Sharp County record., 1880-01-15

and the dim mOOnbeamS peered through
the underbrush and rank grass that
grows on the breeding grounds Of the
wild water fowl, Wakuzza, exhausted
with her long continued work, tied the
canoe to bush with a deer sinew, and
after carefully propping it away from
the bank with a paddle, so as to leave
no tell-tale mark, she hll asleep. Awak-
ing to find the sun high above her, she
again bent over her paddle, and the ca
noe sped up the sluggish stream FOR
three days Wakuzza worked without
food. Then she rested. Setting snares,
she caught swamp rabbits. When she
had five of these saved as a little store
of food she again padded. The stream
became embargoed with the remains OF
old beaver dams, and spread OUT lnIO
shallow marshes Of great area. She had
to carry her canoe over the dams, 10
wade in the water and mud, and drag
the boat OF push it ahead OF her. Inc
water fowl were nesting, and she gath
cred eggs from their nests 1or 1000.
For two weeks, with matchlesS courage,
she pressed on through this marShy
waste of the north to the northwest.
One evening her heart rose with thud
TO her throat as she saw the White'tOps
Of the mountains as the sun sank slowly
behind them.
That night she got her foot on dry
land, and the next day she reached the
noint under the cliff where the grove Of
snruce was. Lost in the wildS of the
north, she gave up the attempt to join
tbe Dog-Ribbed Indians. Free from the
Athabascas, she concluded to build q
hut of the fallen trees and to live in the
little grove the rest of her life. Work
ing steadily with great labor she built
the hut. Then she built her fire. She
sat, poor woman, and pounded two sui
phurouS stones together to produce
sparks, which she hoped would fall on
the bits of punk she had gathered. For
a whole day she pounded the stones,
and the rare patience was at last re-
warded. That night, for the first time
in two months, Wakuzza ate cooked
meat.
Her entire capital for her start in her
new life consisted of the bit of iron hoop,
the awl, a few deer sinews, her youth,
her perfect physique, and a solitude.
She shared grouse and rabbits she
trapped beaver and pOrcupine; once she
shared deer. She made, and Orna-
mented highly, dresses of skin and fur.
She was at rest, happy and cheerful.
When the gentle wind blew through the
spruce boughs she said it sounded to her
like the coOing of her dead baby, and
then she was very happy. The tracks
that had been her betrayal she had
made in hunting for signs of game.
She was anxious to increase the number
of her deadfall traps.
Humbly she told her story as she,
again captive, sat at the foreign camp
fire. Anxiously she looked from face to
face of the members of tho ossplor,ing
party to see if she had their sympathy.
The story of the murder of her family
and of the crushing of her infants head
was received with shouts of laughter by
the Athabasca Indians. Turning her
dark eyes and handsome, grave face to
the Scotchman, she begged him to take
her for his slave, to say that he desired
her. Bending before him she, with the
intense language of the Indian tongue,
begged for salvation, as a lost soul might
beg at Gods Judgment bar. Coldly the
red-haired Scot refused her. He did not
want another woman, he said. Cool
and unsympathetic, McAlpine was
wholly untouched by the grandeur and
richness of the woman's character, so
fully revealed by her story, and by the
evidences of her hut, its comforts and
luxuries, and the cleanliness and pretti-
ness of her clothing, and the skill and
patience with which, unaided and alone,
She had triumphed over adverse cir
cumstances that would have been ia
tai to most men, and through all
had preserved a girls sweetness
and cheerfulness. 1t did not touch him.
Her helplessness did not move him. Her
rare beauty did not warm him-and he
has left it on record that she was the
finest Indian woman in face and figure
he had ever seen. He shut the door of
his Shetland heart against her-not with
q slam, but quietly-because he could
make nothing by her. He had silently
ciphered her up, and there was no
money in her; on the other hand, some
expense, perhaps some trouble. Yet he
acknowledged the wonderful heroism of
her achievement, and saw that in the
rich success of her solitary life in the
arctic SHOWS she was almost super
humanity endowed. And her young
loveliness? He well knew that the In
dian men under his command would kill
each other to get her. Yet he did not
beckon her to him and put his arm
around her, and wave back the Atha-
bascan brutes, and say "This woman is
mine.n No. The factor from the Shet-
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