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They took to themselves Indian wives, with or without some form of marriage ceremony, and flung them aside when they grew tired of the tie or found it galling. There was another kind of squaw-man, the type represented by her father. He had joined his life to that of Matapi-Koma for better or worse until such time as death should separate them. In Jessie's bosom a generous indignation burned.
Had he not seen her go straight to his arms after her horrible experience with West? Matapi-Koma presently waddled out of the room and they could hear the clatter of dishes. "I told her I'd help her wash them if she'd wait," explained Jessie. "But she'd rather do them now and go to bed. My conscience is clear, anyhow." She added with a little bubble of laughter, "And I don't have to do the work.
"To the penitentiary, I hope, Mr. West, for breaking Her Majesty's revenue laws." All week Jessie and her foster-mother Matapi-Koma had been busy cooking and baking for the great occasion. Fergus had brought in a sack full of cottontails and two skunks. To these his father had added the smoked hindquarters of a young buffalo, half a barrel of dried fish, and fifty pounds of pemmican.
And he was a man who paid his debts. It was this factor of his make-up the obligation of old associations laid upon him that had taken him out to West with money, supplies, and a dog-train to help his escape. Jessie went out to find her father. Her eagerness to see him outflew her steps. This was not a subject she could discuss with Matapi-Koma.
The swift deftness and grace of her movements enticed him. The inflections of her warm, young voice set his pulses throbbing as music sometimes did. An ardent desire of her flooded him. She was the most winsome creature under heaven but she was not for him. Matapi-Koma sat at the head of the table, a smiling and benignant matron finished in copper.
She loved the trim lines of his clean beautiful youth and the soul expressed by them. Matapi-Koma waddled into the room and the Mounted Policeman transferred his attention to her. She weighed two hundred twelve pounds, but was not sensitive on the subject. Beresford claimed anxiously that she was growing thin. The Indian woman merely smiled on him benignantly. She liked him, as all women did.
"And 'I' for impudence," she retorted with a smile that robbed the words of offense. He was careful not to risk outstaying his welcome. After an hour he rose to go. His good-bye to Matapi-Koma and Onistah was made in the large living-room. Jessie followed him to the outside door. He gave her a word of comfort as he buttoned his coat, "Don't you worry about Win. I'll keep an eye on him."
Jessie burst into the big family room where Matapi-Koma sat bulging out from the only rocking-chair in the North woods. "Oh, Mother Mother!" the girl cried, and hugged the Cree woman with all the ardent young savagery of her nature. The Indian woman's fat face crinkled to an expansive smile. She had stalwart sons of her own, but no daughters except this adopted child. Jessie was very dear to her.
For any expression of it seemed like a reproach to Matapi-Koma and Onistah and Stokimatis, to her brother Fergus and in a sense even to her father. None the less her blood beat fast. What she had just found out meant that she could aspire to the civilization of the whites, that she had before her an outlook, was not to be hampered by the limitations imposed upon her by race.
"He's likely figurin' on losin' himself in the North woods." "My notion, too. Say, Tom, I have an invitation from a young lady for you and me. I'm to bring you to supper, Jessie McRae says. To-night. Venison and sheep pemmican and real plum pudding, son. You're to smoke the pipe of peace with Angus and warm yourself in the smiles of Miss Jessie and Matapi-Koma. How's the programme suit you?"
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