The Buffalo Runners | Page 3

could not have been found a lazier or more good-natured or good-for-nothing couple than La Certe and his spouse. Love was, if we may venture to say so, the chief element in the character of each. Love of self was the foundation. Then, happily, love of each other came next. Rising gracefully, the superstructure may be described as, love of tobacco, love of tea, love of ease, and love of general comfort, finishing off with a top-dressing, or capital, of pronounced, decided, and apparently incurable love of indolence. They had only one clear and unmistakable hatred about them, and that was the hatred of work. They had a child about four years of age which was like-minded--and not unlike-bodied.
In the wilderness, as in the city, such individuals are well-known by the similarity of their characteristics. It is not that they can't work, but they won't work--though, of course, if taxed with this disposition they would disclaim it with mild indignation, or an expression of hurt remonstrance, for they are almost too lazy to become enraged. "Take life easy, or, if we can't take it easy, let us take it as easy as we can," is, or ought to be, their motto. In low life at home they slouch and smile. In high life they saunter and affect easy-going urbanity--slightly mingled with mild superiority to things in general. Whatever rank of life they belong to they lay themselves out with persistent resolution to do as little work as they can; to make other people do as much work for them as possible; to get out of life as much of enjoyment as may be attainable--consistently, of course, with the incurable indolence--and, to put off as long as may be the evil day which, they perceive or suspect, must inevitably be coming.
The curious thing about this race of beings is, that, whether in high or low station, they are never ashamed of themselves--or of their position as drones in the world's hive. They seem rather to apologise for their degradation as a thing inevitable, for which they are not accountable-- and sometimes, in the case of the rich, as a thing justifiable.
"I'm glad I did not go to the plains this fall," said La Certe, stirring the logs on the fire with his toe and emitting a prolonged sigh of mingled smoke and contentment, while a blast from the bleak nor'-west shook every blackened rafter in his little hut.
"Heel hee!" responded his wife, whose Indian name--translated--was Slowfoot, and might have been Slowtongue with equal propriety, for she was quite an adept at the art of silence. She frequently caused a giggle to do duty for speech. This suited her husband admirably, for he was fond of talking--could tell a good story, sing a good song, and express his feelings in a good hearty laugh.
"Yes, it will be hard for the poor boys who have gone to the plains, the weather is so awful, to say nothing of the women."
"Ho," replied Slowfoot--though what she meant to express by this no mortal knows--nor, perhaps, cares. It meant nothing bad, however, for she smiled seraphically and sent forth a stream of smoke, which, mingling with that just emitted by her husband, rose in a curling harmony to the roof.
Slowfoot was not a bad-looking woman as North American Indians go. She was brown unquestionably, and dirty without doubt, but she had a pleasant expression, suggestive of general good-will, and in the budding period of life must have been even pretty. She was evidently older than her husband, who might, perhaps, have been a little over thirty.
"I should not wonder," continued La Certe, "if the buffalo was drove away, and the people starved this year. But the buffalo, perhaps, will return in time to save them."
"Hm!" responded the wife, helping herself to some very strong tea, which she poured out of a tin kettle into a tin mug and sweetened with maple sugar.
"Do you know if Cloudbrow went with them?" asked the half-breed, pushing forward his mug for a supply of the cheering beverage.
"No, he stopped in his house," replied the woman, rousing herself for a moment to the conversational point, but relapsing immediately.
The man spoke in patois French, the woman in her native Cree language. For convenience we translate their conversation as near as may be into the English in which they were wont to converse with the Scotch settlers who, some time before, had been sent out by the Earl of Selkirk to colonise that remote part of the northern wilderness.
La Certe's father was a French Canadian, his mother an Indian woman, but both having died while he was yet a boy he had been brought or left to grow up under the care of an English woman who had followed the fortunes of the