The Kenna record. (Kenna, Roosevelt County, N.M.) 190?-1924, 1913-10-03


summers his boots smelt fishy. What
happened first or afterwards Is all
mixed up, but there's the smoke smell
and sister Maggie lying in the bunk,
all white and froze.
There's fish smell, and Polly who
used to wallop me with a slipper,
lying white and froze. And yet |
knew she couldn't get froze in sum-
mer.
Then there's smoke smell, and big
Tommy, bigger nor father throwing
up blood. | said he'd catch it from
mother for messing the floor, but
father just Rugged me, telling me to
shut up. l axed him If Tommy was
going to get froze, too. Then father
told me that Tommy was going away
to where the milk came out of COW.
You just shove the can opener into
the COW so-and the milk pours out,
vegi tables, which is green things to
eat. First time you swell up and
pretty nigh bust, but you soon get
used to greens. Tommy is going to
Civil cation. It's months and months
off, and when you get there, the
people is so awful mean they'd let
stranger starve to death without so
much as Come in" The men wear
pants right down to their heels, and
as to the women
Mother comes in and looks at father,
so he forgets to say about the women
at Civil cation, but other times he'd
tell, oh, lots of stories. He SAID it
was worse for the likes of us than
New Jerusalem.
reckon Tommy died, and Joan, too,
and mother would get gaunt and dry,
rocking herself 1.-The Lord gave"
she'd say, land the Lord hath taken
away; blessed be the name of the
Lord"
There was only Pete and me left,
and father wagging his pipe acrost the
stove at mother. They'll die, ma am"
heard him say, and she just shifted.
''If hadn't, taken 'em out doors they'd
be dead now, ma'am."
She called him an injun. She called
him-I dunno what she didl't call him.
I'd been asleep, and when l woke up
she was cooking breakfast while she
called him a lot more things she must
have forgot to say. But he carried
me in his arms out through the little
low door, and it was stabbing cold
| with a blaze of northern lights.
He tucked me up warm on the ko-
matik, he hitche6 up the huskies, and
mushed, way up the tickle, and
through the soft bush snow, and at
sunup we made his winter tilt on Torn
gak Creek. We put in the winter
there, Turing, and every time he
came home from the round of traps,
he'd sell me all the pelts. l was sure
ly proud when he took me hunting fur
and cartridges. l was with him to
the fishing, in the fall we'd hunt, all
winter we'd. trap till it was time for
the sealing, and only two or three
times in a year we'd be back TO
mother
Then I'd see Pete, too, who'd got
pink, with a splitting cough. He want
ed to play with me, but l wouldn't
just couldn't. l hated to be anywheres
near him.
Didn't l tell yez?" father would
point at Pete coughing. Didn't
warn yez?"
But mother set her mouth In a thin
line.
Pete" said she, "is saved"
Next time we come mother was all
alone.
1.-The Lord gave," she says land
| I hot fob
be the name of the Lord. but tie get
ting kind of monotonous,"
She hadn't much to say then, she
didn't seem to care, but was just
numb He wrapped her up warm on
the komatik, with just a sack of
clothes, her Bible, and the album of
photos from Nova Scotia, yes, and the
china dogs she carried in her arms.
Father broke the trail ahead, took
the gee pole, and when day came. we
made the winter tilt. There mother
KEEP house just as she would at home,
so clean we was almost scared to step
indoors.
1t was along in March or maybe
April that father was away in coarse
weather, making the round of his
traps. He didn't come back There'd
been a blizzard, a wolf-howling hurri
cane, blowing out a lane of bare
ground round the back of the cabin
while the big drift piled higher and
packed harder, until the comb of II
grew out above our roof like a sea
breaker. froze so you could walk on
the overhang. And just between dark