A COUNTRY OF STRANGERS by Conrad Richter

Author:Conrad Richter [Richter, Conrad]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-8041-5018-7
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Published: 2013-07-31T00:00:00+00:00

FOR some time sleep had not come easily to Stone Girl. It must be the strange sleeping place, she told herself, or the bed she lay on. The beds in Madame Corbusier’s house had been young and strong. This bed was old and very weak. Many people had lain on it. The cover had long since been worn through, so that the corn husks pushed out like the insides of a gutted deer. Also, it was a narrow bed. She and Otter Boy had to lie very close or one would fall off. It was not a flat bed. At the place for their heads, the bed rose up like a boulder. She thought she knew now why white people seldom stood straight as Indians. They had slept on such a bed and it had bent them like ice bends the young birch trees.

Beneath her she could hear the horses stamp. They sneezed from the hay dust and pulled on their mangers with their strong teeth. The couch and blanket smelled rank of them. Once during the night, when a rat ran over their legs, Otter Boy whispered.

“Guka, Mamma, why do you shake? Is it the rat?”

“No, it is not the rat.”

“Is it the cold of the night?”

“Otter Boy, it is not the cold. Our uncle, Sisquanachan, the south wind, is with us.”

“Guka, Mamma, is it Kamlus, the sickness that shakes again and again?”

“Otter Boy. Go into sleep. It is not Kamlus, the sickness that shakes again and again.”

“Guka, Mamma, do you know the old dried-up white woman who came yesterday? The one that looks like she will not breathe very long.”

“I do not know her. I only wait on her at the table.”

“Guka, Mamma, she stopped by the stable today when you were in the kitchen. She asked my name. Was it weak or brave that I told her?”

“It is right that you tell her when she asks.”

“She did not say go away or be quiet. She talked like she knew me. Does she know me, Guka, Mamma?”

“Otter Boy. Perhaps she knows you. She is Ohum, the grandmother of your Guka, mamma. But you must never tell her that. She would not believe. She would be angry.”

“Why must I never tell her?”

Stone Girl lay silent a while.

“Otter Boy. It is because she is a white person. Surely you have seen by this time how unaccountable white persons are. Sometimes when the morning is bad and stormy, they will say good morning, and sometimes when the morning is very good and the sun smiles, they will say nothing. You have heard them call you Johnny or Indian Charley or something else that is not your name. An old man of the Chippeways told me once the white man does this because inside of him he feels guilty and afraid. He knows he is a trespasser on Indian land and that Indians fight and kill those who steal their land. So he calls you Indian Johnny to make you seem little and harmless and himself big and victorious.

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