Fly Away Snow Goose (Nits'it'ah Golika Xah) by Juliet Waldron

Fly Away Snow Goose (Nits'it'ah Golika Xah) by Juliet Waldron

Author:Juliet Waldron
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780228622642
Publisher: BWL Publishing Inc.
Published: 2022-07-16T00:00:00+00:00


* * *

Sascho had his hand on the latch to the door to Frank and Guy’s cabin, when David, who was piling wood against the wall, signed him to stop.

“I wouldn’t go in there right now.”

“Why? I just brought this hot water from the kitchen. He told me he wanted it right away.”

“Never mind. Pour it into the cattle tank. It’ll melt the ice and you can get more after the trader leaves. Frank won’t want to see you now.”

“Why?” Sascho set the steaming pail down. “You know Mrs. Le Pen will be angry if I take more water right away. Supper dishes and all that.” There was a big tank over the kitchen stove into which water was regularly hand pumped, but it took time to heat it, and clean up time in the evening required plenty. In fact, they’d just finished stacking wood for the kitchen’s needs just an hour ago. This time of year, it was a constant battle against the cold.

David placed the last piece on the pile, and then walked toward Sascho, emerging from the half light at the back of the barn. The place smelled of over-wintering animals, but Sascho had grown to like the smell of the unfamiliar cattle and the horses—even the strong odor that came from the sow’s pen. He’d found comfort in their presence, and had grown to know something of their ways as he tended them. These were the only creatures, besides men, on the place. To him, this land was barren.

Sascho understood that all these animals in the barn were dependent upon man, the same way dogs were. Wild animals, the moose or caribou, the beaver or muskrat, didn’t need the help of any two-legged creature to get along. All these tame animals that the white man had brought lived inside a great deal, for the wind and chill during winter here — especially on this exposed hill by the river —could easily kill them.

“Yeah, well, Frank will be even angrier than Mrs. Le Pen if you go in there now. He’s been drinking and he’s selling clothes and stuff like that to the trader.”

“Clothes?”

“Oh, the really nice deer skin dresses and moccasins they took off all of you when you came here—the good things, anyway, the stuff with lots of beads. The trader sends them down south somewhere and makes money.”

“They sell our clothing?” This gave Sascho pause. Stealing, among Sascho’s people, was a terrible crime. He’d also been told that their clothing would be destroyed because it was “heathen”—whatever that meant.

“Yeah, but we’re not supposed to know about it.”

“What do we go home in then? Our skin?”

The kwet’ı̨ı̨̀ say they think stealing is a sin, but they do it all the time.

“Oh, if you go home, they’ll let you wear some of the oldest stuff they can find, but, hell, don’t worry about it. I don’t think your lot from the north will go home until they’re done with you.”

That was alarming news, but Sascho was still inwardly raging about what he’d heard.



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