softened. Thinking the crisis was over, he holstered his gun. “The government intends to educate these children and make them Christians. It will be easier for everyone if you co-operate.”
“Who will look after him?” StarWoman asked, panic rising in her throat. “He needs me. He has seen only five summers.”
“He’ll be treated well. The house-mother at the school cares for the little Indians like they were her own.”
“But he is my son!” StarWoman protested.
The man’s patience was wearing thin. “As I told you before,” he said sharply, “you have no choice. The Indian Act says the boy has to go to school. Anyway, it’s not forever. You can fetch him home for two months every summer. Apart from that he’s the government’s responsibility until he’s fifteen.”
StarWoman lunged at the man, howling like a crazed animal, beating her fists against his chest and clawing at his face. “I will not let you take him, I will not, I will not.”
With a firm shove, the man pushed StarWoman away. She stumbled back and fell to the ground in convulsive sobs. He reached for his gun and aimed.
HeWhoWhistles acted without thinking, throwing himself on his wife, covering her and protecting her from the fire-stick that would surely kill her.
The white man’s finger trembled on the trigger. He had shot Indians before and hadn’t lost sleep over it, but not like this. Not in the back, not when they were already down. Indians were no better than dogs, but he wouldn’t even shoot a dog like this.
HeWhoWhistles held his breath, expecting to hear the explosion of the fire-stick and feel the burning stone rip through his back. Seconds passed. Apart from StarWoman’s stifled sobs there was silence.
A paper fluttered to the ground and landed by his head. “Here’s your pass. You and the boy can leave in the morning. The school term’s already started, so don’t dawdle. Anyway, you only have ten days; five there, five back. There’s a date on the pass. If you’re not back by that date, we’ll throw you in jail when we catch you. Understand?”
HeWhoWhistles had protected his woman from the fire-stick, but he couldn’t protect his son from the government.
CHAPTER THREE
Crooked Ear followed the child and his father for five days, his pads falling softly on the narrow trail, but when the forest ended and the track headed diagonally across a meadow, he would go no further. He needed to feel the protection of the trees. Open spaces made him anxious. So he sat on his haunches just within the tree line, one ear pricked to the sky, the other folded in half, his amber eyes following the two Uprights. The little one ran back to him and buried a wet face into his ruff, but the soothing feeling was not there.
The tall Upright took the little one by the hand and led him into the gentle waves of sun-bleached grass. Crooked Ear trembled and whined, wanting to follow, but the feral part of his nature kept him rooted. The little Upright vanished first, then the tall one disappeared. Their scent hung on the air, and Crooked Ear raised his nostrils to the breeze and inhaled. Then he sat on his haunches and waited.
Red Wolf reached out and clutched his father’s hand. In silence they walked the last few miles, their pace slowing until, some ten feet from the gate, they stopped.
“I am frightened,” Red Wolf whispered.
Man and boy stared through the iron bars of the gate to the large building that stood in a grassy clearing. It was like nothing they had ever seen; big, solid and symmetrical, with three rows of small barred windows neatly stacked, one on top of the other.
“I don’t want to go to school,” Red Wolf said, gazing without comprehension at the mandate etched over the main doorway: To rescue the heathens from their evil ways and integrate them into Christian society.
“We have no choice,” his father replied. “It is the white man’s law. You must learn their ways. It is the only hope for The People.”
The boy’s chin quivered. “I want to go home,” he said, the back of his hand quickly wiping a tear from his cheek.
Tears stung HeWhoWhistles’ eyes, but he would not allow them to fall.
“It will be exciting for you,” he said, forcing a smile, “like going to summer camp! You will have new friends to play with.”
Red Wolf remembered how he had felt each spring when his family left their small camp on the beach at Clear Lake and made the annual migration to the larger summer camp in the northern forest. It was exciting to pack the entire contents of their home into canoes and paddle for days across lakes and up rivers, sleeping under the stars, and waking to the calls of loons. He wished he were back in the canoe now, trailing a hand in the clear water, watching his father’s muscular shoulders, listening to the quiet dip of the paddle, the slap of a hand on a mosquito, or the rasp of fingernails on bitten flesh. He remembered how eager he had been to sleep in the new summer wiigwam, even though it was identical to the winter one, right down to the mats, the furs, and the birch-bark containers that they brought along. But he didn’t feel any excitement now, only apprehension and gut-wrenching sadness.
“Soon you will understand the white man’s signs just as you understand the signs of the animals,” HeWhoWhistles said, “then you will make marks and send them to me.”
The child lowered his head and stared at his feet, working the toe of his elk-hide moccasin into the dusty surface of the laneway. “But how will you understand the marks, Father?”
HeWhoWhistles sighed. “I will visit soon … as soon as they let me leave the reserve. Time will pass quickly. Winter will come. And go. And then you will return to us.”
The sound of a key turning in a lock brought father and son back to the world around them. They looked through the iron bars of the gate directly into the round face of a man who had not one hair on his head.
“You’re late. Very late! Days late!” the man said in stilted Algonquian. “Come. Biindigek. Hurry.”
He opened the gate and yanked the child through, slamming the bars in the face of HeWhoWhistles and turning the key with a loud clunk.
“I must see where he will be,” HeWhoWhistles demanded. “His mother, she must know.”
“Come back at the end of June,” the man shouted, dragging the child toward the building.
“June?” HeWhoWhistles said.
“When the sun is high in the sky,” the man explained. “When the days are long.”
“He needs this,” HeWhoWhistles protested, offering up an elk-skin pouch.
“Take it home!” the bald man yelled. “And get out of here right now or I’ll set the dog on you.”
Red Wolf dug in his heels and used all of his strength to resist the force of the big man who was taking him from his father. Impatient with the slow progress, the man gripped the boy’s ear and lifted him to his toes. Red Wolf squealed and lashed out blindly with his fists. The man let him go and doubled over, hands between legs, blotches of scarlet spreading up
