CHAPTER XIV
"ON THE LONG TRAIL"
"Bio Blanket, is it?" said Gillington. "Just look his name up, Otway. Two wives and six children, eh? Got them all here, has he? Well, Francois, tell him to go ahead and name them so I'll know he hasn't swapped any since last year. Otway, I guess I'll want out another box of the paper."
The Treaty-clerk disappeared into the little tent, and Gillington pushed his hat back from his heated, florid face, and nodded as the immovable Big Blanket introduced his family, one by one, through the interpreter.
"Little Cow, she old wife," said Big Blanket, thrusting the wrinkled wisp of womanhood forward. "Glory-of-the-eyes, she new." Then he ranged up the berry-brown, laughing children, and told them over. "Violette. Piapot. Song-of-all-the-birds. Apisis. Smoke. Beak-of-the-eagle." He stretched his hands for the little packet of dollar-bills, done up neatly in fives, as Gillington paid them down on the big box in front of the little box on which he sat.
Word by word Francois translated as Gillington spoke.
"Payuk, nesoo, nisto, naoo, nayanun, Nikoowasik. Those packets are for the children, Big Blanket. Three more lots for yourself and the wives, making kakut mitatut in all. Nine sets for Big Blanket, Otway. What's that, Doc.?"
The heat of the sun poured over him as he turned where the grey smoke from a mosquito-smudge blew sideways, hiding and revealing the silent knots of Indians—Chipewyans, Doglegs and Yellow Knives—who had come to Fort Resolution on the Great Slave Lake for their yearly payment of the Treaty money. And this Treaty money is the pledge of the Canadian Government that it will stand by
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