
 my mind reeled and my heart seemed twisted
 
 168 THE MOCCASIN MAKER 
 
 with a physical agouy. My childhood recollec- 
 tions rushed upon me, devoured me. I left the 
 store in a strange, calm frenzy, and going rapidly 
 to the mission house I confronted my Father 
 Paul and demanded to be allowed to go " home," 
 if only for a day. He received the request with 
 the same refusal and the same gentle sigh that I 
 had so often been greeted with, but this time the 
 desire, the smoke-tan, the heart-ache, never les- 
 sened. 
 
 Night after night I would steal away by my- 
 self and go to the border of the village to watch 
 the sun set in the foothills, to gaze at the far 
 line of sky and prairie, to long and long for my 
 father's lodge. And Laurence — always Laurence 
 — my fair-haired, laughing, child playmate, 
 would come calling and calling for me : "Esther, 
 where are you? We miss you; come in, Esther, 
 come in with me." And if I did not turn at once 
 to him and follow, he would come and place his 
 strong hands on my shoulders and laugh into my 
 eyes and say, "Truant, truant, Esther; can't we 
 make you happy?" 
 
 My old child playmate had vanished years ago. 
 He was a tall, slender young man now, handsome 
 as a young chief, but with laughing blue eyes, 
 and always those yellow curls about his temples. 
 He was my solace in my half-exile, my comrade, 
 my brother, until one night it was, "Esther, 
 Esther, can't / make you happy?" 
 
 I did not answer him; only looked out across
 
 AS IT WAS IN THE BEGINNING 169 
 
 the plains and thought of the tepees. He came 
 close, close. He locked his arms about me, and 
 with my face pressed up to his throat he stood 
 silent. I felt the blood from my heart sweep 
 to my very finger-tips. I loved him. O God, how 
 I loved him ! In a wild, blind instant it all came, 
 just because he held me so and was whispering 
 brokenly, "Don't leave me, don't leave me, Esther; 
 my Esther, my child-love, my playmate, my girl- 
 comrade, my little Cree sweetheart, will you go 
 away to your people, or stay, stay for me, for my 
 arms, as I have you now?" 
 
 No more, no more the tepees; no more the 
 wild stretch of prairie, the intoxicating fragrance 
 of the smoke-tanned buckskin; no more the bed 
 of buffalo hide, the soft, silent moccasin ; no more 
 the dark faces of my people, the dulcet cadence 
 of the sweet Cree tongue — only this man, this 
 fair, proud, tender man who held me in his arms, 
 in his heart. My soul prayed his great white God, 
 in that moment, that He let me have only this. It 
 was twilight when we re-entered the mission gate. 
 We were both excited, feverish. Father Paul 
 was reading evening prayers in the large room 
 beyond the hallway ; his soft, saint-like voice stole 
 beyond the doors, like a benediction upon us. I 
 went noiselessly upstairs to my own room and 
 sat there undisturbed for hours. 
 
 The clock downstairs struck one, startling me 
 from my dreams of happiness, and at the same 
 moment a flash of light attracted me. My room
 
 170 THE MOCCASIN MAKER 
 
 was in an angle of the building, and my window 
 looked almost directly down into those of Father 
 Paul's study, into which at that instant he was 
 entering, carrying a lamp. "Why, Laurence," I 
 heard him exclaim, "what are you doing here? 
 I thought, my boy, you were in bed hours ago." 
 
 "No, uncle, not in bed, but in dreamland," 
 replied Laurence, arising from the window, where 
 evidently he, too, had spent the night hours as 
 I had done. 
 
 Father Paul fumbled about a moment, found 
 his large black book, which for once he seemed 
 to have got separated from, and was turning to 
 leave, when the curious circumstance of 
 Laurence being there at so unusual an hour 
 seemed to strike him anew. "Better go to sleep, 
 my son," he said simply, then added curiously, 
 "Has anything occurred to keep you up?" 
 
 Then Laurence spoke: "No, uncle, only — only, 
 I'm happy, that's all." 
 
 Father Paul stood irresolute. Then: "It is 
 ?" ' 
 
 "Esther," said Laurence quietly, but he was 
 at the old man's side, his hand was on the bent 
 old shoulder, his eyes proud and appealing. 
 
 Father Paul set the lamp on the table, but, as 
 usual, one hand held that black book, the great 
 text of his life. His face was paler than I had 
 ever seen it— graver. 
 
 "Tell me of it," he requested.
 
 AS IT WAS IN THE BEGINNING 171 
 
 T loniied far ont of my window and watclKMl 
 them both. I listened with my very heart, for 
 Laurence was telling him of me, of his love, of 
 the new-found joy of that night. 
 
 "You have said nothing of marriage to her?" 
 asked Father Paul. 
 
 "Well — no ; but she suridy understands that — " 
 
 "Did you speakof marriage f' repeated Father 
 Paul, with a harsh ring in his voice that was 
 new to me. 
 
 "No, uncle, but " 
 
 "Very well, then; very well." 
 
 There was a brief silence. Laurence stood 
 staring at the old man as though he were a 
 stranger; he watched him push a large chair up 
 to the table, slowly seat himself; then mechani- 
 cally following his movements, he dropped on to 
 a lounge. The old man's head bent low, but his 
 eyes were bright and strangely fascinating. He 
 began : 
 
 "Laurence, my boy, your future is the dearest 
 thing to me of all earthly interests. Why, you 
 (Mtit marry this girl — no, no, sit, sit until I have 
 finished," he added, with raised voice, as Laurence 
 sprang up, remonstrating. "I have long since 
 decided that you marry well; for instance, the 
 Hudson's Bay factor's daughter." 
 
 Laurence broke into a fresh, rollicking laugh. 
 "What, uncle," he said, "little Ida Mcintosh? 
 Marry that little yellow-haired fluff ball, that 
 kitten, that pretty little dolly?"
 
 172 THE MOCCASI^' MAKER 
 
 ••Stop," said Father Paul. Then with a low, 
 soft persuasiveness, '•She is ichite^ Laurence." 
 
 Mv lover started. ^'Wliv, uncle, what do you 
 mean?" he faltered. 
 
 ••Only this, my son: poor Esther comes of 
 uncertain blood; would it do for you — the mis- 
 sionary's nephew, and adopted son. you might 
 say — to marry the daughter of a pagan Indian? 
 Her mother is hopelessly uncivilized ; her father 
 has a dash of French somewhere — half-breed, you 
 know, my boy. half-breed." Then, with still lower 
 tone and half-shut, crafty eyes, he added: "The 
 blood is a bad, bad mixture, you know that; you 
 know, too, that I am very fond of the girl, poor 
 dear Esther. I have tried to separate her from 
 evil pagan influences; she is the daughter of the 
 Church ; 1 want her to have no other parent ; but 
 you never can tell what lurks in a caged animal 
 that has once been icild. My whole heart is with 
 the Indian people, my son; my whole heart, my 
 whole life, has been devoted to bringing them to 
 Christ, hut it is a different thing to marry with 
 one of them." 
 
 His small old eyes were riveted on Laurence 
 like a hawk's on a rat. My heart lay like ice in 
 my bosom. 
 
 Laurence, speechless and white, stared at h^m 
 breathlessly. 
 
 '•Go away somewhere.'' the old man was urg- 
 ing; "to Winnipeg, Toronto, Montreal; forget her, 
 then come back to Ida Mcintosh. A union of the
 
 AS IT WAS IN THE BEGINNING 173 
 
 Church and the Hudson's Bay will mean great 
 things, and may ultimately result in my life's 
 ambition, the civilization of this entire tribe, 
 that we have worked so long to bring to God." 
 
 I listened, sitting like one frozen. Could those 
 words have been uttered by my venerable teacher, 
 by him whom I revered as I would one of the 
 saints in his own black book? Ah, there was no 
 mistaking it. My white father, my life-long friend 
 who pretended to love me, to care for my happi- 
 ness, was urging the man I worshipped to forget 
 me, to marry with the factor's daughter — 
 because of what? Of my red skin; my good, old, 
 honest pagan mother; my confiding French- 
 Indian father. In a second all the care, the hol- 
 low love he had given me since my childhood, 
 were as things that never existed. I hated that 
 old mission priest as I hated his white man's hell. 
 I hated his long, white hair; I hated his thin, 
 white hands ; I hated his body, his soul, his voice, 
 his black book — oh, how I hated the very atmos- 
 phere of him. 
 
 Laurence sat motionless, his face buried in his 
 hands, but the old man continued, "No, no; not 
 the child of that pagan mother; you can't trust 
 her, my son. What would you do with a wife 
 who might any day break from you to return to 
 her prairies and her buckskins? You can't trust 
 her." His eyes grew smaller, more glittering, 
 more fascinating then, and leaning with an odd, 
 secret sort of movement towards Laurence, he
 
 174 THE MOCCASIN MAKER 
 
 almost whispered, "Think of her silent ways, her 
 noiseless step; the girl glides about like an 
 apparition; her qnick fingers, her wild longings 
 — I don't know why, but with all my fondness 
 for her, she reminds me sometimes of a strange 
 — snake."' 
 
 Laurence shuddered, lifted his face, and said 
 hoarsely : "You're right, uncle ; perhaps I'd better 
 not ; I'll go away, I'll forget her, and then — well, 
 then — jes, you are right, it is a different thing 
 to marry one of them." The old man arose. His 
 feeble fingers still clasped his black book; 
 his soft white hair clung about his forehead like 
 that of an Apostle; his eyes lost their peering, 
 crafty expression ; his bent shoulders resumed 
 the dignity of a minister of the living God; he 
 was the picture of what the traders called him — 
 "St. Paul." 
 
 "Good-night, son,'' he said. 
 
 "Good-night, uncle, and thank you for bringing 
 me to myself." 
 
 They were the last words I ever heard uttered 
 by either that old arch-fiend or his weak, miser- 
 able kinsman. Father Paul turned and left the 
 room. I watched his withered hand — the hand 
 I had so often felt resting on my head in holy 
 benedictions — clasp the door-knob, turn it slowly, 
 then, with bowed head and his pale face wrapped 
 in thought, he left the room — left it with the mad 
 venom of my hate pursuing him like the very 
 Evil One he taught me of.
 
 AS IT WAS IN THE BEGINNING 175 
 
 What were his years of kindness and care now? 
 What did I care for his God, his heaven, his hell ? 
 He had robbed me of my native faith, of my 
 parents, of my people, of this last, this life of 
 love that would have made a great, good woman 
 of me. God ! how I hated him ! 
 
 I crept to the closet in my dark little room. 
 I felt for a bundle I had not looked at for years 
 — yes, it was there, the buckskin dress I had worn 
 as a little child when they brought me to the 
 mission. I tucked it under my arm and descended 
 the stairs noiselessly. I would look into the 
 study and speak good-bye to Laurence; then I 
 would 
 
 I pushed open the door. He was lying on the 
 couch where a short time previously he had sat, 
 white and speechless, listening to Father Paul. 
 I moved towards him softly. God in heaven, he 
 was already asleep. As I bent over him the full- 
 ness of his perfect beauty impressed me for the 
 first time; his slender form, his curving mouth 
 that almost laughed even in sleep, his fair, tossed 
 hair, his smooth, strong-pulsing throat. God! 
 how I loved him ! 
 
 Then there arose the picture of the factor's 
 daughter. I hated her. I hated her baby face, 
 her yellow hair, her whitish skin. "She 
 shall not marry him," my soul said. "I 
 will kill him first — kill his beautiful body, 
 his lying, false heart." Something in my 
 heart seemed to speak ; it said over and over
 
 176 THE MOCCASIN MAKER 
 
 again, "Kill him, kill him; she mil never have 
 him then. Kill him. It will break Father Paul's 
 heart and blight his life. He has killed the best 
 of Ton, of your womanhood; kill his best, his 
 pride, his hope — his sister's son, his nephew 
 Laurence." But how? how? 
 
 What had that terrible old man said I was 
 like? A strange snake. A snake? The idea 
 wound itself about me like the very coils of a 
 serpent. What was this in the beaded bag of 
 my buckskin dress? this little thing rolled in 
 tan that my mother had given me at parting with 
 the words, "Don't touch much, but some time 
 maybe you want it!" Oh! I knew well enough 
 what it was — a small flint arrow-head dipped 
 in the venom of some strange snake. 
 
 I knelt beside him and laid my hot lips on his 
 hand. I worshipped him, oh, how, how I wor- 
 shipped him I Then again the vision of her baby 
 face, her yellow hair — I scratched his wrist twice 
 with the arrow-tip. A single drop of red blood 
 oozed up; he stirred. I turned the lamp down 
 and slipped out of the room — out of the house. 
 
 I dream nightly of the horrors of the white 
 man's hell. Why did they teach me of it, only 
 to fling me into it? 
 
 Last night as I crouched beside my mother on 
 the buffalo-hide, Dan Henderson, the trapper.
 
 AS IT WAS IN THE BEGINNING 177 
 
 came in to smoke with my father. He said old 
 Father Paul was bowed with grief, that with my 
 disappearance I was suspected, but that there 
 was no proof. Was it not merely a snake bite? 
 
 They account for it by the fact that I am a 
 Redskin. 
 
 They seem to have forgotten I am a woman. 
 
 12
 
 The Legend of Lillooet Falls 
 
 No one could possihlT mistake the quiet little 
 tap at the door. It could be given by no other 
 hand west of the Kockies save that of my old 
 friend The Klootchman. I dropped a lap full of 
 work and sprang- to open the door; for the slant- 
 ing rains were chill ontside, albeit the December 
 grass was green and the great masses of English 
 iyy clung wet and fresh as in summer about the 
 low stone wall that ran between my yerandah 
 and the street. 
 
 " Kla-how-ya. Tillicum," I greeted, dragging 
 her into the warmth and comfort of my " den/' 
 and relieving her of her inseparable basket, and 
 removing her rain-soaked shawl. Before she 
 spoke she gave that jieculiar gesture common to 
 the Indian woman from the Atlantic to the Paci- 
 fic. 8he lifted both hands and with each fore- 
 finger smoothed gently along her forehead from 
 the parting of her hair to the temples. It is the 
 universal habit of the red woman, and simply 
 means a desire for neatness in her front locks. 
 
 I busied myself immediately with the teakettle, 
 for. like all her kind. The Klootchman dearly 
 loves her tea. 
 
 178
 
 THE LEGEND OF LILLOOET FALLS 179 
 
 The old woman's eyes sparkled as she watched 
 the welcome brewing, while she chatted away in 
 half English, half Chinook, telling me of her 
 doings in all these weeks that I had not seen her. 
 But it was when I handed her a huge old-fash- 
 ioned breakfast cup fairly brimming with tea as 
 strong as lye that she really described her jour- 
 neyings. 
 
 She had been north to the Skeena River, south 
 to the great " Fair *" at Seattle, but. best of all 
 seemingly to her, was her trip into the interior. 
 She had been up the trail to Lillooet in the great 
 "' Cariboo '" country. It was my turn then to 
 have sparkling eyes, for I traversed that inex- 
 pressibly beautiful trail five years ago, and the 
 delight of that journey will remain with me for 
 all time. 
 
 " And, oh ! Tillicum,"" I cried, " have your good 
 brown ears actually listened to the call of the 
 falls across the cailon — the Falls of Lillooet?" 
 
 " My ears have heard them whisper, laugh, 
 weep,'' she replied in the Chinook. 
 
 " Yes," I answered, '^ they do all those things. 
 They have magic voices — those dear, far-off 
 falls :" 
 
 At the word "magic" her keen eyes snapped, 
 she set her empty cup aside and looked at me 
 solemnly. 
 
 " Then you know the story — the strange tale?" 
 she asked almost whisperingly.
 
 180 THE MOCCASIN MAKER 
 
 I shook my head. This was always the crucial 
 moment with my Klootchman, when her voice 
 lowers, and she asks if you know things. You must 
 be diplomatic, and never question her in turn. 
 If you do her lips will close in unbreakable 
 silence. 
 
 " I have heard no story, but I have heard the 
 Falls Vhisper, laugh and weep.' That is enough 
 for me," I said, with seeming indifference. 
 
 " What do you see when you look at them 
 from across the caiion?" she asked. "Do they 
 look to you like anything else but falling water?" 
 
 I thought for a moment before replying. Mem- 
 ory seemed to hold up an indistinct photograph 
 of towering fir-crested heights, where through a 
 broken ridge of rock a shower of silvery threads 
 cascaded musically down, down, down, until they 
 lost themselves in the mighty Eraser, that hurled 
 itself through the yawning canon stretched at 
 my feet. I have never seen such slender threads 
 of glowing tisstie save on early morning cobwebs 
 at sun-up. 
 
 " The Falls look like cobwebs," I said, as the 
 memory touched me. " Millions of fine misty 
 cobwebs woven together." 
 
 " Then the legend must be true," she uttered, 
 half to herself. I slipped down on my treasured 
 wolf-skin rug near her chair, and with hands 
 locked about my knees, sat in silence, knowing 
 it was the one and only way to lure her to speech. 
 She arose, helped herself to more tea, and with
 
 THE LEGEND OP LILLOOET FALLS 181 
 
 the toe of her beaded moccasin idly stroked one 
 of the wolf-skin paws. " Yes," she said, with 
 some decision, " the Indian men of magic say 
 that the falls are cobwebs twisted and braided 
 together." 
 
 I nodded, but made no comment ; then her voice 
 droned into the broken English, that, much as I 
 love it, I must leave to the reader's imagination. 
 " Indian mothers are strange," she began. I 
 nodded again. 
 
 " Yes, they are strange, and there is a strange 
 tie between them and their children. The men 
 of magic say they can see that tie, though you 
 and I cannot. It is thin, fine, silvery as a cob- 
 web, but strong as the ropes of wild vine that 
 swing down the great canons. No storm ever 
 breaks those vines; the tempests that drag the 
 giant firs and cedars up by their roots, snap their 
 branches and break their boles, never break the 
 creeping vines. They may be torn from their 
 strongholds, but in the young months of the 
 summer the vine will climb up, and cling again. 
 Nothing breaks it. So is the cobweb tie the Men 
 of Magic see between the Indian mother and her 
 child. 
 
 " There was a time when no falls leapt and 
 sang down the heights at Lillooet, and in those 
 days our men were very wild and warlike; but 
 the women were gentle and very beautiful, and 
 they loved and lived and bore children as women 
 have done before, and since.
 
 182 THE MOCCASIN MAKER 
 
 " But there was one, more gentle, more beauti- 
 ful than all others of the tribe. ' Be-be,' our 
 people call her; it is the Chinook word for 'a 
 kiss/ None of our people knew her real name; 
 but it was a kiss of hers that made this legend, 
 so as ' Be-be ' we speak of her. 
 
 "'• Slie was a mother-woman, but save for one 
 beautiful girl-child, her family of six were all 
 boys, splendid, brave boys, too, but this one treas- 
 ured girl-child they called ' Morning-mist.' She 
 was little and frail and beautiful, like the clouds 
 one sees at daybreak circling about the mountain 
 l)eaks. Her father and her brothers loved her, 
 l)ut the heart of Be-be, her mother, seemed 
 wrapped round and about that misty-eyed child. 
 
 '' ' I love you,' the mother would say many 
 times a day, as she caught the girl-child in her 
 arms. ' And I love you,' the girl-child would 
 answer, resting for a moment against the warm 
 shoulder. ' Little Flower,' the woman would 
 murmur, ' thou art morning to me, thou art 
 golden mid-day, thou art slumbrous nightfall to 
 my heart.' 
 
 " So these two loved and lived, mother and 
 daughter, made for each other, shaped into each 
 other's lives as the moccasin is shaped to the 
 foot. 
 
 " Then came that long, shadowed, sunless day, 
 when Be-be, returning from many hours of oUal- 
 lie picking, her basket filled to the brim with rich 
 fruit, her heart reaching forth to her home even
 
 THE LEGEND OF LILLOOET FALLS 183 
 
 before her swift feet could traverse the trail, 
 found her husband and her boys stunned with 
 a dreadful fear, searching with wild eyes, hurry- 
 ing feet, and grief-wrung hearts for her little 
 ^ Morning-child,' who had wandered into the for- 
 est while her brothers played — the forest which 
 was deep and dark and dangerous, — and had not 
 returned." 
 
 The Klootchman's voice ceased. For a long 
 moment she gazed straight before her, then look- 
 ing at me said : 
 
 " You have heard the Falls of Lillooet weep?" 
 I nodded. 
 
 " It is the weeping of that Indian mother, sob- 
 bing through the centuries, that you hear." She 
 uttered the words with a cadence of grief in her 
 voice. 
 
 '^ Hours, nights, days, they searched for the 
 Morning-child," she continued. " And each mo- 
 ment of that unending agony to the mother- 
 woman is repeated to-day in the call, the wail, the 
 everlasting sobbing of the falls. At night the 
 wolves howled up the caiion. 'God of my fathers, 
 keep safe my Morning-child,' the mother would 
 implore. In the glare of day eagles poised, and 
 vultures wheeled above the forest, their hungry 
 claws, their unblinking eyes, their beaks of greed 
 shining in the sunlight. ' God of my fathers, 
 keep safe my Morning-child ' was again wrung 
 from the mother's lips. For one long moon, that 
 dawned, and shone and darkened, that mother's
 
 184 THE MOCCASIN MAKER 
 
 heart lived out its torture. Then one pale day- 
 break a great fleet of canoes came down the 
 Frazer River. Those that paddled were of a 
 strange tribe, they spoke in a strange tongue, 
 but their hearts were human, and their skins were 
 of the rich copper-color of the Upper Lillooet 
 country. As they steered downstream, running 
 the rapids, braving the whirlpools, they chanted, 
 in monotone : 
 
 " ' We have a lost child, 
 A beautiful lost child. 
 We love this lost child, 
 But the heart of the child 
 Calls the mother of the child. 
 Come and claim this lost child.' 
 
 " The music of the chant was most beautiful, 
 but no music in the world of the white man's 
 Tyee could equal that which rang through the 
 heart of Be-be, the Indian mother-woman. 
 
 " Heart upon heart, lips upon lips, the Morn- 
 ing-child and the mother caught each other in 
 embrace. The strange tribe told of how they 
 had found the girl-child wandering fearfully in 
 the forest, crouching from the claws of eagles, 
 shrinking from the horror of wolves, but the 
 mother with her regained treasure in her arms 
 begged them to cease their tales. ' I have gone 
 through agonies enough, oh, my friends,' she 
 cried aloud. ' Let me rest from torture now.' 
 Then her people came and made a great feast and
 
 THE LEGEND OF LILLOOET FALLS 185 
 
 potlatch for this strange Upper Lillooet tribe, 
 and at the feast Be-be arose, and, lifting the girl- 
 child to her shoulder, she commanded silence and 
 spoke : 
 
 " ' O Sagalie Tyee (God of all the earth) , You 
 have given back to me my treasure; take my 
 tears, my sobs, my happy laughter, my joy — take 
 the cobweb chains that bind my Morning-child 
 and me — make them sing to others, that they 
 may know my gratitude. O Sagalie Tyee, make 
 them sing.' As she spoke, she kissed the child. 
 At that moment the Falls of Lillooet came like 
 a million cobweb strands, dashing and gleaming 
 down the canon, sobbing, laughing, weeping, call- 
 ing, singing. You have listened to them." 
 
 The Klootchman's voice was still. Outside, the 
 rains still slanted gently, like a whispering echo 
 of the far-away falls. " Thank you, Tillicum of 
 mine ; it is a beautiful legend," I said. She did 
 not reply until, wrapped about in her shawl, she 
 had clasped my hand in good-bye. At the door she 
 paused, " Yes," she said — " and it is true." I 
 smiled to myself. I love my Klootchman. She 
 is so very Indian.
 
 Her Majesty's Guest 
 
 [Author's Note. — The "Onondaga Jam" 
 occurred late in the seventies, and this tale is 
 founded upon actual incidents in the life of the 
 author's father, who was Forest Warden on the 
 Indian Reserve.] 
 
 I HAVE never been a good man, but then I have 
 never pretended to be one, and perhaps that at 
 least will count in my favor in the day when the 
 great dividends are declared. 
 
 I have been what is called "well brought up'' 
 and I would give some years of my life to possess 
 now the money spent on my education; how I 
 came to drop from what I should have been to 
 what I am would scarcely interest anyone — if 
 indeed I were capable of detailing the process, 
 which I am not. I suppose I just rolled leisurely 
 down hill like many another fellow. 
 
 My friends, however, still credit me with one 
 virtue; that is an absolute respect for my neigh- 
 bor's w^ife, a feeling which, however, does not 
 extend to his dollars. His money is mine if I 
 can get it, and to do myself justice I prefer get- 
 ting it from him honestly, at least without suflS- 
 cient dishonesty to place me behind prison bars. 
 
 186
 
 HER MAJESTY'S GUEST 187 
 
 Some experience has taught me that when a 
 man is reduced to getting his living, as I do, by 
 side issues and small deals, there is no better 
 locality for him to operate than around the 
 borders of some Indian Reserve. 
 
 The pagan Indian is an unsuspicious fool. You 
 can do him up right and left. The Christian 
 Indian is as sharp as a fox, and with a little 
 gloved handling he will always go in with you 
 on a few lumber and illicit whiskey deals, which 
 means that you have the confidence of his breth- 
 ren and their dollars at the same time. 
 
 I had outwitted the law for six years. I had 
 smuggled more liquor into the Indian Bush on 
 the Grand River Reserve and drawn more timber 
 out of it to the Hamilton and Brantford markets 
 than any forty dealers put together. Gradually 
 the law thinned the whole lot out — all but me; 
 but I was slippery as an eel and my bottles of 
 whiskey went on, and my loads of ties and timber 
 came off, until every oflflcer and preacher in the 
 place got up and demanded an inspection. 
 
 The Government at Ottawa awoke, stretched, 
 yawned, then printed some flaring posters and 
 stuck them around the border villages. The 
 posters were headed by a big print of the British 
 Coat of Arms, and some large type beneath 
 announced terrible fines and heavy imprison- 
 ments for anyone caught hauling Indian timber 
 off the Reserve, or hauling whiskey on to it. Then
 
 188 THE MOCCASIN MAKER 
 
 the Government rubbed its fat palms together, 
 settled itself in its easy chair, and snored again. 
 
 I? Oh, I went on with my operations. 
 
 And at Christmas time Tom Barrett arrived 
 on the scene. Kot much of an event, you'd say 
 if you saw him, still less if you heard him. 
 According to himself, he knew everything and 
 could do everything in the known world ; he was 
 just twenty- two and as obnoxiously fresh a thing 
 as ever boasted itself before older men. 
 
 He was the old missionary's son and had come 
 up from college at Montreal to help his father 
 preach salvation to the Indians on Sundays, 
 and to swagger around week-days in his brand 
 new clerical-cut coat and white tie. 
 
 He enjoyed what is called, I believe, "deacon's 
 orders." They tell me he was recently "priested," 
 to use their straight English Church term, and 
 is now parson of a swell city church. Well I they 
 can have him. I'll never split on him, but I could 
 tell them some things about Tom Barrett that 
 would soil his surplice — at least in my opinion, 
 but you never can be sure when even religious 
 people will make a hero out of a rogue. 
 
 The first time I ever saw him he came into 
 "Jake's" one night, quite late. We were knocked 
 clean dumb. "Jake's" isn't the place you would 
 count on seeing a clerical-cut coat in. 
 
 It's not a thoroughly disreputable place, for 
 Jake has a decent enough Indian wife; but he 
 happens also to have a cellar which has a hard
 
 HER MAJESTY'S GUEST 189 
 
 name for illicit-whiskey supplies, though never 
 once has the law, in its numerous and unan- 
 nounced visits to the shanty, ever succeeded in 
 discovering barrel or bottle. I consider myself 
 a pretty smart man, but Jake is cleverer than I 
 am. 
 
 When young Barrett came in that night, there 
 was a clatter of hiding cups. "Hello, boys," he 
 said, and sat down wearily opposite me, leaning 
 his arms on the table between us like one utterly 
 done out. 
 
 Jake, it seemed, had the distinction of knowing 
 him ; so he said kind of friendly-like, 
 
 "Hello, parson — sick?" 
 
 "Sick? Sick nothing," said Barrett, "except 
 sick to death of this place. And don't ' parson ' 
 me! I'm 'parson' on Sundays; the rest of the 
 six days I'm Tom Barrett — Tom, if you like." 
 
 We were dead silent. For myself, I thought 
 the fellow clean crazy; but the next moment he 
 had turned half around, and with a quick, soft, 
 coaxing movement, for all the world like a 
 woman, he slipped his arm around Jake's 
 shoulders, and said, "Say, Jake, don't let the fel- 
 lows mind me," Then in a lower tone — ''What 
 have you got to drink?" 
 
 Jake went white-looking and began to talk of 
 some cider he'd got in the cellar; but Barrett 
 interrupted with, "Look here, Jake, just drop 
 that rot; I know all about you." He tipped a 
 half wink at the rest of us, but laid his fingers
 
 190 THE MOCCASIN MAKER 
 
 across his lips. "Come, old man,'" he wheedled 
 like a girl, "you don't know what it is to be 
 dragged away from college and bnried alive in 
 this Indian bush. The governor's good enough, 
 you know — treats me white and all that — but 
 you know what he is on whiskey. I tell you I've 
 got a throat as long and dry as a fence rail — '' 
 
 No one spoke. 
 
 "You'll save my life if you do," he added, crush- 
 ing a bank note into Jake's hand. 
 
 Jake looked at me. The same thought flashed 
 on us both; if we could get this church student 
 on our side — Well ! Things would be easy enough 
 and public suspicion never touch us. Jake 
 turned, resurrected ^he hidden cups, and went 
 down cellar. 
 
 "You're Dan McLeod, aren't you?" suggested 
 Barrett, leaning across the table and looking 
 sharply at me. 
 
 "That's me," I said in turn, and sized him u]). 
 I didn't like his face; it was the undeniable face 
 of a liar — small, uncertain eyes, set together close 
 like those of a fox, a thin nose, a narrow, woman- 
 ish chin that accorded with his girlish actions of 
 coaxing, and a mouth I didn't quite understand. 
 
 Jake had come up with the bottle, but before 
 he could put it on the table Barrett snatched it 
 like a starving dog would a hunk of meat. 
 
 He peered at the label, squinting his foxy eyes, 
 then laughed up at Jake.
 
 HER MAJESTY'S GUEST 191 
 
 "I hope you don't sell the Indians this/^ he 
 said, tapping the capsnle. 
 
 No, Jake never sold a drop of whiskey to 
 Indians, — the law, you know, was very strict 
 and — 
 
 "Oh, I don't care whatever else you sell them," 
 said Barrett, "but their red throats would never 
 appreciate fine twelve-year-old like this. Come, 
 boys." 
 
 We came. 
 
 "So you're Dan McLeod," he continued after 
 the first long pull, "I've heard about you, too. 
 You've got a deck of cards in your pocket — 
 haven't you? Let's have a game." 
 
 I looked at him, and though, as I said in the 
 beginning, I'm not a good man, I felt honestly 
 sorry for the old missionary and his wife at that 
 moment. 
 
 "It's no use," said the boy, reading my hesita- 
 tion. "I've broken loose. I must have a slice of 
 the old college life, just for to-night." 
 
 I decided the half-cut of Indian blood on his 
 mother's side was showing itself; it was just 
 enough to give Tom a good red flavoring and a 
 rare taste for gaming and liquor. 
 
 We played until daylight, when Barrett said 
 he must make his sneak home, and reaching for 
 his wide-brimmed, soft felt preacher's hat, left — 
 having pocketed twenty-six of our ^ood dollars, 
 swallowed unnumbered cups of twelve-year-old
 
 192 THE MOCCASIN MAKER 
 
 and won the combined respect of everyone at 
 Jake's. 
 
 The next Sunday Jake went to church out of 
 curiosity. He said Tom Barrett "ofiSciated" in a 
 surplice as white as snow and with a face as sin- 
 less as your mother's. He preached most elo- 
 quently aijainst the terrible evil of the illicit 
 liquor trade, and implored his Indian flock to 
 resist this greatest of all pitfalls. Jake even 
 seemed impressed as he told us. 
 
 But Tom Barrett's "breaking loose for once" 
 was like any other man's. Night after night saw 
 him at Jake's, though he never played to win 
 after that first game. As the weeks went on, he 
 got anxious-looking; his clerical coat began to 
 grow seedy, his white ties uncared for; he lost 
 his fresh, cheeky talk, and the climax came late 
 in March when one night I found him at Jake's 
 sitting alone, his face bowed down on the table 
 above his folded arms, and something so dis- 
 heartened in his attitude that I felt sorry for the 
 boy. Perhaps it was that I was in trouble myself 
 that day; my biggest "deal" of the season had 
 been scented by the officers and the chances were 
 they would come on and seize the five barrels of 
 whiskey I had been as many weeks smuggling 
 into the Reserve. However it was, I put my hand 
 on his shoulder, and told him to brace up, asking 
 at the same time what was wrong. 
 
 "Money," he answered, looking up with kind 
 of haggard eyes. "Dan, I must have money. City
 
 HER MAJESTY'S GUEST 193 
 
 bills, college debts — everything has rolled up 
 against me. I daren't tell the governor, and he 
 couldn't help me anyway, and I can't go back 
 for another term owing every man in my class." 
 He looked suicidal. And then I made the plunge 
 I'd been thinking on all day, 
 
 "Would a hundred dollars be any good to you?" 
 I eyed him hard as I said it, and sat down in my 
 usual place, opposite him. 
 
 " Good?" he exclaimed, half rising. " It would 
 be an eternal godsend." His foxy eyes glittered. 
 I thought I detected greed in them; perhaps it 
 was only relief. 
 
 I told him it was his if he would only help me, 
 and making sure we were quite alone, I ran off 
 a hurried account of my "deal," then proposed 
 that he should "accidentally" meet the officers 
 near the border, ring in with them as a parson 
 would be likely to do, tell them he suspicioned 
 the whiskey was directly at the opposite side of 
 the Reserve to where I really had stored it, get 
 them wild-goose chasing miles away, and give me 
 a chance to clear the stuff and myself as well ; in 
 addition to the hundred I would give him twenty 
 per cent, on the entire deal. He changed color and 
 the sweat stood out on his forehead. 
 
 "One hundred dollars this time to-morrow 
 night," I said. He didn't move. "And twenty 
 per cent. One hundred dollars this time to- 
 morrow night," I repeated. 
 
 13
 
 194 THE MOCCASIN MAKER 
 
 He began to weaken. I lit my pipe and looked 
 indifferent, though I knew I was a lost man if 
 he refused — and informed. Suddenly he stretched 
 his hand across the table, impulsively, and closed 
 it over mine. I knew I had him solid then. 
 
 "Dan," he choked up, "it's a terrible thing for 
 a divinity student to do ; but — " his fingers tight- 
 ened nervously. "I'm with you !" Then in a mo- 
 ment, "Find some whiskey, Dan. I'm done up." 
 
 He soon got braced enough to ask me who was 
 in the deal, and what timber we expected to trade 
 for. When I told him Lige Smith and Jack 
 Jackson were going to help me, he looked scared 
 and asked me if I thought they would split on 
 him. He was so excited I thought him cowardly, 
 but the poor devil had reason enough, I supposed, 
 to want to keep the transaction from the ears 
 of his father, or worse still — the bishop. He 
 seemed easier when I assured him the boys were 
 square, and immensely gratified at the news that 
 I had already traded six quarts of the stuff for 
 over a hundred dollars' worth of cordwood. 
 
 "We'll never get it across the river to the 
 markets," he said dolefully. "I came over this 
 morning in a canoe. Ice is all out." 
 
 "What about the Onondaga Jam?" I said. He 
 winked. 
 
 "That'll do. I'd forgotten it," he answered, 
 and chirped up right away like a kid. 
 
 But I hadn't forgotten the Jam. It had been 
 a regular gold-mine to me all that open winter.
 
 HER MAJESTY'S GUEST 195 
 
 when the ice froze and thawed every week and 
 finally jammed itself clean to the river bottom 
 in the throat of the bend up at Onondaga, and 
 the next day the thermometer fell to eleven 
 degrees below zero, freezing it into a solid block 
 that bridged the river for traffic, and saved my 
 falling fortunes. 
 
 "And Where's the whiskey hidden?" he asked 
 after awhile. 
 
 "No you don't," I laughed. "Parson or pal, 
 no man living knows or will know where it is 
 till he helps me haul it away. I'll trust none 
 of you." 
 
 "I'm not a thief," he pouted. 
 
 "No," I said, "but you're blasted hard up, and 
 I don't intend to place temptation in your way." 
 
 He laughed good-naturedly and turned the 
 subject aside just as Lige Smith and Jack Jack- 
 son came in with an unusual companion that put 
 a stop to further talk. Women w^ere never seen 
 at night time around Jake's; even his wife was 
 invisible, and I got a sort of shock when I saw 
 old Cayuga Joe's girl, Elizabeth, following at 
 the boys' heels. It had been raining and the girl, 
 a full blood Cayuga, shivered in the damp and 
 crouched beside the stove. 
 
 Tom Barrett started when he saw her. His 
 color rose and he began to mark up the table 
 with his thumb nail. I could see he felt his fix. 
 The gii'l — Indian right through — showed no sur-
 
 196 THE MOCCASIN MAKER 
 
 prise at seeing him there, but that did not mean 
 she would keep her mouth shut about it next day. 
 Tom was undoubtedly discovered. 
 
 Notwithstanding her unwelcome presence, 
 however, Jackson managed to whisper to me that 
 the Forest Warden and his officers w^ere alive and 
 bound for the Reserve the following day. But it 
 didn't worry me worth a cent; I knew we were 
 safe as a church with Tom Barrett's clerical coat 
 in our midst. He was coming over to our corner 
 now. 
 
 "That hundred's right on the dead square, 
 Dan?" he asked anxiously, taking my arm and 
 moving to the window. 
 
 I took a roll of bank notes from my trousers' 
 pocket and with my back to the gang counted 
 out ten tens. I always carry a good wad with 
 me with a view to convenience if I have to make 
 a hurried exit from the scene of my operations. 
 
 He shook his head and stood away. "Not till 
 I've earned it, McLeod." 
 
 What fools very young men make of them- 
 selves sometimes. The girl arose, folding her 
 damp shawl over her head, and made towards 
 the door; but he intercepted her, saying it was 
 late and as their ways lay in the same direction, 
 he would take her home. She shot a quick glance 
 at him and went out. Some little uneasy action 
 of his caught my notice. In a second my suspi- 
 cions w^ere aroused; the meeting had been
 
 HER MAJESTY'S GUEST 197 
 
 arranged, and I knew from what I had seen him 
 to be that the girl was doomed. 
 
 It was all very well for me to do up Cayuga 
 Joe — he was the Indian whose hundred dollars' 
 worth of cordwood I owned in lieu of six quarts 
 of bad whiskey — but his women-folks were en- 
 titled to be respected at least while I was around. 
 I looked at my watch ; it was past midnight. I 
 suddenly got boiling hot clean through. 
 
 "Look here, Tom Barrett," I said, "I ain't a 
 saint, as everybody knows ; but if you don't treat 
 that girl right, you'll have to square it up with 
 me, d'you understand?" 
 
 He threw me a nasty look. "Keep your gal- 
 lantry for some occasion when it's needed, Dan 
 McLeod," he sneered, and with a laugh I didn't 
 like, he followed the girl out into the rain. 
 
 I walked some distance behind them for two 
 miles. When they reached her father's house and 
 went in, I watched her through the small uncur- 
 tained window put something on the fire to cook, 
 then arouse her mother, who even at that late 
 hour sat beside the stove smoking a clay pipe. The 
 old woman had apparently met with some acci- 
 dent ; her head and shoulders were bound up, and 
 she seemed in pain. Barrett talked with her con- 
 siderably and once when I caught sight of his 
 face, it was devilish with some black passion I 
 did not recognize. Although I felt sure the girl 
 was now all right for the night, there was some-
 
 198 THE MOCCASIN MAKER 
 
 thing about this meeting I didn't like; so I lay 
 around until just daylight when Jackson and 
 Lige Smith came through the bush as pre- 
 arranged should I not return to Jake's. 
 
 It was not long before Elizabeth and Tom came 
 out again and entered a thick little bush behind 
 the shanty. Lige lifted the axe off the woodpile 
 with a knowing look, and we all three followed 
 silently. I was surprised to find it a well beaten 
 and equally well concealed trail. All my suspi- 
 cions returned. I knew now that Barrett was 
 a bad lot all round, and as soon as I had quit 
 using him and his coat, I made up my mind to 
 rid my quarters of him; fortunately I knew 
 enough about him to use that knowledge as a 
 whip-lash. 
 
 We followed them for something over a mile, 
 when — heaven and hell! The trail opened 
 abruptly on the clearing where lay my recently 
 acquired cordwood with my five barrels of whis- 
 key concealed in its midst. 
 
 The girl strode forward, and with the strength 
 of a man, pitched down a dozen sticks with light- 
 ning speed. 
 
 "There!" she cried, turning to Tom. "There 
 you find him — you find him whiskey. You say 
 you spill. No more my father he's drunk all day, 
 he beat my mother." / 
 
 I stepped out. 
 
 "So, Tom Barrett," I said, "you've played the 
 d d sneak and hunted it out!"
 
 HER MAJESTY'S GUEST 199 
 
 He fairly jumped at the sound of my voice; 
 then he got white as paper, and then — something 
 came into his face that I never saw before. It 
 was a look like his father's, the old missionary. 
 
 "Yes, McLeod," he answered. "And I've hunted 
 you out. It's cost me the loss of a whole term at 
 college and a considerable amount of self-respect, 
 but I've got my finger on you now!" 
 
 The whole infernal trick burst right in on my 
 intelligence. If I had had a revolver, he would 
 have been a dead man ; but border traders nowa- 
 days are not desperadoes with bowie knives and 
 hip pockets 
 
 "You surely don't mean to split on me?" I 
 asked. 
 
 "I surely don't mean to do anything else," he 
 cheeked back. 
 
 "Then, Tom Barrett," I sputtered, raging, 
 "you're the dirtiest cad and the foulest liar that 
 ever drew the breath of life." 
 
 "I dare say I am," he said smoothly. Then 
 with rising anger he advanced, peering into my 
 face with his foxy eyes. "And I'll tell you right 
 here, Dan McLeod, I'd be a hundred times a cad, 
 and a thousand times a liar to save the souls and 
 bodies of our Indians from going to hell, through 
 your cursed whiskey." 
 
 I have always been a brave man, but I confess 
 I felt childishly scared before the wild, mesmeric 
 power of his eyes. I was unable to move a finger, 
 but I blurted out boastfullv: "If it wasn't for
 
 200 THE MOCCASIN MAKER 
 
 your preacher's hat and coat I'd send your sneak- 
 ing soul to Kingdom Come, right here !" 
 
 Instantly he hauled off his coat and tie and 
 stood with clenched fists while his strange eyes 
 fairly spat green fire. 
 
 "Now," he fumed, "I've discarded my cloth, 
 Dan McLeod. You've got to deal with a man 
 now, not with a minister." 
 
 To save my immortal soul I can't tell why I 
 couldn't stir. I only know that everything seemed 
 to drop out of sight except his two little blazing 
 eyes. I stood like a fool, queered, dead queered 
 right through. 
 
 He turned politely to the girl. "You may go, 
 Elizabeth," he said, "and thank you for your 
 assistance." The girl turned and went up the 
 trail without a word. 
 
 With the agility of a cat he sprang on to the 
 wood-pile, pitched off enough cordwood to expose 
 my entire "cellar;" then going across to Lige, he 
 coolly took the axe out of his hand. His face 
 was white and set, but his voice was natural 
 enough as he said : 
 
 "Now, gentlemen, whoever cares to interrupt 
 me will get the blade of this axe buried in his 
 brain, as heaven is my witness," 
 
 I didn't even curse as he split the five barrels 
 into slivers and my well-fought-for whiskey 
 soaked into the slush. Once he lifted his head 
 and looked at me, and the mouth I didn't under-
 
 HER MAJESTY'S GUEST 201 
 
 stand revealed itself; there was something about 
 it like a young Napoleon's. 
 
 I never hated a man in my life as I hated Tom 
 Barrett then. That I daren't resist him made it 
 worse. I watched him finish his caddish job, 
 throw down the axe, take his coat over his arm, 
 and leave the clearing without a word. 
 
 But no sooner was he out of sight than my 
 devilish temper broke out, and I cursed and blas- 
 phemed for half an hour. I'd have his blood if 
 it cost my neck a rope, and that too before he 
 could inform on us. The boys were with me, of 
 course, poor sort of dogs with no grit of their 
 own, and with the axe as my only weapon we left 
 the bush and ran towards the river. 
 
 I fairly yelled at my good luck as I reached 
 the high bank. There, a few rods down shore, 
 beside the open water sat Tom Barrett, calling 
 something out to his folks across the river, and 
 from upstream came the deafening thunder of 
 the Onondaga Jam that, loosened by the rain, 
 was shouldering its terrific force downwards with 
 the strength of a million drunken demons. 
 
 We had him like a rat in a trap, but his foxy 
 eyes had seen us. He sprang to his feet, hesi- 
 tated for a fraction of a moment, saw the murder 
 in our faces, then did what any man but a fool 
 would have done — ran. 
 
 We were hot on his heels. Fifty yards distant 
 an old dug-out lay hauled up. He ran it down
 
 202 THE MOCCASIN MAKER 
 
 into the water, stared wildly at the oncoming 
 jam, then at us, sprang into the canoe and 
 grabbed the paddle. 
 
 I was murderously mad. I wheeled the axe 
 above my shoulder and let fly at him. It missed 
 his head by three inches. 
 
 He was paddling for dear life now, and, our 
 last chance gone, we stood riveted to the spot, 
 watching him. On the bluff across the river 
 stood his half-blood mother, the raw March wind 
 whipping her skirts about her knees; but her 
 strained, ashen face showed she never felt its 
 chill. Below with his feet almost in the rapidly 
 rising water, stood the old missionary, his scant 
 grey hair blowing across his eyes that seemed to 
 look out into eternity — amid stream Tom, 
 paddling with the desperation of death, his head 
 turning every second with the alertness of an 
 animal to gauge the approaching ice-shove. 
 
 Even I wished him life then. Twice I thought 
 him caught in the crush, but he was out of it 
 like an arrow, and in another moment he had 
 leapt ashore while above the roar of the grinding 
 jam I heard him cry out with a strange exulta- 
 tion: 
 
 " Father, I've succeeded. I have had to be a 
 scoundrel and a cad, but Fve trapped them at 
 lastr 
 
 He staggered forward then, sobbing like a 
 child, and the old man's arms closed round him.
 
 HER MAJESTY'S GUEST 203 
 
 just as two heavy jaws of ice snatched the dug- 
 out, hurled it off shore and splintered it to atoms. 
 Well ! I had made a bad blunder, which I 
 attempted to rectify by reaching Buffalo that 
 night; but Tom Barrett had w^on the game. I 
 was arrested at Fort Erie, handcuffed, jailed, 
 tried, convicted of attempted assault and illicit 
 whiskey-trading on the Grand River Indian 
 Reserve — and spent the next five years in King- 
 ston Penitentiary, the guest of Her Most Gra- 
 cious Majesty Queen Victoria.
 
 Mother o' the Men 
 
 A Story of the Canadian North-West Mounted Police 
 
 The commander's wife stood on the deck of 
 the "North Star" looking at the receding city of 
 Vancouver as if to photograph within her eyes 
 and heart every detail of its wonderful beauty — 
 its clustering, sisterly houses, its holly hedges, its 
 ivied walls, its emerald lawns, its teeming streets 
 and towering spires. She seemed to realize that 
 this was the end of the civilized trail ; that hence- 
 forth, for many years, her sight would know only 
 the unbroken line of icy ridge and sky of the 
 northernmost outposts of the great Dominion. 
 To her hand clung a little boy of ten, and about 
 her hovered some twenty young fellows, gay in 
 the scarlet tunics, the flashing buffalo-head but- 
 tons, that bespoke the soldierly uniform of the 
 Canadian North-West Mounted Police. They were 
 the first detachment bound for the Yukon, and 
 were under her husband's command. 
 
 She was the only woman in the "company." 
 The major had purposely selected unmarried men 
 for his staff, for in the early nineties the Arctic 
 was no place for a woman. But when the Govern- 
 
 204
 
 MOTHER O' THE MEN 205 
 
 ment at Ottawa saw fit to commission Major 
 Lysle to face the frozen North, and with a hand- 
 ful of men build and garrison a fort at the rim 
 of the Polar Seas, Mrs. Lysle quietly remarked, 
 "I shall accompany you, so shall the boy," and 
 the major blessed her in his heart, for had she 
 not so decided, it would mean absolute separa- 
 tion from wife and child for from three to five 
 years, as in those days no railways, no telegraph 
 lines, stretched their pulsing fingers into the 
 Klondyke. One mail went in, one mail came out, 
 each year — that was all. 
 
 " It's good-bye, Graham lad," said one of the 
 scarlet-coated soldiers, tossing the little boy to 
 his back. "Look your longest at those paved 
 streets, and the green, green things. There'll be 
 months of just snow away up there," and he 
 nodded towards the north. 
 
 "Oh, but father says it won't be lonely at all 
 up there," asserted the child. "He says I'll grow 
 terribly big in a few^ years; that people always 
 grow in the North, and maybe I'll soon be able to 
 wear buffalo buttons and have stripes on my 
 sleeve like you;" and the childish fingers traced 
 the outline of the sergeant's chevrons. 
 
 "I hope, dear, that you shall do all that, soon," 
 said Mrs. Lysle; "but first you must win those 
 stripes, my boy, and if you win them as the ser- 
 geant did, mother shall be very proud of you."
 
 206 THE MOCCASIN MAKER 
 
 At which, the said sergeant hastily set the boy 
 down, and, with confusion written all over his 
 strong young face, made some excuse to disap- 
 pear, for no man in the world is as shy or modest 
 about his deeds of valor as is a North- West 
 "Mounted." 
 
 "Won't you tell me, mother, how Sergeant 
 Black got those stripes on his sleeve?" begged 
 the boy. 
 
 "Perhaps to-night, son, when you are in bed — 
 just before mother says good-night — we'll see. 
 But look ! there is the city, fading, fading." Then 
 after a short silence: "There, Graham, it has 
 gone." 
 
 "But isn't that it 'w^ay over there, mother?" 
 persisted the boy. "I see the sun shining on the 
 roofs." 
 
 Mrs. Lysle shook her head. " No, dearie; that 
 is the snow on the mountain peaks. The city has 
 — gone." 
 
 But far into the twilight she yet stood watch- 
 ing the purple sea, the dove-gray coast. Her 
 world was with her — the man she had chosen for 
 her life partner, and the little boy that belonged 
 to them both — but there are times even in the 
 life of a wife and mother when her soul rebels 
 at cutting herself off from her womenkind, and 
 all that environment of social life among women 
 means, even if the act itself is voluntary on her 
 part. It was a relief, then, from her rather som-
 
 MOTHER O' THE MEN 207 
 
 bre musing at the ship's rail, when the major 
 lightly placed both hands on her shoulders and 
 said, "Grahamie has toddled off to the stateroom. 
 The sea air is weighting down his eyelids." 
 
 "Sea air?" laughed Mrs. Lysle. "Don't you 
 believe it, Horace. The young monkey has been 
 just scampering about the deck with the men 
 until his little legs are tired out. I'm half afraid 
 our 'Mounted' boys bid fair to spoil him. I'll 
 go to him, for I promised him a story to-night." 
 
 "Which you would rather perish than not tell 
 him, if you promised," smiled the major. "You 
 govern that boy the same way I do my men, eh, 
 dear?" 
 
 "It's the only way to govern boys or soldiers," 
 she laughed back from the head of the companion 
 way. "Then both boy and soldier will keep their 
 promises to you." 
 
 The major watched her go below, then said to 
 himself, "She's right — she's always right. She 
 w^as right to come north, and bring him, too. But 
 I am a coward, for I daren't tell her she'll have 
 to part from him, or from me, some day. He will 
 have to be sent to the front again ; he can't grow 
 up unlearned, untaught, and there are no schools 
 in our Arctic world, and she must go with him, 
 or stay with me; but I can't tell her. Yes, I'm 
 a coward." But Major Lysle was the only per- 
 son in all the world who would have thought or 
 said so.
 
 208 THE MOCCASIN MAKER 
 
 "And will you tell me how Sergeant Black won 
 his stripes, mother, before I go to sleep?" begged 
 Graham. 
 
 " Yes, little ' North- West,' " she replied, using 
 the pet name the men in barracks frequently 
 called the child. "It's just a wee story of one 
 man fighting it out alone — just alone, single- 
 handed — with no reinforcements but his own 
 courage, his own self-reliance." 
 
 "That's what father says, isn't it, mother, to 
 just do things yourself?" asked the boy. 
 
 "That's it, dear, and that is what Sergeant 
 Black did. He was only corporal then, and he 
 was dispatched from headquarters to arrest some 
 desperate horse thieves who were trying to drive 
 a magnificent bunch of animals across the boun- 
 dary line into the United States, and then sell 
 them. These men were breaking two laws. They 
 had not only stolen the horses, but were trying to 
 evade the American Customs. Your father always 
 called them 'The Rapparees,' for they were Irish, 
 and fighters, and known from the Red River to 
 the Rockies as plunderers and desperadoes. There 
 was some trouble to the north at the same time; 
 barracks was pretty well thinned; not a man 
 could be spared to help him. But when Corporal 
 Black got his instructions and listened to the 
 commanding officer say, 'If that detachment 
 returns from the Qu'Appelle Valley within 
 twenty-four hours, I'll order them out to assist
 
 MOTHER O' THE MEN 209 
 
 you, corporal,' the plucky little soldier just stood 
 erect, clicked his heels together, saluted, and re- 
 plied, 'I can do it alone, sir.' 
 
 " 'I notice you don't say you think you can do 
 it alone,' remarked the officer dryly. He was a 
 lenient man and often conversed with his men. 
 
 " 'It is not my place to think, sir. I've just got 
 to do/ replied the corporal, and saluting again, 
 he was gone. 
 
 "All that night he galloped up the prairie trail 
 on the track of the thieves, and just before day- 
 break he sighted them, entrenched in a coulee, 
 where their campfires made no glow, and the 
 neighing horses could not be heard. There were 
 six men all told, busying themselves getting 
 breakfast and staking the animals preparatory to 
 hiding through the day hours, and getting across 
 the boundary line the next night. Both men and 
 beasts were wearied with the long journey, but 
 Corporal Black is the sort of man that never 
 wearies in either brain or body. He never hesi- 
 tated a second. Jerking his rat-skin cap down, 
 covering his face as much as possible, he rode 
 silently around to the south of the encampment, 
 clutched a revolver in each hand, and rode within 
 earshot, then said four words : 
 
 " 'Stand, or I fire !' If a cyclone had swooped 
 down on them, the thieves could not have been 
 more astounded. But they stood, and stood yards 
 away from their own guns. Then they demanded 
 to know who he was, for of course they thought 
 14
 
 210 THE MOCCASIN MAKER 
 
 him a thief like themselveSj probably following 
 them to capture their spoil. Then Corporal Black 
 unbuttoned his great-coat and flung it wide open, 
 displaying the brilliant scarlet tunic of our own 
 dear Mounted Police. They needed no other 
 reply. At the point of his revolver he ordered 
 them to unstake the horses. Then not one man 
 was allowed to mount, but, breakfastless and 
 frenzied, they were compelled to walk before him, 
 driving the stolen animals ahead, mile upon mile, 
 league after league. 
 
 "Father says it was a strange-looking proces- 
 sion that trudged into barracks. Twenty beau- 
 tiful, spirited horses, six hangdog-looking thieves, 
 with a single exhausted horse in the rear, on 
 which was mounted an alert, keen-eyed and very 
 hungry young soldier who wore a scarlet tunic 
 and buffalo-head buttons. The next day Corporal 
 Black had another stripe on his sleeve."* 
 
 Her voice ceased, and she looked down at her 
 son. The child lay for a moment, wide-eyed and 
 tense. Then some indescribable quality seemed 
 to make him momentarily too large, too tall, for 
 the narrow ship's berth. Then: 
 
 "And he fought it out alone, mother, just alone 
 — single-handed ?" 
 
 " Yes, Grahamie," she said, softly. 
 
 * The foregoing story is an actual occurrence. The 
 author had the honor of knowing personally the North- 
 West Mounted Policeman who achieved his rank through 
 this action.
 
 MOTHER O' THE MEN 211 
 
 "Fought alone!" he said almost to himself. 
 Then aloud : "Thank you, mother, for telling me 
 that story. Perhaps some day I'll have to fight 
 it out alone, and when I do, I'll try to remember 
 Sergeant Black. Good-night, mother." 
 
 "Good-night, my boy." 
 
 The long, long winter was doing its worst, and 
 that was unspeakable in its dreariness and its 
 misery. The "Fort" was just about completed 
 before things froze up — narrow, small quarters 
 constructed of rough logs, surrounded by a stock- 
 ade — but above its roof the Union Jack floated, 
 and beneath it flashed the scarlet tunics, the buf- 
 falo-head buttons, the clanking spurs of as brave 
 a band of men, "queened over" by as courageous 
 a woman, as ever Gibraltar or the Throne Room 
 knew. 
 
 As time went on the major's wife began to find 
 herself "Mother o' the Men" (as an old Klon- 
 dyker named her), as well as of her own boy. 
 Those blizzard-blown, snow-hardened, ice-tough- 
 ened soldiers went to her for everything — sym- 
 pathy, assistance, advice — for in that lonely out- 
 post military lines were less strictly drawn, and 
 she could oftentimes do for the men what would 
 be considered amazingly unofiicial, were those 
 little humane kindnesses done in barracks at 
 Regina or Macleod or Calgary. She nursed the 
 men through every illness, preparing the food
 
 212 THE MOCCASIN MAKER 
 
 herself for the invalids. She attended to many 
 a frozen face and foot and finger. She smoothed 
 out their differences, inspirited them when they 
 i^rew discouraged, talked to them of their own 
 people, so that their home ties should not be 
 entirely severed because they could write letters 
 or receive them but once a year. But there were 
 days when the sight of a woman's face would 
 have been a glimpse of paradise to her, days when 
 she almost wildly regretted her boy had not been 
 a girl — just a little sweet- voiced girl, a thing of 
 her own sex and kind. But it always seemed at 
 these moments that Grahamie would providenti- 
 ally rush in to her with some glad story of sport 
 or adventure, and she would snatch him tightly 
 in her arms and saj, "No, no, boy of mine, I don't 
 want even a girlie, if I may only keep you." And 
 ouce when her thoughts had been more than usu- 
 ally traitorous in wishing he had been a girl, the 
 child seemed to divine some idea of her struggle ; 
 for a moment his firm little fingers caught her 
 hand encouragingly, and he said in a whisper, 
 "Are you fighting it out alone, mother — just 
 single-handed?" 
 
 "Just single-handed, dearest," she replied. 
 
 Then he scampered away, but paused to call 
 back gravely, "Remember Sergeant Black, 
 mother." 
 
 "Yes, Grahamie, I'll try to," she replied 
 ])rightly. At that moment he was the lesser 
 child of the two.
 
 MOTHER O' THE MEN 213 
 
 And so the winter crept slowly on, uud tlio 
 brief, brilliant summer flitted in, then out, like 
 a golden dream. The second snows were upon 
 the little fort, the second Christmas, the second 
 long, long weeks and months of the new year. An 
 unspoken horror was staring them all in the face : 
 navigation did not open when expected, and sup- 
 plies were running low, pitifully low. The smoked 
 and dried meats, the canned things, flour, sealed 
 lard, oatmeal, hard-tack, dried fruits — every- 
 thing was slowly but inevitably giving out day 
 upon day. Before and behind them stretched 
 hummocks of trailless snow. Not an Indian, not 
 a dog train, not even a wild animal, had set foot 
 in that waste for weeks. In early March the 
 major's wife had hidden a single package of gela- 
 tine, a single tin of dried beef, and a single half 
 pound of cornstarch. "If sickness comes to my 
 boys" (she did not say boy), "I shall at least 
 have saved these," she told herself, in justifica- 
 tion of her act. " A sick man cannot live on 
 beans." But now they were down to beans — just 
 beans and lard boiled together. Then a day 
 dawned when there was not even a spoonful of 
 lard left. " Beans straight !" — it was the death 
 knell, for beans straight — beans without grease 
 — kill the strongest man in a brief span of days. 
 Oh, that the ice bridges would melt, the seas 
 open, the ships come! 
 
 But that night the men at mess had beans with 
 unlimited grease, its peculiar flavor peppered and
 
 214 THE MOCCASIN MAKER 
 
 spiced out of it. Life, life was to be theirs even 
 yet! What had renewed it? 
 
 But one of the men had caught something on 
 his fork and extracted it from the food on his 
 plate. It was an overlooked wick. The major's 
 wife had begun to boil up the tallow candles.* 
 But the cheer that shook that rough log roof 
 came right from hearts that blessed her, and 
 brought her to the door of the men's mess-room. 
 The men were on their feet instantly. "A light 
 has broken upon us, or rather ivithin us, Mrs. 
 Lysle!" cried a self-selected spokesman. 
 
 "Illuminating, isn't it, boys?'' She laughed, 
 then turned away, for the cheers and tears were 
 very close together. 
 
 Then one day when even starving stomachs 
 almost revolted at the continued coarse mixture, 
 a ribbon of blue proclaimed the open sea, and 
 into those waters swept the longed-for ship. Yet, 
 strangely enough, that night the "Mother o' the 
 Men" wept a storm of tears, the only tears she 
 had yielded to in those long five years. For 
 with its blessing of food the ship had her hold 
 bursting with liquors and wines, the hideous com- 
 merce that invades the pioneer places of the 
 earth. Should the already weakened, ill-fed and 
 scurvy-threatened garrison break into those sup- 
 plies, all the labor and patience and mothering of 
 this courageous woman would be useless, for 
 after a bean diet in the Northern latitudes, 
 
 ♦Fact.
 
 MOTHER O' THE MEN 215 
 
 whiskey is deadly to brain and body, and the 
 victim maddens or dies. 
 
 "You are crying, mother, and the ship here at 
 last!" said Grahamie's voice at her shoulder. 
 "Crying when we are all so happy." 
 
 "Mother is a little upset, dear. You must try 
 to forget you ever saw her eyes wet." 
 
 "I'll forget," said the bo}^ with a finality she 
 could not question. "The ship is so full of good 
 things, mother. We'll think of that, and — for- 
 get, won't we?" he added. 
 
 "AZZ the things in the ship are not good, 
 Grahamie, boy. If they were, mother would not 
 cry," she said. 
 
 "I see," he said, but stole from her side with a 
 strained, puzzled look in his 3'oung eyes. 
 
 Outside he was met by a laughing, joyous dozen 
 of men. One swung the child to his shoulder, 
 shouting, "Hurrah, little 'North- West' ! Hurrah ! 
 we are all coming to pay tribute to your mother. 
 Look at the dainties we have got for her from the 
 ship!" 
 
 "I'm afraid you can't see mother just now," 
 said the boy. "Mother is a little upset. You see, 
 the ship is so full of good things — but then, all 
 the things in the ship are not good. If they were, 
 mother would not cry." In the last words he 
 unconsciously imitated his mother's voice. 
 
 A profound silence enveloped the men. Then 
 one spoke. "She'll never have cause to cry about 
 anything / do, boys."
 
 216 THE MOCCASIN MAKER 
 
 "Nor I!" "Nor I!" "Nor I!'' rang out voice 
 after voice. 
 
 "Run back, you blessed little 'North-West,' and 
 tell mother not to be scared for the boys. We'll 
 stand by her to a man. She'll never regret that 
 ship's coming in," said the gallant soldier, slip- 
 ping the boy to the ground. And to the credit of 
 the men who wore buffalo-head buttons, she never 
 did. 
 
 And in all hcv Yukon years the major's wife 
 had but one more heartache. That agonizing 
 winter had taught her many things, but the bit- 
 terest knowledge to come to her was the fact that 
 her boy must be sent "to the front." To be sure, 
 he was growing up the pet of all the police; he 
 was becoming manlier, sturdier, more self-reliant 
 every day. But education he must have, and 
 another winter of such deprivation and horror 
 he was too young, too tender, to endure. It was 
 then that the battle arose in her heart. The boy 
 was to be sent to college. Was it her place to 
 accompany him to the distant South-east, to live 
 by herself alone in the college town, just to be 
 near him and watch over his young life, or was it 
 here with her pioneer soldier husband, and his 
 little isolated garrison of "boys" whom she had 
 mothered for two years? 
 
 The inevitable day came when she had to shut 
 her teeth and watch Grahamie go aboard the 
 southward-bound vessel alone, in the care of a 
 policeman who was returning on sick leave
 
 MOTHER O' THE MEN 217 
 
 — to watch him stand at the rail, his little face 
 growing dimmer and more shadowy as the sea 
 widened between them — watch him through tear- 
 less, courageous eyes, then turn away with the 
 hopelessness of knowing that for one entire end- 
 less year she must wait for word of his arrival.* 
 But his last brave good-bye words rang through 
 her ears every day of that eternal year: "We'll 
 remember Sergeant Black, won't we, mother? 
 And we'll each fight it out alone, single-handed, 
 and maybe thej^'ll give us a chevron for our 
 sleeves when it's over." 
 
 But that night when the barracks was wrapped 
 in gloom over the loss of its boy chum, the sur- 
 geon appeared in the men's quarters. "Hello, 
 boys !" he said, none too cheerfully. "Dull doings, 
 I say. I'm busy enough, though, keeping an eye 
 on Madam, the major's lady. She's so deadly 
 quiet, so self-controlled, I'm just a little afraid. 
 I wdsh something would happen to — well, make 
 her less calm." 
 
 ^'^ril ^happen,' doctor," chirped up a genial- 
 looking young chap named O'Keefe. "I'll get 
 sick and threaten to die. You say it's serious; 
 she'll be all interest and medicine spoons, and 
 making me jelly inside an hour." 
 
 The surgeon eyed him sternly, then : "O'Keefe," 
 he said, "you're the cleverest man I ever came 
 across in the force, and I've been in it eleven 
 
 * Fact.
 
 218 THE MOCOASIN MAKER 
 
 years. But, man alive ! what have you been doing 
 to yourself? Overwork, no food — why, man, 
 you're sick ; look as if you had fever and a touch 
 of pneumonia. You're a very sick man. Go to 
 bed at once — at once, I say !'' 
 
 O'Keefe looked the surgeon in the eye, winked 
 meaningly, and O'Keefe turned in, although it 
 was but early afternoon. At six o'clock an orderly 
 stood at the door of the major's quarters. Mrs. 
 Lysle was standing on the steps, her eyes fixed 
 on the far horizon across which a ship had melted 
 away. 
 
 "Beg pardon, madam," said the orderly, salut- 
 ing, "but young O'Keefe is very ill. We have had 
 the surgeon, but the — the — pain's getting worse. 
 He's just yelling with agony.'' 
 
 "I'll go at once, orderly. I should have been 
 told before," she replied ; and burying her own 
 heartache, she hurried to the men's quarters. Her 
 anxious eyes sought the surgeon's. "Oh, doctor !" 
 she said, "this poor fellow must be looked after. 
 What can I do to help?'' 
 
 "Everything, Mrs. Lysle," grutfed the surgeon 
 with a professional air. "He is very ill. He must 
 be kept wrapped in hot linseed poultices and — " 
 
 "Oh, I say, doctor," remonstrated poor O'Keefe, 
 "I'm not that bad." 
 
 "You're a very sick man," scowled the surgeon. 
 "Now, Mrs. Lysle has graciously offered to help 
 nurse you. She'll see that you have hot fomen-
 
 MOTHER O' THE MEN 219 
 
 tations every half hour. I'll drop iu twice a day 
 to see how you are getting along." And with that 
 miserable prospect before him, poor O'Keefe 
 watched the surgeon disappear. 
 
 "I simply had to order those half-hour fomen- 
 tations, old man,'- apologized the surgeon that 
 night. "You see, she must be kept busy — just 
 kept at it every minute we can make her do so. 
 Do you think you can stand it?" 
 
 "Of course I can," fumed the victim. "But 
 for goodness' sake, don't put me on sick rations ! 
 I'll die, sure, if you do." 
 
 "I've ordered you the best the commissariat 
 ])oasts — heaps of meat, butter, even eggs, my boy. 
 Think of it — eggs: — you lucky young Turk!" 
 laughed the surgeon. 
 
 Then followed nights and days of torture. The 
 "boys" would line up to the "sick-room" four 
 times daily, and blandly ask how he was. 
 
 "How am I?" young O'Keefe would bellow. 
 "How aw I? I'm well and strong enough to brain 
 every one of you fellows, surgeon included, when 
 I get out of this I" 
 
 "But when are you going to get out? When 
 will you be out of danger?'' they would chuckle, 
 
 "Just when I see that haunted look go out of 
 her eyes, and not till then I" he would roar. 
 
 And he kept his word. He was really weak 
 when he got up, and pretended to be w^eaker, but 
 the lines of acute self-control had left Mrs. Lvsle's
 
 220 THE MOCCASIN MAKER 
 
 face, the suffering had gone from her eyes, the 
 day the noble O'Keefe took his first solid meal in 
 her presence. 
 
 Even the major never discovered that worthy 
 bit of deception. But a year later, when the mail 
 went out, the surgeon sent the entire story to 
 Graham, who, in writing to his mother the fol- 
 lowing year, perplexed her greatly by saying : 
 
 ". . . . But there are three men in the force 
 I love better than anyone in the world except you, 
 mother. The first, of course, is father, the others, 
 Sergeant Black and Private O'Keefe." 
 
 "Why O'Keefe?" she asked herself. 
 
 But loval little " North-West " never told her.
 
 The Nest Builder 
 
 " Well ! if some women aren't born jnst to 
 laugh !" remarked the station agent's wife. "Have 
 you seen that round-faced woman in the waiting- 
 room?" 
 
 " No," replied the agent. " I've been too busy ; 
 I've had to help unload freight. I heard some 
 children in there, though ; they were playing and 
 laughing to beat the band." 
 
 "ISfine of them, John! iSline of them, and the 
 oldest just twelve !" gasped his wife. "Why, I'd 
 be crazy if I were in her place. She's come all 
 the way from Grey or Bruce in Ontario — I forget 
 which — with not a soul to help her with that 
 flock. Three of them are almost babies. The 
 smallest one is a darling — just sits on the bench 
 in there and dimples and gurgles and grins all 
 the time." 
 
 " Hasn't she got a husband?" asked John. 
 
 " Of course," asserted his wife. " But that's 
 just the problem now, or rather he's the problem. 
 He came to Manitoba a year ago, and was work- 
 ing right here in this town. He doesn't seem to 
 have had much luck, and left last week for some 
 
 221
 
 222 THE MOCCASIN MAKER 
 
 ranch away back of Brandon, she now finds out ; 
 she must have crossed his letter as she came out. 
 She expected to find him here, and now she is 
 in that waiting-room with nine children, no 
 money to go further, or to go to a hotel even, 
 and she's — well, she's just good-natured and smil- 
 ing, and not a bit worried. As I say, some women 
 are born just to laugh." 
 
 "Have they anything to eat?" asked the agent, 
 anxiously. 
 
 " Stacks of it — a huge hamper. But I took the 
 children what milk we had, and made her take a 
 cup of good hot tea. She icould pay me, however, 
 I couldn't stop her. But I noticed she has mighty 
 little change in her purse, and she said she had no 
 money, and said it with a round, untroubled, 
 smiling face." The agent's wife spoke the last 
 words almost with envy. 
 
 " I'll try and locate the husband," said the 
 agent. 
 
 " Yes, she'll get his address to-night, she says," 
 explained the wife ; " but no one knows when he 
 will get here. Most likely he's twenty miles away 
 from Brandon, and they will have to send out 
 for him." 
 
 Which eventually proved to be the case; and 
 three days elapsed before the husband and father 
 was able to reach the little border town where his 
 wife and ample family had been installed as resi- 
 dents of the general Avaiting-room of a small, 
 scantily-equipped station. No beds, no washing
 
 THE NEST BUILDER 223 
 
 conveniences, no table, no chairs; just the wall 
 seats, with a roof above them and the pump water 
 at the end of the platform to drink from and 
 dabble in. The distressed man arrived, harassed 
 and anxious, only to be met by a round-faced, 
 laughing wife and nine round-faced, laughing- 
 children, who all made sport of their "camping" 
 experience, and assured him they could have 
 "stood it" a little longer, if need be. 
 
 But they slept in beds that night — glorious, 
 feathery beds, that were in reality but solid hemp 
 mattresses — in the cheapest lodging-house in 
 town. 
 
 Then began the home-building. Henderson had 
 secured a quarter section of land and made two 
 payments on it when his wife and children 
 arrived, with all their " settlers' effects " in a 
 freight car, which, truth to tell, were meagre 
 enough. They had never really owned a home 
 in the East, and when, with saving and selling, 
 she managed to follow her husband into the pro- 
 mising world of Manitoba, she determined to 
 possess a home, no matter how crude, how small, 
 how remote. So Henderson hired horses and 
 " teamed " out sufficient lumber and tar-paper 
 to erect a shack which measured exactly eighteen 
 by twelve feet, then sodded the roof in true Mani- 
 toba style, and into this cramped abode Mrs. 
 Henderson stowed her household goods and nine 
 small children. With the stove, table, chairs, 
 tubs and trunks, there was room for but one bed
 
 224 THE MOCCASIN MAKER 
 
 to be put up. Poor, unresourceful Henderson 
 surveyed the crowded shack helplessly, but that 
 round-faced, smiling wife of his was not a par- 
 ticle discouraged. " We'll just build in two sets 
 of bunks, on each end of the house," she laughed. 
 " The children won't mind sleeping on ^ shelves,' 
 for the bread-winners must have the bed." 
 
 So they economized space with a dozen such 
 little plans, and all through the unpacking and 
 settling and arranging, she would say every hour 
 or two, " Oh, it's a little crowded and stuffy, but 
 it's ours — it's Jiome/' until Henderson and the 
 children caught something of her inspiration, and 
 the sod-roof shack became " home " in the sweet- 
 est sense of the word. 
 
 There are some people who " make " time for 
 everything, and this remarkable mother was one. 
 That winter she baked bread for every English 
 bachelor ranchman within ten miles. She did 
 their washing and ironing, and never neglected 
 her own, either. She knitted socks for them, and 
 made and sold quantities of Saskatoon berry 
 jam. When spring came she had over fifty dol- 
 lars of her own, with which she promptly bought 
 a cow. Then late in March they made a small 
 first payment on a team of horses, and " broke 
 land " for the first time, plowing and seeding a 
 few acres of virgin prairie and getting a start. 
 
 But her quaintest invention to utilize every 
 resource possible was a novel scheme for chicken- 
 raising. One morning the children came in
 
 THE NEST BUILDER 225 
 
 greatly excited over finding a wild duck's nest 
 in the nearby " slouch." Mrs. Henderson told 
 them to be very careful not to frighten the bird, 
 but to go back and search every foot of the grassy 
 edges and try to discover other nests. They suc- 
 ceeded in finding three. That day a neighbor- 
 ing English rancher, driving past on his way 
 to Brandon, twenty miles distant, called out, 
 " Want anything from town, Mrs. Henderson?" 
 
 " Eggs, just eggs, if you will bring them, like 
 a good boy," she answered, running out to the 
 trail to meet him. 
 
 " Why, you are luxurious to-day, and eggs at 
 fifty cents a dozen," he exclaimed. 
 
 " Never mind," she replied, " they're not nearly 
 so luxurious as chickens. You just bring me a 
 dozen and a half. Pay any price, but be sure 
 they are fresh, new laid, right off the nest. Now 
 just insist on that, or we shall quarrel." And 
 with a menacing shake of a forefinger and a cus- 
 tomary laugh, she handed him a precious bank 
 note to pay for the treasures. 
 
 The next day Mrs. Henderson adroitly substi- 
 tuted hen's eggs for the wild ducks' own, and the 
 shy, pretty water fowls, returning from their 
 morning's swim, never discovered the fraud.* 
 
 " Six eggs under three sitters — eighteen chicks, 
 if we're lucky enough to have secured fertile 
 eggs," mused Mrs. Henderson. " Oh, well, we'll 
 see." And they did see. They saw exactly 
 
 * Fact. 
 15
 
 226 THE MOCCASIN MAKER 
 
 eighteen fluffy, peeping chicks, whose timid lit- 
 tle mothers could not understand why their 
 broods disappeared one by one from the long, wet 
 grasses surrounding the nest. But in a warm 
 canton flannel lined basket near the Henderson's 
 stove the young arrivals chirped and picked at 
 warm meal as sturdily as if hatched in a coop 
 by a commonplace barnyard " Biddy." And every 
 one of those chicks lived and grew and fattened 
 into a splendid flock, and the following spring 
 they began sitting on their own eggs. But the 
 good-hearted woman, in relating the story, would 
 always say that she felt like a thief and a robber 
 whenever she thought of that shy, harmless little 
 wild duck who never had the satisfaction of see- 
 ing her brood swim in the " slough." 
 
 All this happened more than twenty years ago, 
 yet when I met Mrs. Henderson last autumn, as 
 she was journeying to Prince Albert to visit a 
 married daughter, her wonderfully youthful face 
 was as round and smiling as if she had never bat- 
 tled through the years in a hand-to-hand fight to 
 secure a home in the pioneer days of Manitoba. 
 She is well off now, and lives no more in the 
 twelve-by-eighteen-foot bunk-house, but when I 
 asked her how she accomplished so much, she 
 replied, " I just jollied things along, and laughed 
 over the hard places. It makes them easier 
 then." 
 
 So perhaps the station agent's wife was really 
 right, after all, when she remarked that " some 
 women were just born to laugh."
 
 The Tenas Klootchman* 
 
 This story came to me from the lips of Maarda 
 herself. It was hard to realize, while looking 
 at her placid and happy face, that Maarda had 
 ever been a mother of sorrows, but the healing 
 of a wounded heart oftentimes leaves a light like 
 that of a benediction on a receptive face, and 
 Maarda's countenance held something greater 
 than beauty, something more like lovableness, 
 than any other quality. 
 
 We sat together on the deck of the little 
 steamer throughout the long violet twilight, that 
 seems loath to leave the channels and rocky 
 of the Upper Pacific in June time. We had 
 dropped easily into conversation, for nothing so 
 readily helps one to an introduction as does the 
 friendly atmosphere of the extreme West, and I 
 had paved the way by greeting her in the 
 Chinook, to which she responded with a sincere 
 and friendly handclasp. 
 
 Dinner on the small coast-wise steamers is 
 almost a function. It is the turning-point of the 
 
 * In Chinook language " Tenas Klootchman " means 
 " girl baby." 
 
 227
 
 228 THE MOCCASIN MAKER 
 
 day, and is served English fashion, in the even- 
 ing. The passengers " dress " a little for it, eat 
 the meal leisurely and with relish. People who 
 perhaps have exchanged no conversation during 
 the day, now relax, and fraternize with their fel- 
 low men and women. 
 
 I purposely secured a seat at the dining-table 
 beside Maarda. Even she had gone through a 
 simple " dressing " for dinner, having smoothed 
 her satiny black hair, knotted a brilliant silk 
 handkerchief about her throat, and laid aside 
 her large, heavy plaid shawl, revealing a fine 
 delaine gown of green, bordered with two flat 
 rows of black silk velvet ribbon. That silk velvet 
 ribbon, and the fashion in which it was applied, 
 would have bespoken her nationality, even had 
 her dark copper-colored face failed to do so. 
 
 The average Indian woman adores silk and 
 velvet, and will have none of cotton, and these 
 decorations must be in symmetrical rows, not 
 designs. She holds that the fabric is in itself 
 excellent enough. Why twist it and cut it into 
 figures that would only make it less lovely? 
 
 We chatted a little during dinner. Maarda 
 told me that she and her husband lived at the 
 Squamish River, some thirty-five miles north of 
 Vancouver City, but when I asked if they had 
 any children, she did not reply, but almost in- 
 stantly called my attention to a passing vessel 
 seen through the porthole. I took the hint, and 
 said no more of family matters, but talked of the
 
 THE TENAS KLOOTCHMAN 229 
 
 fishing and the prospects of a good sockeye run 
 this season. 
 
 Afterwards, however, while I stood alone on 
 deck watching the sun set over the rim of the 
 Pacific, I felt a feathery touch on my arm. I 
 turned to see Maarda, once more enveloped in 
 her shawl, and holding two deck stools. She 
 beckoned with a quick uplift of her chin, and 
 said, "We'll sit together here, with no one about 
 us, and I'll tell you of the child." And this was 
 her story : 
 
 She was the most beautiful little Tenas 
 Klootchman a mother could wish for, bright, 
 laughing, pretty as a spring flower, but — just as 
 frail. Such tiny hands, such buds of feet! One 
 felt that they must never take her out of her 
 cradle basket for fear that, like a flower stem, she 
 would snap asunder and her little head droop 
 like a blossom. 
 
 But Maarda's skilful fingers had woven and 
 plaited and colored the daintiest cradle basket 
 in the entire river district for this little wood- 
 land daughter. She had fished long and late 
 with her husband, so that the canner's money 
 would purchase silk " blankets " to enwrap her 
 treasure; she had beaded cradle bands to strap 
 the wee body securely in its cosy resting-nest. 
 Ah, it was such a basket, fit for an English prin- 
 cess to sleep in ! Everything about it was fine, 
 soft, delicate, and everything born of her mother- 
 love.
 
 230 THE MOCCASIN MAKER 
 
 So, for weeks, for even months, the little 
 Tenas Klootchman laughed and smiled, waked 
 and slept, dreamed and dimpled in her pretty 
 playhouse. Then one day, in the hot, dry sum- 
 mer, there was no smile. The dimples did not 
 play. The little flower paled, the small face grew 
 smaller, the tiny hands tinier; and one morning, 
 when the birds awoke in the forests of the Squa- 
 mish, the eyes of the little Tenas Klootchman 
 remained closed. 
 
 They put her to sleep under the giant cedars, 
 the lulling, singing firs, the whispering pines 
 that must now be her lullaby, instead of her 
 mother's voice crooning the child-songs of the 
 Pacific, that tell of baby foxes and gamboling 
 baby wolves and bright-eyed baby birds. Nothing 
 remained to Maarda but an empty little cradle 
 basket, but smoothly-folded silken "blankets," 
 but disused beaded bands. Often at nightfall she 
 would stand alone, and watch the sun dip into 
 the far waters, leaving the world as gray and 
 colorless as her own life; she would outstretch 
 her arms — pitifully empty arms — towards the 
 west, and beneath her voice again croon the lulla- 
 bies of the Pacific, telling of the baby foxes, the 
 soft, furry baby wolves, and the little downy 
 fledglings in the nests. Once in an agony of lone- 
 liness she sang these things aloud, but her hus- 
 band heard her, and his face turned gray and 
 drawn, and her soul told her she must not be 
 heard again singing these things aloud.
 
 THE TENAS KLOOTCHMAN 231 
 
 And one evening a little steamer came into 
 harbor. Many Indians came ashore from it, as 
 the fishing season had begun. Among others was 
 a young woman over whose face the finger of ill- 
 ness had traced shadows and lines of suffering. 
 In her arms she held a baby, a beautiful, chubby, 
 round-faced, healthy child that seemed too heavy 
 for her wasted form to support. She looked 
 about her wistfully, evidently seeking a face that 
 was not there, and as the steamer pulled out of 
 the harbor, she sat down weakly on the wharf, 
 laid the child across her lap, and buried her face 
 in her hands. Maarda touched her shoulder. 
 
 " Who do you look for?" she asked. 
 
 " For my brother Luke ' Alaska,' " replied the 
 woman. "I am ill, my husband is dead, my 
 brother will take care of me; he's a good man." 
 
 " Luke ' Alaska,' " said Maarda. What had she 
 heard of Luke "Alaska?" Why, of course, he 
 was one of the men her own husband had taken 
 a hundred miles up the coast as axeman on a sur- 
 veying party, but she dared not tell this sick 
 woman. She only said: "You had better come 
 with me. My husband is away, but in a day or 
 two he will be able to get news to your brother. 
 I'll take care of you till they come." 
 
 The woman arose gratefully, then swayed 
 unsteadily under the weight of the child. 
 Maarda's arms were flung out, yearningly, long- 
 ingly, towards the baby. 
 
 " Where is your cradle basket to carry him
 
 232 THE MOCCASIN MAKER 
 
 in?" she asked, looking about among the boxes 
 and bales of merchandise the steamer had left 
 on the wharf. 
 
 " I have no cradle basket. I was too weak to 
 make one, too poor to buy one. I have nothing/^ 
 said the woman. 
 
 " Then let me carry him," said Maarda. "It's 
 quite a walk to my place ; he's too heavy for you." 
 
 The woman yielded the child gratefully, say- 
 ing, "It's not a boy, but a Tenas Klootchman." 
 
 Maarda could hardly believe her senses. That 
 splendid, sturdy, plump, big baby a Tenas 
 Klootchman! For a moment her heart surged 
 with bitterness. Why had her own little girl been 
 so frail, so flower-like? But with the touch of that 
 warm baby body, the bitterness faded. She 
 walked slowly, fitting her steps to those of the 
 sick woman, and jealously lengthening the time 
 wherein she could hold and hug the baby in her 
 yearning arms. 
 
 The woman was almost exhausted when they 
 reached Maarda's home, but strong tea and hot, 
 wholesome food revived her; but fever burned 
 brightly in her cheeks and eyes. The woman 
 was very ill, extremely ill. Maarda said, "You 
 must go to bed, and as soon as you are there, I 
 will take the canoe and go for a doctor. It is two 
 ■or three miles, but you stay resting, and I'll bring 
 liim. We will put the Tenas Klootchman beside 
 you in — " she hesitated. Her glance travelled up 
 to the wall above, where a beautiful empty cradle
 
 THE TENAS KLOOTCHMAN 233 
 
 basket hung, with folded silken "blankets" and 
 disused beaded bands. 
 
 The woman's gaze followed hers, a light of 
 beautiful understanding pierced the fe^er glare 
 of her eyes, she stretched out her hot hmd pro- 
 testingly, and said, "Don't put her Li — that. 
 Keep that, it is yours. She is used to being rolled 
 only in my shawl." 
 
 But Maarda had already lifted the basket 
 down, and was tenderly arranging the wrappings. 
 Suddenly her hands halted, she seemed to see a 
 wee flower face looking up to her like the blossom 
 of a russet-brown pansy. She turned abruptly, 
 and, going to the door, looked out speechlessly 
 on the stretch of sea and sky glimmering through 
 the tree trunks. 
 
 For a time she stood. Then across the silence 
 broke the little murmuring sound of the baby half 
 crooning, half crying, indoors, the little cradle- 
 less baby that, homeless, had entered her home. 
 Maarda returned, and, lifting the basket, again 
 arranged the wrappings. "The Tenas Klootch- 
 man shall have this cradle," she said, gently. The 
 sick woman turned her face to the wall and 
 sobbed. 
 
 It was growing dark when Maarda left her 
 guests, and entered her canoe on the quest for a 
 doctor. The clouds hung low, and a fine, slant- 
 ing rain fell, from which she protected herself 
 as best she could with a shawl about her shoul- 
 ders, crossed in front, with each end tucked into
 
 234 THE MOCCASIN MAKER 
 
 her belt beneath her arms — Indian-fashion. 
 Around rocks and boulders, headlands and crags, 
 she paddled, her little craft riding the waves like 
 a cork, but pitching and plunging with every 
 stroke. By and by the wind veered, and blew 
 head on, and now and again she shipped water; 
 her skirts began dragging heavily about her wet 
 ankles, and her moccasins were drenched. The 
 wind increased, and she discarded her shawl to 
 afford greater freedom to her arm-play. The rain 
 drove and slanted across her shoulders and head, 
 and her thick hair was dripping with sea mois- 
 ture and the downpour. 
 
 Sometimes she thought of beaching the canoe 
 and seeking shelter until daylight. Then she again 
 saw those fever-haunted eyes of the stranger 
 who was within her gates, again heard the half 
 wail of the Tenas Klootchman in her own baby's 
 cradle basket, and at the sound she turned her 
 back on the possible safety of shelter, and forged 
 ahead. 
 
 It was a wearied woman who finally knocked 
 at the doctor's door and bade him hasten. But 
 his strong man's arm found the return journey 
 comparatively easy paddling. The wind helped 
 him, and Maarda also plied her bow paddle, fre- 
 quently urging him to hasten. 
 
 It was dawn when they entered her home. 
 The sick woman moaned, and the child fretted 
 for food. The doctor bent above his patient, 
 shaking his head ruefully as Maarda built the
 
 THE TENAS KLOOTCHMAN 235 
 
 fire, and attended to the child's needs before she 
 gave thought to changing her drenched garments. 
 All day she attended her charges, cooked, toiled, 
 watched, forgetting her night of storm and sleep- 
 lessness in the greater anxieties of ministering 
 to others. The doctor came and went between 
 her home and the village, but always with that 
 solemn headshake, that spoke so much more forc- 
 ibly than words. 
 
 " She shall not die !" declared Maarda. "The 
 Tenas Klootchman needs her, she shall not die !" 
 But the woman grew feebler daily, her eyes grew 
 brighter, her cheeks burned with deeper scarlet. 
 
 " We must fight for it now," said the doctor. 
 And Maarda and he fought the dread enemy hour 
 after hour, day after day. 
 
 Bereft of its mother's care, the Tenas Klootch- 
 man turned to Maarda, laughed to her, crowed 
 to her, until her lonely heart embraced the child 
 as a still evening embraces a tempestuous day. 
 Once she had a long, terrible fight with herself. 
 She had begun to feel her ownership in the little 
 thing, had begun to regard it as her right to tend 
 and pet it. Her heart called out for it; and she 
 wanted it for her very own. She began to feel a 
 savage, tigerish joy in thinking — aye, knowing 
 that it really would belong to her and to her alone 
 soon — very soon. 
 
 When this sensation first revealed itself to 
 her, the doctor was there— had even told her the 
 woman could not recover. Maarda's gloriously
 
 236 THE MOCCASIN MAKER 
 
 womanly soul was horrified at itself. She left the 
 doctor in charge, and went to the shore, fighting 
 out this outrageous gladness, strangling it — kill- 
 ing it. 
 
 She returned, a sanctified being, with every 
 faculty in her body, every sympathy of her heart, 
 every energy of her mind devoted to bringing 
 this woman back from the jaws of death. She 
 greeted the end of it all with a sorrowing, half- 
 breaking heart, for she had learned to love the 
 woman she had envied, and to weep for the little 
 child who lay so helplessly against her unselfish 
 heart. 
 
 A beautifully lucid half-hour came to the 
 fever-stricken one just before the Call to the 
 Great Beyond ! 
 
 " Maarda," she said, " you have been a good 
 Tillicum to me, and I can give you nothing for 
 all your care, your kindness — unless — " Her 
 eyes wandered to her child peacefully sleeping in 
 the delicately-woven basket. Maarda saw the 
 look, her heart leaped with a great joy. Did the 
 woman wish to give the child to her? She dared 
 not ask for it. Suppose Luke "Alaska" wanted 
 it. His wife loved children, though she had four 
 of her own in their home far inland. Then the 
 sick woman spoke: 
 
 " Your cradle basket and your heart were 
 empty before I came. Will you keep my Tenas 
 Klootchman as your own? — to fill them both 
 again?"
 
 THE TENAS KLOOTCHMAN 237 
 
 Maarda promised. " Mine was a Tenas 
 Klootehman, too/' she said. 
 
 " Then I will go to her, and be her mother, 
 wherever she is, in the Spirit Islands they tell us 
 of," said the woman. " We will be but exchang- 
 ing our babies, after all." 
 
 When morning dawned, the woman did not 
 
 awake. 
 
 ********* 
 
 Maarda had finished her story, but the recol- 
 lections had saddened her eyes, and for a time 
 we both sat on the deck in the violet twilight 
 without exchanging a word. 
 
 " Then the little Tenas Klootchman is yours 
 now?" I asked. 
 
 A sudden radiance suffused her face, all trace 
 of melancholy vanished. She fairly scintillated 
 happiness. 
 
 " Mine !" she said. " All mine ! Luke 'Alaska^ 
 and his wife said she was more mine than theirs, 
 that I must keep her as my own. My husband 
 rejoiced to see the cradle basket filled, and to hear 
 me laugh as I used to. 
 
 " How I should like to see the baby !" I began. 
 
 " You shall," she interrupted. Then with a 
 proud, half-roguish expression, she added: 
 
 " She is so strong, so well, so heavy ; she sleeps 
 a great deal, and wakes laughing and hungry. " 
 
 As night fell, an ancient Indian woman came 
 up the companion-way. In her arms she carried 
 a beautifully-woven basket cradle, within which
 
 238 THE MOCCASIN MAKER 
 
 nestled a round-cheeked, smiling-eved baby. 
 Across its little forehead hung locks of black, 
 straight hair, and its sturdy limbs were vainly 
 endeavoring to free themselves from the lacing 
 of the " blankets." Maarda took the basket, with 
 an expression on her face that was transfiguring, 
 
 " Yes, this is my little Tenas Klootchman," she 
 said, as she unlaced the bands, then lifted the 
 plump little creature out on to her lap. 
 
 Soon afterwards the steamer touched an 
 obscure little harbor, and Maarda, who was to 
 join her husband there, left me, with a happy 
 good-night. As she was going below, she fal- 
 tered, and turned back to me. " I think some- 
 times," she said, quietly, "the Great Spirit 
 thought my baby would feel motherless in the far 
 Spirit Islands, so He gave her the woman I 
 nursed for a mother; and He knew I was child- 
 less, and He gave me this child for my daughter. 
 Do you think I am right? Do you understand?" 
 
 " Yes," I said, " I think you are right, and I 
 understand." 
 
 Once more she smiled radiantly, and turning, 
 descended the companionway. I caught a last 
 glimpse of her on the wharf. She was greeting 
 her husband, her face a mirror of happiness. 
 About the delicately-woven basket cradle she had 
 half pulled her heavy plaid shawl, beneath which 
 the two rows of black velvet ribbon bordering 
 her skirt proclaimed once more her nationality.
 
 The Derelict 
 
 Cragstone had committed what his world 
 called a crime — an inexcusable offence that 
 caused him to be shunned by society and 
 estranged from his father's house. He had proved 
 a failure. 
 
 Not one of his whole family connections could 
 say unto the others, " I told you so," when he 
 turned out badly. 
 
 They had all predicted that he was born for 
 great things, then to discover that they had over- 
 estimated him was irritating, it told against their 
 discernment, it was unflattering, and they 
 thought him inconsiderate. 
 
 So, in addition to his failure, Cragstone had to 
 face the fact that he had made himself unpopular 
 among his kin. 
 
 As a boy he had been the pride of his family, 
 as a youth, its hope of fame and fortune ; he was 
 clever, handsome, inventive, original, everything 
 that society and his kind admired, but he crimin- 
 ally fooled them and their expectations, and they 
 never forgave him for it. 
 
 He had dabbled in music, literature, law, every- 
 thing — always with semi-success and brilliant 
 
 239
 
 240 THE MOCCASIN MAKER 
 
 promise ; he had even tried the stage, playing the 
 Provinces for an entire season; then, ultimately 
 sinking into mediocrity in all these occupations, 
 he returned to London, a hopelessly useless, a 
 pitiably gifted man. His chilly little aristocra- 
 tic mother always spoke of him as " poor, dear 
 Charles." His brothers, clubmen all, graciously 
 alluded to him with, " deuced hard luck, poor 
 Charlie." His father never mentioned his name. 
 
 Then he went into " The Church," sailed for 
 Canada, idled about for a few weeks, when one 
 of the great colonial bishops, not knowing what 
 else to do with him, packed him off north as a 
 missionary to the Indians. 
 
 And, after four years of disheartening labor 
 amongst a semi-civilized people, came this girl 
 Lydia into his life. This girl of the mixed parent- 
 age, the English father, who had been swept 
 northward with the rush of lumber trading, the 
 Chippewa mother, who had been tossed to his 
 arms by the tide of circumstances. The girl was 
 a strange composition of both, a type of mixed 
 blood, pale, dark, slender, with the slim hands, 
 the marvellously beautiful teeth of her mother's 
 people, the ambition, the small tender mouth, 
 the utter fearlessness of the English race. But 
 the strange, laughless eyes, the silent step, the 
 hard sense of honor, proclaimed her far more 
 the daughter of red blood than of white. 
 
 And, with the perversity of his kind, Cragstone 
 loved her; he meant to marry her because he 
 
 ^
 
 THE DERELICT 241 
 
 knew that he should not. What a monstrous 
 thing it would be if he did ! He, the shepherd of 
 this half -civilized flock, the modern John Baptist ; 
 he, the voice of the great Anglican Church crying 
 in this wilderness, how could he wed with this 
 Indian girl who had been a common serving-maid 
 in a house in Penetanguishene, and been dis- 
 missed therefrom with an accusation of theft that 
 she could never prove untrue? How could he 
 bring this reproach upon the Church? Why, the 
 marriage would have no precedent; and yet he 
 loved her, loved her sweet, silent ways, her listen- 
 ing attitudes, her clear, brown, consumptive-sug- 
 gesting skin. She was the only thing in all the irk- 
 some mission life that had responded to him, had 
 encouraged him to struggle anew for the spiritual 
 welfare of this poor red race. Of course, in Pene- 
 tanguishene they had told him she was irreclaim- 
 able, a thief, with ready lies to cover her crimes ; 
 for that very reason he felt tender towards her, 
 she was so sinful, so pathetically human. 
 
 He could have mastered himself, perhaps, had 
 she not responded, had he not seen the laughless 
 eyes laugh alone for him, had she not once when 
 a momentary insanity possessed them both con- 
 fessed in words her love for him as he had done 
 to her. But now? Well, now only this horrible 
 tale of theft and untruth hung between them 
 like a veil ; now even with his arms locked about 
 her, his eyes drowned in hers, his ears caught 
 the whispers of calumny, his thoughts were per- 
 
 16
 
 242 THE MOCCASIN MAKER 
 
 forated with the horror of his Bishop's censure, 
 and these things rushed between his soul and 
 hers, like some bridgeless deep he might not cross, 
 and so his lonely life went on. 
 
 And then one night his sweet humanity, his 
 grand, strong love rose up, battled with him, 
 and conquered. He cast his Pharisaical ideas, 
 and the Church's " I am better than thou," aside 
 forever ; he would go now, to-night, he would ask 
 her to be his wife, to have and to hold from this 
 day forward, for better, for worse, for — 
 
 A shadow fell across the doorway of his simple 
 home; it was August Beaver, the trapper, with 
 the urgent request that he would come across to 
 French Island at once, for old " Medicine " Joe 
 was there, dying, and wished to see the minister. 
 At another time Cragstone would have felt sym- 
 pathetic, now he was only irritated; he wanted 
 to find Lydia, to look in her laughless eyes, to feel 
 her fingers in his hair, to tell her he did not care 
 if she were a hundred times a thief, that he loved 
 her, loved her, loved her, and he would marry 
 her despite the Church, despite — 
 
 " Joe, he's near dead, you come now?" broke 
 in August's voice. Cragstone turned impatiently, 
 got his prayer-book, followed the trapper, took 
 his place in the canoe, and paddled in silence 
 up the bay. 
 
 The moon arose, large, limpid, flooding the 
 cabin with a wondrous light, and making more
 
 THE DERELICT 243 
 
 van the features of a dying man, whose fever- 
 wasted form lay on some lynx skins on the floor. 
 
 Cragstone was reading from the Book of Com- 
 mon Prayer the exquisite service of the Visitation 
 of the Sick. Outside, the loons clanged up the 
 waterways, the herons called across the islands, 
 but no human things ventured up the wilds. In- 
 side, the sick man lay, beside him August Beaver 
 holding a rude lantern, while Cragstone's match- 
 less voice repeated the Anglican formula. A 
 spasm, an uplifted hand, and Cragstone paused. 
 Was the end coming even before a benediction? 
 But the dying man was addressing Beaver ia 
 Chippewa, whispering and choking out the words 
 in his death struggle. 
 
 " He says he's bad man," spoke Beaver. A hor- 
 rible, humorous sensation swept over Cragstone; 
 he hated himself for it, but at college he had 
 always ridiculed death-bed confessions; but in 
 a second that feeling had vanished, he bent his 
 handsome, fair face above the copper-colored 
 countenance of the dying man. " Joe," he said, 
 with that inelfable tenderness that had always 
 drawn human hearts to him ; " Joe, tell me before 
 I pronounce the Absolution, how you have been 
 'bad'?" 
 
 " I steal three times," came the answer, "Oncet 
 horses, two of them from farmer near Barrie. 
 Oncet twenty fox-skins at North Bay; station 
 man he in jail for those fox-skins now. Oncet 
 gold watch from doctor at Penetanguishene."
 
 244 THE MOCCASIN MAKER 
 
 The prayer-book rattled from Cragstont's 
 hands and fell to the floor. 
 
 " Tell me about this watch," he mumbled. 
 " How did you come to do it?" 
 
 " I liffe at the doctor's ; I take care his horse, 
 long time ; old River's girl, Lydia, she work there 
 too; they say she steal it; I sell to trader, the 
 doctor he nefer know, he think Lydia." 
 
 Cragstone was white to the lips. " Joe," he 
 faltered, " you are dying ; do you regret this sin, 
 are you sorry?" 
 
 An indistinct " yes " was all ; death was claim- 
 ing him rapidly. 
 
 But a great, white, purified love had swept over 
 the young clergyman. The girl he worshipped 
 could never now be a reproach to his calling, she 
 was proved blameless as a baby, and out of his 
 great human love arose the divine calling, the 
 Christ-like sense of forgiveness, the God-like for- 
 getfulness of injury and suffering done to his and 
 to him, and once more his soft, rich voice broke 
 the stillness of the Northern night, as the Angli- 
 can absolution of the dying fell from his lips in 
 merciful tenderness: 
 
 " O Lord Jesus Christ, who hath left power to 
 His Church to absolve all sinners who truly re- 
 pent and believe in Him, of His great mercy for- 
 give thee thine offences, and by His authority 
 committed to me I absolve thee from all thy sins 
 in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of 
 the Holy Ghost. Amen."
 
 THE DERELICT 245 
 
 Beaver was holding the lantern close to the 
 penitent's face; Cragstone, kneeling beside him, 
 saw that the end had come already, and, after 
 making the sign of the Cross on the dead Indian's 
 forehead, the young priest arose and went silently 
 out into the night. 
 
 The sun was slipping down into the far hori- 
 zon, fretted by the inimitable wonder of islands 
 that throng the Georgian Bay ; the blood-colored 
 skies, the purpling clouds, the extravagant beauty 
 of a Northern sunset hung in the west like the 
 trailing robes of royalty, soundless in their flar- 
 ing, their fading; soundless as the unbroken 
 wilds which lay bathed in the loneliness of a 
 dying day. 
 
 But on the color-flooded shore stood two, blind 
 to the purple, the scarlet, the gold, blind to all 
 else save the tense straining of the other's eyes; 
 deaf to nature's unsung anthem, hearing only the 
 other's voice. Cragstone stood transfixed with 
 consternation. The memory of the past week of 
 unutterable joy lay blasted with the awfulness 
 of this moment, the memory of even that first 
 day — when he had stood with his arms about her, 
 had told her how he had declared her reclaimed 
 name far and wide, how even Penefanguishene 
 knew now that she had suffered blamelessly, how 
 his own heart throbbed suffocatingly -with the 
 honor, the delight of being the poor means 
 through which she had been righted in the accus-
 
 246 THE MOCCASIN MAKER 
 
 ing eyes of their little world, and that now she 
 would be his wife, his sweet, helping wife, and 
 she had been great enough not to remind him 
 that he had not asked her to be his wife until her 
 name was proved blameless, and he was great 
 enough not to make excuse of the resolve he had 
 set out upon just when August Beaver came to 
 turn the current of his life. 
 
 But he had other eyes to face to-night, eyes 
 that blurred the past, that burned themselves 
 into his being — the condemning, justly and right- 
 eously indignant ejes of his Bishop — while his 
 numb heart, rather than his ears, listened to the 
 words that fell from the prelate's lips like curses 
 on his soul, like the door that would shut him 
 forever outside the holy place, 
 
 " What have you done, you pretended servant 
 of the living God? What use is this you have 
 made of your Holy Orders? You hear the con- 
 fessions of a dying man, you absolve and you 
 bless him, and come away from the poor dead 
 thief to shout his crimes in the ears of the world, 
 to dishonor him, to be a discredit to your calling. 
 Who could trust again such a man as you have 
 proved to be — faithless to himself, faithless to his 
 Church, faithless to his God?" 
 
 But Cragstone was on the sands at his accuser's 
 feet. " Oh ! my Lord," he cried, " I meant only 
 to save the name of a poor, mistrusted girl, self- 
 ishly, perhaps, but I would have done the same 
 thing just for humanity's sake had it been another 
 to whom injustice was done."
 
 THE DERELICT 247 
 
 " Your plea of justice is worse than weak ; to 
 save the good name of the living is it just to rob 
 the dead?" 
 
 The Bishop's voice was like iron. 
 
 " I did not realize I was a priest, I only knew 
 I was a man/' and with these words Cragstone 
 arose and looked fearlessly, even proudly, at the 
 one who stood his judge. 
 
 " Is it not better, my Lord, to serve the living 
 than the dead?" 
 
 " And bring reproach upon your Church?" said 
 the Bishop, sternly. 
 
 It was the first thought Cragstone ever had of 
 his official crime; he staggered under the horror 
 of it, and the little, dark, silent figure, that had 
 followed them unseen, realized in her hiding amid 
 the shadows that the man who had lifted her into 
 the light was himself being thrust down into irre- 
 mediable darkness. But Cragstone only saw the 
 Bishop looking at him as from a supreme height, 
 he only felt the final stinging lash in the words : 
 " When a man disregards the most sacred offices 
 of his God, he will hardly reverence the claims 
 of justice of a simple woman who knows not his 
 world, and if he so easily flings his God away for 
 a woman, just so easily will he fling her away for 
 other gods." 
 
 And Lydia, with eyes that blazed like flame, 
 watched the Bishop turn and walk frigidly up 
 the sands, his indignation against this outrager 
 of ttie Church declaring itself in every footfall.
 
 248 THE MOCCASIN MAKER 
 
 Cragstone flung himself down, burying his face 
 in his hands. What a wreck he had made of life ! 
 He saw his future, loveless, for no woman would 
 trust him now ; even the one whose name he had 
 saved would probably be more unforgiving than 
 the Church ; it was the way with women when a 
 man abandoned God and honor for them; and 
 this nameless but blackest of sins, this falsity to 
 one poor dying sinner, would stand between him 
 and heaven forever, though through that very 
 crime he had saved a fellow being. Where was 
 the justice of it? 
 
 The purple had died from out the western sky, 
 the waters of the Georgian Bay lay colorless at 
 his feet, night was covering the world and steal- 
 ing with inky blackness into his soul. 
 
 She crept out of her hiding-place, and, coming, 
 gently touched his tumbled fair hair; but he 
 shrank from her, crying : " Lydia, my girl, my 
 girl, I am not for a good woman now! I, who 
 thought you an outcast, a thief, not worthy to be 
 my wife, to-night I am not an outcast of man 
 alone, but of God." 
 
 But what cared she for his official crimes? She 
 was a woman. Her arras were about him, her lips 
 on his ; and he who had, until now, been a portless 
 derelict, who had vainly sought a haven in art, 
 an anchorage in the service of God, had drifted 
 at last into the world's most sheltered harbor — 
 a woman's love. 
 
 But, of course, the Bishop took away his gown.
 
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