At the appointed time I sat on the beach waiting for the Indian. He did not come and there was no sign of his boat.
An Indian woman came down the bank carrying a heavy not-walking-age child. A slim girl of twelve was with her. She carried a paddle and going to a light canoe that was high on the sand, she began to drag it towards the sea.
The woman put the baby into the canoe and she and the girl grunted and shunted the canoe into the water, then they beckoned to me.
“Go now,” said the woman.
“Go where?”
“Yan.–My man tell me come take you go Yan.”
“But–the baby–?”
Between Yan and Masset lay ugly waters–I could not–no, I really could not–a tippy little canoe–a woman with her arms full of baby–and a girl child–!
The girl was rigging a ragged flour sack in the canoe for a sail. The pole was already placed, the rag flapped limply around it. The wind and the waves were crisp and sparkling. They were ready, waiting to bulge the sack and toss the canoe.
“How can you manage the canoe and the baby?” I asked the woman and hung back.
Pointing to the bow seat, the woman commanded, “Sit down.”
I got in and sat.
The woman waded out holding the canoe and easing it about in the sand until it was afloat. Then she got in and clamped the child between her knees. Her paddle worked without noise among the waves. The wind filled the flour sack beautifully as if it had been a silk sail.
The canoe took the water as a beaver launches himself–with a silent scoot.
The straight young girl with–black hair and eyes and the lank print dress that clung to her childish shape, held the sail rope and humoured the whimsical little canoe. The sack now bulged with wind as tight as once it had bulged with flour. The woman’s paddle advised the canoe just how to cut each wave.
We streaked across the water and were at Yan before I remembered to be frightened. The canoe grumbled over the pebbly beach and we got out.
We lit a fire on the beach and ate.
The brave old totems stood solemnly round the bay. Behind them were the old houses of Yan, and behind that again was the forest. All around was a blaze of rosy pink fireweed, rioting from the rich black soil and bursting into loose delicate blossoms, each head pointing straight to the sky.
Nobody lived in Yan. Yan’s people had moved to the newer village of Masset, where there was a store, an Indian agent and a church.
Sometimes Indians came over to Yan to cultivate a few patches of garden. When they went away again the stare in the empty hollows of the totem eyes followed them across the sea, as the mournful eyes of chained dogs follow their retreating masters.
Just one carved face smiled in the village of Yan. It was on a low mortuary pole and was that of a man wearing a very, very high hat of honour. The grin showed his every tooth. On the pole which stood next sat a great wooden eagle. He looked down his nose with a dour expression as a big sister looks when a little sister laughs in church.
The first point at the end of Yan beach was low and covered with coarse rushes. Over it you could see other headlands point after point. . .jutting out, on and on. . .beyond the wide sweep of Yan beach to the edge of the world.
There was lots of work for me to do in Yan. I went down the beach far away from the Indians. At first it was hot, but by and by haze came creeping over the farther points, blotting them out one after the other as if it were suddenly aware that you had been allowed to see too much. The mist came nearer and nearer till it caught Yan too in its woolly whiteness. It stole my totem poles; only the closest ones were left and they were just grey streaks in the mist. I saw myself as a wet rag sticking up in a tub of suds. When the woolly mist began to thread and fall down in rain I went to find the woman.
She had opened one of the houses and was sitting on the floor close to a low fire. The baby was asleep in her lap. Under her shawl she and the child were one big heap in the half-dark of the house. The young girl hugged her knees and looked into the fire. I sat in to warm myself and my clothes steamed. The fire hissed and crackled at us.
I said to the woman, “How old is your baby?”
“Ten month. He not my baby. That,” pointing to the girl, “not my chile too.”
“Whom do they belong to?”
“Me. One woman give to me. All my chiles die–I got lots, lots dead baby. My fliend solly me ’cause I got no more chile so she give this an’ this for mine.”
“Gave her children away? Didn’t she love them?” “She love plenty lots. She cly, cly no eat–no sleep–cly, cly–all time cly.”
“Then why did she give her children away?”
“I big fliend for that woman–she solly me–she got lots more baby, so she give this and this for me.”
She folded the sleeping child in her shawl and laid him down. Then she lifted up some loose boards lying on the earth floor and there was a pit. She knelt, dipped her hand in and pulled out an axe. Then she brought wood from the beach and chopped as many sticks as we had used for our fire. She laid them near the fire stones, and put the axe in the pit and covered it again. That done, she put the fire out carefully and padlocked the door.
The girl child guiding the little canoe with the flour-sack sail slipped us back through the quiet mist to Masset.
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