VIII

It was a lovely morning. The prairie billowed away endlessly to the
south, and heaved away in vastness to the north; and the fresh, sharp air
sent the blood beating through the veins. In the bar-room some early
traveller was talking to Peter Galbraith. A wandering band of Indians
was camped about a mile away, the only sign of humanity in the waste.
Jen sat in the doorway culling dried apples. Though tragedies occur in
lives of the humble, they must still do the dull and ordinary task. They
cannot stop to cherish morbidness, to feed upon their sorrow; they must
care for themselves and labour for others. And well is it for them that
it is so.

The Indian camp brings unpleasant memories to Jen's mind. She knows it
belongs to old Sun-in-the-North, and that he will not come to see her
now, nor could she, or would she, go to him. Between her and that race
there can never again be kindly communion. And now she sees, for the
first time, two horsemen riding slowly in the track from Fort Desire
towards Galbraith's Place. She notices that one sits upright, and one
seems leaning forward on his horse's neck. She shades her eyes with her
hand, but she cannot distinguish who they are. But she has seen men tied
to their horses ride as that man is riding, when stricken with fever,
bruised by falling timber, lacerated by a grizzly, wounded by a bullet,
or crushed by a herd of buffaloes. She remembered at that moment the
time that a horse had struck Val with its forefeet, and torn the flesh
from his chest, and how he had been brought home tied to a broncho's