Our excursions to the small lake became almost a daily ritual for Kip and me. It was a beautiful walk and a lovely spot. No one seemed to resent us using the trail and sitting on the lakeshore or strolling through the pines, but no one seemed to pay much attention to us anyway. I still was unable to get the women to even acknowledge my presence. It was a very difficult time for me.
Wynn and I discussed it often at our supper table.
“Though these Indians are from the same tribe as our Beaver River Indians, they have not been exposed to the white man in the same way,” he reminded me. “In coming to this remote village, it is as though we stepped back in time. We live with a very primitive people, Elizabeth.”
Wynn sympathized with my need for friendship, but cautioned me to be patient and let the people have time to come to know and accept me. I secretly wondered just how long my patience would need to endure. I seemed to be getting nowhere.
Fall came with dry winds rustling the party-dressed leaves on the poplar trees and the birds twittering and instructing one another concerning their coming flight south. I loved the fall, but the thought of the coming winter, with no friends to help me see it through, concerned me. I needed to take action but I didn’t know what to do.
Then one day I had an idea. I was passing down the path to again walk to the lake when I noticed two women enter the village with baskets of berries. So there were berries around! I did want some for the winter ahead. I also saw it as an opportunity to “build a bridge.” Hadn’t it been berries that had brought me my first friends at Beaver River? I hurried home to find some kind of container.
I left Kip behind in the cabin. I didn’t want him to interfere in any way with my attempt to make friends. With a light step and heart, I went to find some village women.
I did not need to go far. Just down the trail from our cabin, two Indian women sat in the afternoon sun sewing buckskin moccasins. I approached them with my cooking pot extended and a smile on my lips.
As usual they stopped their chatter and lowered their eyes, but I was not to be discouraged so easily.
I greeted them with the proper Indian greeting. They did not return it as was the custom. I waited for a moment and when there was no response I raised the question.
“I want to pick berries,” I informed them with my limited vocabulary.
Still no response. They continued their work, seeming nervous at my presence, but they did not look up nor acknowledge me.
“Where can I find berries?” I tried to keep my voice friendly in spite of how I was beginning to feel, but it wavered some.
One of the women grunted, and they both picked up their work and went into the cabin.
I could have cried. How was I ever going to make friends in this strange new village? I was about to turn around and go home again when I spotted two younger women, their babies on their backs, stirring a blackened pot over an open fire. Perhaps the younger ones would be less hostile, I decided, and headed for them.
They too dropped their eyes and ceased speaking when I came near, though their eyes did lift occasionally to steal little glances at me.
I greeted them, but did not wait for their response. I hastened right on. “I want to pick berries and I not know where they are. Can you tell me, please?”
For a moment there was silence and then they exchanged brief looks. One of them shrugged slightly, but the other pointed to the west and said simply, “There.” It wasn’t much, and it certainly didn’t locate a patch for me, but it was the first word that had been spoken to me since I had entered their village. I smiled my thanks and started west.
I tramped around through the woods for the rest of the afternoon and still did not find a berry patch.
That night at our evening meal I told Wynn about my adventure of the day. He looked concerned, feeling my hurt at being rejected by this village, but we both acknowledged that it was a start—a small start.
“I’ve seen a patch or two as I’ve made my rounds,” Wynn informed me. “Let’s see if I can remember just where it was. Guess I didn’t pay enough attention because I knew all your canning jars were packed away—even if we did get them out and fill them, we’d have no place to store them. If we put them back on the wagon, they’d just freeze with our first cold spell.”
“Even if I just get a few for now, so that we can have some fresh and a pie or two,” I said, realizing that Wynn was right about preserving, “it would be nice for a change.”
Wynn nodded and took pencil and paper to draw me a crude little map.
The next morning I took Kip and my cooking pot, a sandwich for my lunch, and with Wynn’s map in hand I set out to find a berry patch.
It took a bit of looking but I finally found a patch big enough to fill my pot, and I settled down to the picking, humming to myself as the pot slowly filled.
I let Kip run while I picked. He took little ventures into the woods, chasing rabbits and worrying the squirrels, but he returned often to keep check on me.
Midday I stopped for my sandwich. I wished I had a cup of tea to go with it. I was not far from the stream, so I left my pot and strolled to the stream for a drink. The water was cool and refreshing. I splashed a little on my face and washed the blue stain from my hands.
Kip lapped at the water, wading out in it just far enough to reach it with his tongue without bending too much. The flowing water licked at his legs and swirled around his nose as he thrust it into the stream.
I picked up a short stick and played a game of chase-the-stick with Kip for a few minutes. By the time our game was over, Kip was dripping wet from chasing the stick out into the middle of the stream. I forgot to keep my distance, and when Kip left the stream he shook water all over my skirt. I laughed at myself and ran back toward the berry patch and my nearly full pot.
Kip ran on ahead of me, still shaking wetness as he ran. He seemed to know exactly where we were going and led me directly toward my cooking pot with its berries. He reached it first—or would have reached it had he not suddenly stopped dead still, his hackles bristling and his throat rumbling.
His eyes were fastened on the spot where I had left my berries, and my eyes lifted from Kip to search out the pot as well.
There, feasting undeservedly from my hard-earned berries, was a skunk. I held my breath, not daring to stir.
The skunk seemed undisturbed. I wanted him to stay that way. I had no desire at all to tangle with him. I put a hand down to restrain Kip, but I wasn’t fast enough.
Kip knew the berries were mine. He also knew that the skunk was an imposter. With his throat sending out warnings, he sprang forward to chase the skunk from the berry container.
It all happened so quickly I hardly had time to think. There was a flash as Kip left my side, the instant flag of the skunk’s tail, a brief skirmish, and then Kip was screaming in rage and pain and rolling his head around in the debris on the forest floor as a sickening and powerful smell rolled over us.
I looked up from Kip just in time to see the last of the skunk disappearing through the underbrush.
I hurried Kip back to the stream. I didn’t even need to throw in the stick for him to seek out the water. He plunged his whole head into its depths, burying himself in the coolness. His eyes stinging and his nose smarting, again and again he thrust his head into the stream.
It did nothing for the odor. It seemed to just grow worse and worse. I looked down at my skirt, then sniffed of my hands. Though I had not been sprayed directly by the skunk, I seemed to smell almost as bad as Kip. What in the world would I ever do now?
After Kip had received all the help he could get from the flowing stream, we went back to the berry patch to reclaim our pot.
I was tempted to leave it just where it sat. I knew from the concentration of the smell in the area that just to walk through the bushes and over the ground would cover my shoes and skirts with more of the offensive odor. Yet I couldn’t afford to leave the cooking pot behind. I had only one other with which to cook.
I found a long stick and stretched as far as I could to hook the pot and lift it to me. It slipped from the pole mid-air and clattered to the ground. Try as I might I could not get the handle hooked again. I finally gave up and, hoisting my skirt the best I could, waded through the short bushes and reclaimed my pot. As I had anticipated, it reeked!
I emptied out the rest of the berries, nearly crying as I watched them fall into a small pile on the ground, and headed once again for the stream. I used sand to scrub and scour my pot, but even so some of the smell seemed to cling to it. Whatever would I do? I needed that cooking pot.
At last we started for home.
“Kip, you stink!” I informed him as I slipped his leash back on, and then smiled in spite of myself—the pot calling the kettle black. I was sure I was just as offensive as the dog. And my cooking pot wasn’t much better.
I wondered just how in the world I would be able to get back into the village without causing chaos.
“Well, at least they won’t be able to ignore me,” I said to Kip with a grin. But I really wasn’t that amused by it all. We were in a terrible fix, and well I knew it. How in the world, and when in the world, would we ever be free of the odor?