Klee Wyck - Emily Carr [39]
The scraggy ponies dragged their feet heavily; sweat cut rivers through the dust that was caked on their sides.
One of the three men on the front seat of the wagon seemed to be a hero. The other men questioned him all the way, though generally Indians do not talk as they travel. When one of the men fell off the seat he ran round the wagon to the high side and jumped up again and all the while he did not stop asking the hero questions. There were so many holes in the road and the men fell off so often that they were always changing places, like birds on a roost in cold weather.
Suddenly we gave such an enormous bump that we all fell off together, and the horses stopped. When the wheels were not rattling any more we could hear water running. Then the old man came out of the clouds of dust behind us and said there was a stream close by.
We threw ourselves on to our stomachs, put our lips to the water and drank like horses. The Indians took the bits out of their horses’ mouths and gave them food. Then the men crawled under the wagon to eat their lunch in its shade; I sat by the shadiest wheel. It was splendid to put my legs straight out and have the earth support them and the wheel support my back. The old man went to sleep.
After he woke and after the horses had pulled the wagon out of the big hole, we rumbled on again.
When the sun began to go down we were in woods, and the clouds of mosquitoes were as thick as the clouds of dust, but more painful. We let them eat us because, after bumping for seven hours, we were too tired to fight.
At last we came to a great dip where the road wound around the edge of a ravine shaped like an oblong bowl. There were trees growing in this earth bowl. It seemed to be bottomless. We were level with the tree-tops as we looked down. The road was narrow—its edges broken.
I was afraid and said, “I want to walk.”
Aleck waved his hand across the ravine. “Kitwancool,” he said and I saw some grey roofs on the far side of the hollow. After we had circled the ravine and climbed the road on the other side we would be there, unless we were lying dead in that deep bowl.
I said again, “I want to walk.”
“Village dogs will kill you and the little dog,” said Aleck. But I did walk around the bend and up the hill, until the village was near. Then I rode into Kitwancool on the oatsack.
The dogs rushed out in a pack. The village people came out too. They made a fuss over the hero-man, clustering about him and jabbering. They paid no more attention to me than to the oatsack. All of them went into the nearest house taking Aleck, the hero, the old man and the other man with them, and shut the door.
I wanted to cry, sticking alone up there on top of the oats and lumber, the sagging horses in front and the yapping dogs all round, nobody to ask about anything—and very tired. Aleck had told me I could sleep on the verandah of his father’s house, because I only had a cot and a tent-fly with me, and bears came into the village often at night. But how did I know which was his father’s house? The dogs would tear me if I got down and there was no one to ask, anyway.
Suddenly something at the other end of the village attracted the dogs. The pack tore off and the dust hid me from them.
Aleck came out of the house and said, “We are going to have dinner in this house now.” Then he went in again and shut the door.
THE WAGON was standing in the new part of the village. Below us, on the right, I could see a row of old houses. They were dim, for the light was going, but above them, black and clear against the sky stood the old totem poles of Kitwancool. I jumped down from the wagon and came to them. That part of the village was quite dead. Between the river and the poles was a flat of green grass. Above, stood the houses,