Now, Madeline, the Mission girl, was an orphan. Her white father
had failed to give a bald-faced grizzly the trail one day, and
had died quickly. Then her Indian mother, having no man to fill
the winter cache, had tried the hazardous experiment of waiting
till the salmon-run on fifty pounds of flour and half as many of
bacon. After that, the baby, Chook-ra, went to live with the good
Sisters, and to be thenceforth known by another name.
But Madeline still had kinsfolk, the nearest being a dissolute
uncle who outraged his vitals with inordinate quantities of the
white man's whisky. He strove daily to walk with the gods, and
incidentally, his feet sought shorter trails to the grave. When
sober he suffered exquisite torture. He had no conscience. To
this ancient vagabond Cal Galbraith duly presented himself, and
they consumed many words and much tobacco in the conversation
that followed. Promises were also made; and in the end the old
heathen took a few pounds of dried salmon and his birch-bark
canoe, and paddled away to the Mission of the Holy Cross.
It is not given the world to know what promises he made and what
lies he told--the Sisters never gossip; but when he returned, upon
his swarthy chest there was a brass crucifix, and in his canoe
his niece Madeline.
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