'A big wolf, and if my horse had n't got scared I'd 'a' shot him,' he answered. The foxes are shy and you never see them. A large bear looted Jack W.'s cabin. Just tore things loose and carried off his bacon. A wolf carried off a fresh beef hide from the white settler's place two weeks ago. That's all the news. I have no paper from the U. S. and I wonder what they are doing there. Those clippings would be interesting- I hope you are saving them. Politics and world happenings, you know. August 24, 1926 Have n't a minute to spare, as winter is n't far off, but must write you a few lines, as I know you'll be anxious about us up here in this vast wilderness. I am still living in a tent and cooking over a camp fire, and it appears to be very healthy, judging by how dirty we get to be. I smell like a smoked herring. No well dug yet, so we get water from the river, and very good water it is. A large bear is prowling around, but not having shells for bears I can't tackle it yet. I have fifty-six traps of all kinds, which is just one twentieth of what the other trappers have, but I will get more if I catch any fur. The trading post trades you anything you want for fur, charging about four times what it's worth, plus the freight in. This trading is very interesting indeed. Suppose I take some eggs or butter to the store. They'll offer me, say, fifty cents a pound or dozen. 'Shabbynacky,' or else I can take it home. There is no cash business done at all. But it's not 'so worse,' as one man said. The trader will buy you anything from the 'outside' you want, from a box of salve to a threshing machine, providing you have it coming. Furs dropped in price fifty per cent here when the U. S. put a fifty per cent tariff on raw furs. So the poor Indian 'gets it in the neck.' The trader plays safe. I went horseback over to see a family living seven miles from us and learned quite a bit about setting the traps. The breeds are really beginning to like us. One smiled at us and joked me about being a barber when he passed by to-day and I was trimming Daddy's hair out in the sunshine in front of the tent. They are a very quiet, silent race, but once a friend, it's forever true. Our homestead is in a bend of the river and has some low hills at the back, where it is thirty feet higher than the river. There is a small lake and a slough with muskrats in it, partly on our place, and the lake on the homestead for Karl to locate on when he is eighteen years old. I expect to make our living catching the rats and a few foxes. The fur is so scarce that the trappers go far inland and have trap lines a hundred miles long. But that leaves what there is here for me; and foxes can run, so I'll get some, I'm sure, and rats always live in sloughs. We have been very busy putting up hay. Daddy can't work hard, but he got a job from the white settler to ride the big mower for him for a few days, and in return his breeds stacked up what hay we'll need for the winter. The hay grew on our homestead, which is nearly all cleaned good hay ground. There is plenty of hay around here, as the white settler has set fires for forty years and cleaned up for fifty miles around his place for his stock to I have warm blankets and quilts and a moose hide to make us moccasins and ten pounds of wool yarn to knit up, and I shall cut one blanket up for clothing and lining coats and vests. We'll make it fine. Vegetables never fail here, nor grain or berries. By salting one spot against the prevailing wind, deer and moose can be got easily. There are big fish in the river. The Lord is my Shepherd once more, and He only helps those that help themselves. My two good friends will never get over it, I fear. They are shocked to death. So frail, Daddy so old, boy so young. But that's what makes it so interesting. Not to go to a poorhouse, nor crawl on my belly in an irrigated garden for a living. As I look at the river on three sides, where there will never be a sign of human habitation in sight, I am monarch of all I survey From the centre all round to the sea. We were so tired of half rations, so sick of the struggle. I expect hardships, welcome them, but it will be on a full belly and I can stand it. September 6, 1926 My conscience is troubling me very much. I tried to doctor a sick soul and gave a sedative instead of using the surgical knife. The white settler has a dear little daughter, just twenty-two years old. I never thought I'd find a woman smaller than I, but this girl is, and so pretty and sweet. They grow that way up here in the woods. I mean, sweet. All the young girls are that way. Their eyes are shy and timid and I could n't hurt them. The white settler has so many kids, and the girls range in age from ten to twenty-three and there are seven unmarried and all are just as I have described them. M. is the one that haunts my wakeful hours at night. Which reminds me of a verse in the Bible, which says, if I remember right, "The poor are always with us.' For M. told me the first day I met her, "The breeds are here, and we must accept them and treat them like human beings.' Daddy said the same and we are doing it. All breeds are not alike, but the big majority have strong backs and weak heads. Among the exceptions is one named N. That's his first name. He is nearly white, tall, very strong, and would pass for a Frenchman 'outside.' But here he's just a breed, and among his fellows looks like one. He has always worked at the ranch and played with the children as he grew up, and fell in love with M. Her parents have forbidden her to ever think of marriage with a breed. M. has refused eight white trappers, to share their cabins, and I don't blame her. I haven't seen one yet as nice as N. Yes, he wipes the dishes for her every day and they look anywhere except at each other when anyone is looking, but when they're alone blue eyes look at soft black eyes. He eats with the breeds at their table and this little act of wiping the dishes is his one happy moment after each meal. Dear Doctor-Lady, I wish you could see them together. So happy and yet so unhappy. Then one day M. broke down and cried and told me. And I comforted her, assuring her everything would come out all right and that N. was a very good man. I could n't bear to see her cry and I forgot that she will have breed children if she marries N. My sympathy made me do wrong. For I don't want breed grandchildren myself. I can't think of anything more horrible than to have grandchildren with strong backs and weak heads. For breeds are just big children. If I had expressed my horror at such a union as she contemplates, my conscience would be clear and I'd feel like a brute. What shall I do? Just let nature take its course? Am I, a woman from the 'outside' and well informed, responsible for this? She said she was going to marry him or die an old maid. It's too bad that we are fifteen miles from the white settler. Karl gets so lonesome for children. I play with him some, but it's not the same. He knows the name of every breed around here and quite a few Indians. He has also made a friend of the Mounted Police, who is nicknamed 'Baldy' and is a rather young-looking man with a splendid appearance, as if he had just stepped out of a storybook. But they lead a very strenuous life here, protecting the white settler and keeping the Indians peaceful. There is only one at each fort and their days are full of danger, and braver men never lived. Baldy has told Karl many stories of his own exploits and of another who was his partner a few years back, but got shot by a murderer who was quicker on the trigger than he was that time. Full many a league o'er prairie wild Our trackless path must be, And round it roam the fiercest tribes But danger from their savage bands We bear no lifted banner, So among uneducated, silent Indians, childlike breeds, and trappers of the fur, Boy's life will be spent. But already I see a change in him. He is more manly, more to be depended on. He realizes that we are in a new, wild country and that I depend on him to make a home here and provide the necessities of life. The silence almost gets me. For two weeks I have n't seen a white person, and we, Boy and I, have been alone. Daddy had to appear in person at the nearest land office to file on our homestead and he left us on the twenty-seventh of August. He will most likely be back the end of this week. Boy and I have been so lonely without him. But the law has to be complied with, and by homesteading himself, if he should die before Boy is of age, I also get a homestead, besides the right to prove up his homestead should he die before it is proved up or after. He is very anxious for Boy to get a good farm and enough to pasture stock on. It's possible to get half a section, besides Boy's homestead, right at eighteen years of age this way. I think that Daddy will be with us a good many years yet, but he does n't think so, though I tell him that 'creaking hinges last a long time.' You can't get a breed or an Indian to live alone. They are the most childish and superstitious mortals I've ever heard of. Their fears simply get them. 'What are you afraid of?" I ask them. 'I don't know' is all the answer I get, or 'I won't stay alone - I can't.' My health is better here and Karl is growing so fast I can just see him grow, and he is just as chubby. So the climate so far agrees with us. I hope you are well, too, and happy. October 25, 1926 This will be just a few lines to let you know that I'm well and we're all feeling good. Winter is here, snow on the ground, and we are still in a tent, but building on our cabin. It's not very cold, except in spells, and I have a heater up besides the old cookstove. There is no soul closer than seven miles - not even an Indian. All are away on their trap lines. We had fish for supper last night and prairie chicken for dinner. Just as a battle looks more terrible to those far away than to the one in the fray, so this must look that way to you. It's pioneering, I'll say, but I think we'll winter through all right. I do wish we had a house and barn, but will dig away at it and by next winter we'll have it. I have a roof over the kitchen stove and three walls to that, but have to cut lots of logs yet for the rest. Old winter will be a snorter in another month and I must go to work again. Can't wait a minute. Thank you for the paper. The mail is a bright spot in our life, a window to look out on the big 'outside.' The river is n't running ice yet, but will any day, and then the mail will be once a month and I may not be able to get it regular, as it's over thirty miles away and I have no dog team. I saw a dog team this week. A trapper passed through with five dogs. I gave him his dinner and then I kissed each of his dogs on the forehead and hugged them and cried a little over them. He vowed he'd never whipped them and I told him right to his face he was a liar. Such beautiful dogs, and their hearts were broken; their tails turned down and slicked tight to their stomachs at the sound of his voice. This country is 'hell' for dogs and Indians. The Indians are in the grip of the fur traders and are robbed terribly, and just starve along, always in debt to the traders. And the traders just hate white settlers and manage to keep them out. We are the only ones to come in this year. Those that came before have most of them gone out again, but I intend to stick. If I get through this winter I'll make it. It's a wonderful country, a bracing climate, and I love it. The fairy-tale book and Robinson Crusoe have been a godsend for Boy. Just what he needed for his mind. He has his sled and a hill to slide on, a dog to play with, and he is getting to be an expert with the big axe. Much better than I am. Well, it's going to be a hard time for me for a while, but I'm game. So much is at stake. January 18, 1927 Just think, I've been to a party. A real party, and it seems just too good to be true; and a year from now there'll be another one. But first I must tell you about the Preacher, because he enters so much into our lives. The English Church sends us one missionary and we call him 'the Preacher.' The old one was pensioned and sent to England the week we arrived here. He thought he could ride his circuit as usual and the result was he was found wandering in a muskeg, by the Indians. He had started out with a sandwich in his pocket and no mosquito bar, and when found was out of his head. It's no trouble to get lost here at all. I never venture over a quarter of a mile from home without the dog. When I want to go home I tell him to go ahead and show me the way. Our new Preacher is just out of college. He's a dandy real good-looking, young, jolly. Can sing a rollicking college song or dance a jig. He is very modern, immaculately dressed, and rides like all Englishmen-bumpety-bump. It looks so unnatural. We enjoy his visits very much and he has called four times already. There are so few here that it does n't take long to get around. No, the teacher got cold feet at the last minute and would n't come. She was a strong, husky Scotch woman, and if she'd come we'd have got along fine and got our cabins built. Yes, I read your proposition of the irrigated land; I know all about truck, fruit, and apples and the marketing of it, too. It sounds nice, but when you can't sell what you raise, what then? Freight rates are so high that the selling price of the stuff won't cover it. There are no markets in the West. Some day I'll tell you of five years spent on an irrigated ranch. I'm grateful for the offer, but never again will I crawl on my belly for nothing. February 9, 1927 There are just 131 civilized in here. By 'civilized' I mean speaking English and wearing clothes. Of these, thirtyone are white, and I can count the white women on my fingers. The Preacher is a mine of information and our newspaper. He likes us and is delighted to think we are really settling here. We sometimes talk about the 'Bonny Lassie' left in England and the aged mother who won't sell her antique and cherished old furniture and silver because she's keeping it to move right into the 'Vicarage' when he becomes 'the Vicar' of the little village church. He loves the freedom here and says he can't go back to the narrow life of the English vicar. The Bonny Lassie is planning on coming here this summer. Won't that be fine? Pretty rough on this gentle English girl to live amongst Indians and trappers, but I know she and I will be the best of friends and she's a brick if she comes. It's a selfimposed exile for me and will be for her, too. Love for your mate makes you daring, but it has its compensations. February 11, 1927 These civilized people are scattered over a couple of thousand square miles. Many live in teepees and the rest in log cabins, except two or three who have board cabins. Mr. L.'s house was built by his father forty years ago of boards sawed with a handsaw. Some labor. He gives a party once a year after Xmas. The Preacher was so afraid we would n't go that he came after us. It's hard to find the trail in the snow and it's a perfect maze to me, but we arrived at 7 P.M. and after a hot supper the L. children gave their school programme of music, recitations, songs, and dances. They have a big schoolhouse in the back yard and the eldest daughter teaches them. After the programme the dining room and big kitchen were cleared for dancing. Everybody was there except five and the Catholic Mission. The white women were elderly wives who had followed their husbands in here. Old-fashioned, unbobbed, and with long skirts. But it was like coming home, so warm was the welcome I received from this lonesome sisterhood. They held my hands so long; they did n't want to let them go. They were nearly all from the States. One had gone insane not very bad; you could see her mind was shattered. You know it takes some mental calibre to come in here and live alone and not see a white woman more than once or twice a year. If you have n't much in your head the lonesomeness will get you. This woman is poor white trash from the cotton fields of Texas. She knows nothing but work. I questioned her about her life here in order to learn what I could of the loneliness that makes insanity among sheep herders and farm women. I see by one of your letters that you have no conception of how far north I am. Calgary is a large city crowded with cars. Farther north is Edmonton, also a big city. Next comes Peace River, a small town at the end of the railroad. It has some autos and two wooden hotels. Each hotel has a bathroom in it, but you have to carry your water up from the creek and heat it on the kitchen range if you want to take a |