A Pioneer Alaska Highway Vacation
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A Pioneer Alaska Highway Vacation |
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Chapter XI
The four boys who had dropped in for coffee just after midday dinner had left, heading north on some prospecting job, and Mary and I were sitting together in the window. “Here comes Mrs. Whitehorse Billy”, she exclaimed. “I hope she’s brought my mukluks.” A short, upright old Indian woman was coming down the trail. Opening the door, she peeped in, her broad face wreathed in smiles. She accepted Mary’s explanation of my presence – I had come, she told her, a long, long journey, from far across the sea, all the way from England – with beaming non-comprehension, nodding her head and repeating “far off – yes: very far – long way!” She produced a pair of brown moccasins and also the mukluks, soft hide boots which keep out the cold and snow as nothing else will. The feet were of bleached moose hide, bead-embroidered: the legs of soft, pliable white caribou, banded with a strip of bear fur. Looking at Mrs. Whitehorse Billy’s gnarled brown fingers it was difficult to believe she had made them in three days! Sitting on the edge of her chair she looked on with interest while Mary tried one on. It was a rather tight fit for the addition of a sock, a defect which their maker declared could easily be remedied by soaking the foot of it in water and stretching it. Mary looked doubtful, wriggling her toes. “They might fit Norma,” she suggested, “she wants a pair.” Norma was the cook’s wife. “But I know she wants white ones too – no more white skin?” she asked the old woman. “No more white – plenty brown, but not more white till I go hunt, get more”, explained Mrs. Whitehorse Billy. “But,” she urged again, “you put in water – pull on stick - like this”, gesticulating, “stretch – make plenty big. Plenty big!” she reiterated, gazing at her handiwork. The universal art of persuasion! Mrs. Whitehorse Billy was but employing the technique by which her more sophisticated sisters mesmerize their prey into an unsuitable purchase. Mary next examined the moccasins, which were for her husband while I tried on one of the mukluks. For me it was far too big which its maker seemed to find intensely amusing and kept repeating “Two big yes? Much – too big – not fit!” and chuckling. Beneath a black coat, bunched round the middle with a leather belt she wore a once pink dress, mellowed by time and dirt to an indefinable duskiness. A silver cross hung by a strip of hide round her neck and her head was bound with a red scarf.
Mary told her she would keep the mukluks for Norma to try on, and sat down at her desk to make abstruse calculations about the cost of the moccasins to be balanced against various sums owed by the visitor for groceries purchased for her in Whitehorse. This took time as each item was minutely recalled and contested by Mrs. Whitehorse Billy. She had settled herself comfortably back in her chair and sat swinging her short legs, on one of which was a brown, and on the other a grey woolen stocking, gazing about her with the air of a pleased child. It was impossible to guess her age. Alert black eyes lit the flat face with its nut-like network of fine lines, and her teeth were worn down with constant chewing of skins and what she called ‘sinoo’. According to local repute, her husband had been murdered some years ago, the result of a quarrel with another Indian, but nobody really knew. Her home, temporarily, was two dingy tents beneath a tall spruce where the trail joined the Highway. The financial position finally agreed and the dollars for the moccasins counted into her hand, Mrs. Whitehorse Billy recited the list of her shopping requirements, in which flour and potatoes figured largely, for Mike to take with him next time he went into town. Then she wandered over to examine jackets and moccasins displayed on a counter beneath the stairs, for the Lodge was also a trading post for Indians goods. Fingering a fringed and bead embroidered skin jacket she enquired, “Who make – not mine?” Mary glanced up from her writing. “No, not yours – Mrs. Johnny Jones make”, she recalled. As one artist dismissing the work of another, Mrs. Whitehorse Billy gave the jacket a scornful twitch. “No good!” she pronounced. Previous Chapter | Next Chapter
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