Mrs. Mike

by Benedict Freedman

  "You see," Mike lit his pipe, and began in Beaver, slowly, so I could follow. Mustagan's eyes never left his face. An Indian is the most patient listener in the world. "Years ago, when the first Mounty rode into Calgary, there was nothing there but a tent. The tent belonged to Father Lacombe, the first white man to come into the Territory. That little tent was the first Mission in the Northwest. Well, the Indians there were Blackfeet, and Father Lacombe taught them and lived among them and became a brother to them, and spoke to them much of their elder brother who was God's son, whose name was Jesus. Also he spoke to them of other things. There was one habit in particular that he spoke against, and it was this: when food and filth filled a tepee so that a bad smell came, and there was no place to step, the Blackfeet would leave that house and build for themselves a new one that was clean and fresh—for a while.

  "Now, in the nation from which the good Father came, it was the custom to collect waste foods and bones into a neat pile, to hunt out the dirt from all corners of the lodge, gather it together, and burn it. He spoke to the Blackfeet of this white man's custom, telling them it was good medicine. But to the women this custom brought more work, and as it was the day was not long enough for their labors. So, though they listened with pleasure to the voice of Father Lacombe and watched his gestures with admiration, still did the waste matter and the filth lie on the floors of their tepees.

  "But the Father did not despair of teaching them, for he knew

  the ways of women, and that their hearts followed after beauty. So he wrote on a piece of paper. And this paper was carried by dog sled and runner into the city that is called Regina. And back into the wilderness came a large thing of cylindrical shape." Mike's hands molded a cylinder in the air, and Mustagan nodded. "It was wrapped in many layers of heavy paper and guarded always by ten braves, for it was known to be the good medicine of Father Lacombe. And after many months it arrived in the camp of the Blackfeet. The drums beat, and the people of the tribe gathered around. Father Lacombe stripped the wrappings from it, and a great cry went up, for the thing flashed silver in the sun and was beautiful to behold.

  "The Father then showed them how the top came off, easily as the scalp from an enemy's head. And the tribe filed by and looked within. When he saw that the eyes of the women glowed to behold this thing of beauty, Father Lacombe spoke and named the thing of shiny silver, 'garbage can.' He explained that within its mouth would lie all the decaying food and gnawed bones in the camp.

  "The Blackfeet were well pleased with this silver gift and wished to make gifts in return. But the Father would not take their skins, their bows, or their weapons; he said only that they must put his gift to good use.

  "Now there was sickness in another tribe, and Father Lacombe journeyed ten sleeps away to bring them comfort and medicine. When he returned he went, before taking rest or sleep, to look at the floors of the lodges. Great was his disappointment, and bitter were the eyes he turned upon the Blackfeet; for still did the filth lie ankle-deep in the tepees, and nowhere did he see the garbage can.

  "He went then to the chief and asked that the council fires be kindled. And when the blankets were laid and the people assembled, great was his surprise to see two braves enter the circle with the garbage can in their arms. It was placed in the center of the council, and the chief took his seat upon it.

  "For a moment the Father knew not what words to call upon.

  But finally he asked why they had not filled his gift with trash, as he had asked them. And the chief made answer for the people, saying they would not fill so beautiful a gift with such dishonorable objects.

  "We would no more throw bones at the present of Father La-combe than we would throw them at the Father himself."

  Mustagan nodded in silent approval.

  "And so," Mike concluded, "the chief ceremonial seat in a Blackfoot council is known still as gabajcan."

  Oo-me-me looked with awe and wonder at Mike. And Mustagan said, "A storyteller, him bring gladness to all hearts."

  I was feeling better too about the cheesecloth. Greater and wiser people than I had not succeeded any better. How clever Mike was! He would not offend Mustagan and his wife by mentioning the cheesecloth directly, but had hinted at their error with the involved circumlocution an Indian loves. I wondered if Oo-me-me had understood the parallel.

  I said, "Next week when I come I will bring you more cheesecloth."

  Oo-me-me looked puzzled. "But no more have I dresses to put it on."

  A brave entered the house. An Indian never knocks on the door, not even on the door of his chief. Though he held his voice low, the words that he spoke to Mustagan came from him in a sort of pant. The man's excitement spread to the others. Oo-me-me stared with wild eyes at his face. Even I, who could not hear him, felt trouble.

  "How long ago?" The words burst from Mike in English. He changed them quickly into Beaver. The Indian answered, and Mike stood up. Mustagan also rose, and the Indian, taking it as a sign of dismissal, darted off.

  Mike turned to me. "Chief Mustagan will send someone back with you, Kathy."

  "What's happened?" I couldn't keep the fear out of my voice.

  Mike hesitated. "A white woman lost on the trail."

  "A white woman around here?"

  "Maybe not. We don't know where she is. She and her husband started by boat from Peace River Crossing. I know him slightly, a Frenchman, Jacques Jellet. He's a trapper."

  "How did she get lost?"

  "They'd been traveling four or five weeks, camping at night. They didn't want to overload the boat with provisions, so he shot their meat on the way. Well, three days ago he went off a ways hunting, and when he came back she was gone. He saw the fire was low, nothing but a few embers. So he figured she'd gone after wood. He waited a half hour or so, then he began calling her.

  "Two days later he stumbled into a Cree camp, still calling her. At first the Crees ran from him. They thought he was some kind of spirit. His clothes were half torn off him, his body was cut and bleeding, his eyes were wild, and over his head he waved a burning torch."

  "Was he mad?" I asked.

  "No, mosquitoes."

  The Indian who had brought the news was back at the door with a horse. Mike took the reins from him.

  "How did our Beaver Indians hear what had happened in the land of the Crees?" I asked.

  "Haven't you heard of the moccasin telegraph?"

  "Yes," I said, "I've heard of it, but I don't know what it means."

  "It means," said Mike, "that the print of the moccasin is on every trail, and by the moccasin comes the news." He swung into the saddle.

  "Mike, be careful."

  "She couldn't have gotten far," Mike said. "There's really no chance she could have wandered as far as my territory, so this is just routine. They'll find her body a hundred miles east of here."

  I caught his leg and looked at him. "Her body? But, Mike, she couldn't be dead! She's only been lost three days. You can't starve to death in three days."

  Mike looked grim. "She's dead, all right."

  "But how?"

  He paused, then said the word again, "Mosquitoes."

  Nine

  They had taken the Union Jack from in front of the Hudson's Bay Company and were flying it down by the pier. It waved goodbye and so did we to the men in the boats. There were three large canoes piled with the winter's catch of furs. The men would take the pelts three hundred miles by water to Peace River Crossing, from where they would go by overland trail another four hundred miles to Edmonton. That trip had taken us three months in winter. In summer, traveling by water, it would be longer. I felt sorry for the wives of the men who were leaving. They did not talk or wave as much as the others.

  The trappers crowded the pier, pointing with pride to the canoes, identifying their own furs, laughing and telling stories of how that beaver and that mink tangled with their lines. "Look how low is bateau in the water, eh! Heavy with the winter's wor
k. C'est bon." And they waved their sweaty, bright-colored handkerchiefs at the Indians in the canoes, and yelled messages at them: "Tell that little klooch at Grouard that I'm still thinking of her!" Or, "You get to Peace River Crossing, you tell one Baldy Red I cut his heart out he no pay me that five bucks!" I laughed out loud when I heard that. I'd almost forgotten Baldy.

  Mike undid the ropes and shoved off the first canoe. A great shout went up. It shook the air, from every throat it burst—that is, from every throat but one. Atenou sat glumly, his face in his hands. I watched him as Mike shoved off the second and third boats. His expression of woe did not change. His eyes stared mournfully as the canoes flashed past him, but he did.not move his head to follow their passage.

  Something was wrong. This was not like Atenou. He was one of Mustagan's best hunters, a man whom the Indian women watched with their slow eyes, for he had not yet taken a wife.

  I walked over to him. "Atenou, is something wrong?"

  He lifted his eyes to me, then they closed from the exertion.

  Maybe he's sick, I thought, but I didn't want to ask that because Indians are very susceptible to suggestion. Instead I said, "What is it?"

  A low moan, that was all. It frightened me, and I called Mike.

  "What's the matter with you, Atenou? You look like the last rose of summer."

  Atenou answered Mike as he had me, with a wavering moan. Mike tried again, this time in Beaver. Atenou took his hands away irom his face, and one cheek was swelled out like a balloon.

  "Toothache." Mike pronounced the word first in English and then in Beaver. Atenou held onto his jaw again. Mike forced his hands away and his mouth open. He asked questions which the Indian answered with grunts and groans. Mike's hand was in Atenou's mouth by now, and he did something inside it that brought a bellow. A pretty half-breed girl going by asked, "Atenou is singing with the toothache?"

  Mike turned to me. "An abscess. The one in the back. All I did was press on it." He hauled Atenou to his feet. "Come on!" He inarched off, piloting the brave toward the office.

  I ran after them. "What are you going to do?"

  "It's got to come out," Mike said.

  "But..." Mike's look warned me into silence.

  Atenou was completely docile. I guess he thought nothing worse could happen to him than what he was feeling now. But he was wrong.

  Mike sat him in the big chair. "It's your wisdom tooth," he said. "It's got to come out."

  Atenou gazed dully at him and made no answer. Mike went to the back of the room and unlocked one of the cupboards.

  I followed him. "Mike," I whispered, "you don't know how to pull teeth!"

  "Shh!" Mike whispered back. "Do you want him to lose confidence in me?"

  "Oh, Mike, I don't think you should try it."

  Mike got out a bottle of liquor and rummaged around until he found a whisky glass. "Here, pour some out for him. Give him as much as he'll hold."

  I took the bottle from Mike, and maybe my hand shook or maybe I looked a little white around the mouth, because Mike grinned at me and said, "Pour yourself a glass too." I ignored the suggestion.

  Atenou looked very surprised when I handed him the forbidden firewater. But he drank it down and asked no questions. Every time I asked if he would have some more, he grunted acceptance. I don't know how many glasses of whisky I poured him. Finally I got tired and left him the bottle.

  I walked back to see what Mike was doing. He was very busy. In front of him was spread a case of vicious-looking instruments supplied by the Canadian Government. Also supplied by the Government was the thin paper book of instructions which Mike was reading.

  "What are you doing?" I asked with disapproval.

  "Trying to find out if it's a bicuspid."

  I recognized that dogged note in his voice, and I knew that Atenou's tooth was as good as out.

  "All right," I said. "How do you go about it—just pull?"

  Mike consulted the book. "Pull with a twisting motion, it says here."

  "Twisting?" I asked dubiously.

  "Certainly. You know what twisting is—a, a twist."

  Poor Mike, I could see he was scared. Well, he's got a right to be, was my first thought. My second was more wifely: "What can I do to help?"

  "You can help me tie him if he's drunk enough."

  He was drunk enough. He lolled back in the chair, humming a war chant and hiccoughing. We passed the rope back and forth

  over and under Atenou's body until, as Mike said, we had him hog-tied.

  Then Mike told me to bring him the case of instruments. The sight of those dozen sharp hooked implements seemed to bring Atenou out of his drunk. Mike nodded toward the whisky, and I poured another two glasses down his throat. On the third glass his head fell back, his eyes clouded over, and the stuff dribbled down his chin.

  Mike took off his jacket and rolled up his sleeves. We walked silently to the pump out back and washed our hands.

  "Open a fresh roll of cotton," Mike said. I nodded and followed him into the office. It took an awfully long time to find the cotton, and almost as long to open it. When I brought it to Mike, he was rereading the directions in that thin paper book. There was sweat on his forehead. He fingered through the instruments and picked out a pliers.

  "Open your mouth," he said to Atenou. But Atenou was too drunk to understand him even when he spoke in Beaver.

  Mike turned to me. "Hold his nose, Kathy."

  "What?"

  "Hold his nose. He'll have to open his mouth then to breathe."

  I could see Mike's point, but I didn't relish holding the nose of that drooling, drunken Indian, even if he was tied.

  "Hurry up!" Mike said.

  I moved close and bent over Atenou. The smell of him was indescribable, part whisky and part—I don't know what. I took a deep breath, which I intended to hold until that tooth was out, and pressed the end of his nose between my thumb and forefinger. Nothing happened. I pressed harder, and the mouth fell open. In went the silver pliers and Mike's hand up to the wrist. In a moment they were both out, but there was no tooth between the pliers.

  "Holy St. Patrick, did he swallow it?"

  "No," said Mike. "I haven't pulled it." He looked away from me. "I was thinking—" He stopped.

  "Yes?" I said.

  "I was thinking that maybe I could do with a small gulp of that whisky myself."

  It somehow pleased me, seeing Mike Flannigan in need of a drink like any other Irishman. Well, he had one. And it was no small gulp that he had, either.

  "Now it's your turn, Kathy."

  I looked at him, then I looked at the dark shining nose I had to hold again. I took it straight from the bottle like a man. I coughed and choked and made a face, but a warm comfort spread inside me. I grabbed Atenou's nostrils and squeezed. Again the mouth dropped open, again the pliers and Mike's hand entered. I saw it give the twisting motion and the pull. I saw it give the twisting motion and the pull again. Mike braced his foot against the chair—twist, pull, a jerk, a yell from Atenou—and the tooth came out in the pliers. Mike waved it triumphantly in the air. I guess maybe he was a little drunk. I guess maybe I was too, but whether from whisky or relief I don't know.

  But Atenou was sober and feeling gingerly around in his mouth with his tongue. When he came to the hole, he let out a cry that could be heard in the Red River Valley.

  Mike and I rushed to him, untied him, bathed his face, gave him whisky, and plugged the vacant spot with cotton. All this time he never stopped yelling. Suddenly I realized the impossibility of yelling with your mouth filled with cotton and whisky. I looked at Atenou. His mouth was closed. The screams were coming from somewhere else. Mike must have reached that conclusion too. He ran to the door and started yelling, "Drop it, you damn fool! Drop it!"

  I ran to the door too, but Mike pushed me back. I ducked under his arm and looked. The horse I saw seemed to be one of the four escaped from the Apocalypse. Its co
at shone with sweat, its eyes rolled in terror, its lips were flecked with foam, its ears were flattened and twitching, its nostrils flaring. The screams of the man were mixed with those of the animal. For there was a man on its back, a man clutching something wildly, desperately, in his arms. I strained to see. Even Atenou watched with interest from

  the window. What the man seemed to hold was a ball of fur. It couldn't be that. I craned forward and before Mike pulled me back I had seen it. A bald-faced grizzly was running almost at the horse's flank. She was the same coloring as the fur ball the man held—her cub, of course. Now I understood Mike's hoarse cries of "Drop it! Drop it!"

  The man turned toward us a ghastly face. Mike cupped his hand. "You idiot, drop that cub!"

  For a moment it seemed that the man had not understood, for horse, rider, and grizzly streaked by us. I caught my breath, for the grizzly was gaining on them. Its bared teeth were even with the mare's thin, white-stockinged shanks. But the man had understood, for his arm went out from his body in a queer jerking motion. At the end of them the cub dangled and was dropped. It rolled over and over. The mother grizzly turned to it, nuzzled it with an inquiring nose. Then, picking it up in her mouth, she set off at a dignified trot for the woods.

  The horse stopped and whinnied uncertainly. The man went limp in the saddle. He seemed to have caved in from the stomach up. His shoulders dropped, and his head sank between them. Mike ran for him. "Katherine Mary, get out that whisky."

  There was no need to get it out. It was still sitting on the table. I filled the glass full. When Atenou saw me at the whisky, he clapped his hand to his cheek and groaned pitifully. I poured him a glass too.

  Mike returned with a pale-faced young man leaning on his arm. The stranger crossed the room unsteadily, smiled wanly when Mike introduced me, and fell into a chair. Mike handed him the whisky. He drank it down obediently in one gulp, as though it were medicine. He coughed a little, but already the color was coming back to his face.

  Mike sat on the edge of the table and lit his pipe. He blew a few thoughtful puffs into the air. "Now let's have it."

  "Have it?" The young man looked startled. "Oh, you mean about the bear?"