Plain Tales of the North

9781465619440

208 pages

Library of Alexandria

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Overview

I know a lonely grave far north in Saskatchewan. It lies on a high bank, facing a small lake, under a cluster of old jack-pines. There is no cross on that grave, neither is there a name. Four logs, nailed in a square and half-buried in the grey moss, mark the spot where fifteen years ago two old Indians, man and wife, dug a hole six by four and laid to rest a white woman, a mere girl, a bride of a few months. Fifteen years have passed. But after all these years her memory still lingers with the few Indians who saw her come into the wilderness, wither under the fierce blast of the Arctic winter and die as the snow left the ground and spring came. She was an American of gentle birth, refined and delicate. Her husband brought her there in a spirit of adventure. He was a strong man, rough and accustomed to the North. She loved him. She struggled bravely through the winter, but the fierce Arctic climate, the utter solitude, the coarse food—these she could not stand. At length, while the man was away for several days tending his traps, she laid herself on the rude cabin bunk and died, all alone. There the Indians found her white and still, and buried her a few hundred yards from the shack, on the edge of the lake. The man came back later—then left at once. He is a squaw man now—trapping and hunting in the neighborhood. Each year his sleigh and his canoe pass along the lake, a stone’s throw from where she lies under the jack-pines. Not once has he stopped even to glance at the spot where she bravely lived with him and died alone. You will find crosses, inscriptions, some kind of token of remembrance on all the Indian graves. Her grave alone, in the Far North, bears neither cross nor name—just four logs, nailed together in a square, half-buried in the grey moss.