Detour to Otherwhen ©
by K Pelle
Chapter 4
It was Mimi who noticed I was getting uptight and hurried back to the camper, coming back only moments later with a cup of coffee and quietly handing it to me. The wink and the twisted grin delivered along with the coffee probably did more for my sense of humour than the caffeine did, but that cup of coffee broke up the logjam of people around me. Anna and Ellen both headed toward the camper hurriedly and Mimi followed them, but only after giving me another wink and a toss of her head at the pain-in-the-butt neighbour.
That left me having to deal with only one person, that same nosy neighbour. Unfortunately, he was a little shrimp of a guy, obviously another case of tiny man syndrome, who reminded me of one of those little yapping beasts that women insist on calling 'lap-dogs.' I simply shrugged at his incessant noise, and even tried to ignore him by turning and walking away. After all, I couldn't argue with him. He was right, there had been a bear, but I had survived and so had the dog; just because he was right didn't make him my best buddy or my chief advisor. In fact he was rapidly becoming a pain that I couldn't scratch, at least not politely. Finally, because his voice was getting louder and shriller, I couldn't ignore him any longer.
"Look, fella, do you really think I owe you something for your warning?"
"What . . . why, no! But, really, you should have listened to me and . . ."
"Why?"
"What do you mean? You could have been killed while you slept and that would have ruined everyone's holiday."
"Just like you're ruining my holiday now, you mean?"
"Well . . . well . . . what am I doing to you?" his voice had risen even higher now, as if I'd offended him.
"You're hounding me about something that's over and done with, and now, you're shouting, so you're even disturbing the other people around us. Why don't you just shut up and go back to bed, so the rest of us can get over the bear attack, roll over and try to get some sleep?"
"That would be wonderful!" a woman's voice called from behind me.
"Just belt the little prick once or twice. He deserves it. He's nothing but a pain in the ass!" a guy's voice called.
"He's just a little know-it-all son-of-a-bitch, who sticks his nose in everyone else's business. It's too bad your dog didn't chase the bear to his campsite, so it could have eaten the little bastard. We might have had some peace and quiet then," another voice echoed the common sentiment.
"Yeah, the bears around here eat garbage, don't they? He qualifies!" A shrill woman's voice shrieked.
The little guy was twisting and staring around him as if trying to figure out who was bad-mouthing him, then he spun away from me and huffily stomped back toward his camper. He tried to slam the dor when he went inside, but camper doors aren't meant to be slammed. The window in the door popped right out of its frame and smashed to bits as it hit the ground. I don't know how I held back my laughter, but I did. Other campers weren't as polite and the little man's verbal reaction was unprintable, which just brought more laughter.
It wasn't long after he'd left that the girls came out of the camper, dressed to leave, so since we had to be in Canmore early, I got dressed, packed my tent and we left the campground. I suppose a lot of folks were glad to see us leave, but I'll bet if the 'pain in the butt' twerp had left at the same time they'd have all cheered loudly.
Twenty minutes later we were pulling up to the veterinarian's office in Canmore and I was surprised that someone was sitting in front of an open door as if waiting to meet us. A tall, blonde, 40ish woman, who could have auditioned for the part of a valkyrie in the movies, was sitting on the front step. To my surprise she was beaming a smile at us as we all climbed out of the vehicles.
"Good Morning. Are you the folks from Banff whose bitch had a run-in with Dietrich's bear-dog, Bruno, and then held a bear at bay so the ranger could tranquillize it?"
"Wow, you have a better rumour system around here than we do back home," I smiled at her. "My name is Joe McIntyre and this is Anna Schmidt, my girlfriend, and our dog is called Curly. The two young women are Anna's students at the University of Victoria. Mimi is the shorter of the two and Ellen is the tall one."
"Hi, everyone. My name is Charleen Alsop, but everyone calls me Shar. I'm the local veterinarian, and while rumours do run rampant around here, I got a call from the ranger about your dog, so he gave me all the particulars. Now unfortunately, my examination room isn't very large, so could just one of you come in with Curly? Since no other patients have arrived yet, the rest of you can wait in my waiting room. There's fresh coffee and hot water for tea, so you can take your pick."
Anna wanted to go with Curly, so I sat with the others and had another coffee. Actually the examination didn't take that long, and it was only a short time before we were on our way to a local restaurant. To my surprise, Shar, the vet, decided to close her office and meet us there. Since I was driving one vehicle, Anna a second and Shar the third, I didn't find out why she was there until we were seated in the restaurant and had ordered our breakfasts.
That's when Anna started the ball rolling, "Joe, I think you should have a say in this, but Shar has strongly suggested that we let Curly bear the pups. She's almost convinced me that it would be the smart thing to do."
"Really, even after considering the size difference between the two dogs?"
"Actually when bear-dogs are born, they're not usually any larger than a normal pup and Curly is quite large for a Chocolate Lab. I really don't think she'll have any problems," Shar smiled at me and I got the idea she was in 'salesman' mode. "On top of that, any of the bitches that have born pups so far have never had more than two or three pups. The bear-dogs aren't exactly breeding quickly, but the pups are extremely valuable. For instance if your dog has three pups, and you raise them to the age of two months, I'll guarantee a sale for them. In fact, I will personally offer to buy any and all of her pups from you."
"Yeah, so what?" I frowned. "Curly is a purebred Chocolate Lab. Any pups she has are going to sell very, very easily and for quite a bit of money, even if they aren't purebred."
"For two thousand dollars each?" she grinned.
"What?" "Pardon me. Did I hear you correctly?" "Did you say two grand for each pup?" the three women who were with me all asked at once.
I just stared at Shar, who nodded and grinned back at us, "Yes, I told you the pups will be valuable and I think your dog's pups will be a great addition to the breed. Labrador dogs are known for their composure and obedience, which are two of the things Dietrich and I would like to implant into the new breed. On top of that, your dog showed extreme bravery in protecting you from that bear. That's a definite bonus, but as well, she's a very friendly dog toward anyone she trusts, which is a trait that is somewhat lacking in the present breed. You see the present bear-dogs are part timber wolf, and wolves normally bond with only one person, simply because they still retain a pack mentality, so they bond to the strongest member of the family."
She sighed deeply at that point, then carried on with her spiel, "The problem Dietrich has with his breeding program is basically centred around that pack mentality issue. His overall concept is somewhat complex, but I'll try to explain his idea so you get a basic understanding of what he's trying to do.
"You see many years ago Dietrich recognized that towns like Banff and Canmore, which have been built near large wilderness areas, were going to develop problems with bears coming into town and terrifying people. Since he was working as a guide, he saw the interaction of bears and wolves in the wild and noticed that by cooperating, a pack of wolves would keep bears away from their young. They accomplished that by harassing the bear until it grew so annoyed by their irritating actions that it left the area of their den. He felt that if the wolves were crossed with similar types of dogs, he could develop an animal which could be used to keep the bears and other predators out of the various towns.
"He actually started with two female pups from a lone wolf which happened to be killed while crossing a highway. Luckily he recognized her and knew where she'd had her den, so he rescued her three pups, but only two females survived to maturity. He crossed those with two German Shepard males, and because wolves mate for life, that virtually established two packs of half-breed wolves."
"Whoa," Anna snapped. "We'd appreciate it if you wouldn't use that term around us, please. Three of us are Métis, and the fourth is a mixed breed creole from Louisiana, so the term half-breed is considered to be a slur by all of us."
"Oops, I apologise," Shar bit her lower lip and held up her hands as if in surrender. "I wasn't meaning that as an insult, I was using it as a convenient descriptive term, not one meant to be a slur toward any of you."
"Okay, we'll forgive you," I shrugged. "I've been called a lot worse, but to get back to the mixed breed pups; I'm guessing that those were the basic breeding stock for the bear-dogs?"
"Yes, they were," Shar nodded. "In fact he's been outcrossing and inbreeding their progeny for years, but in the last ten years or so he's been consulting me. Between us, what we've been trying to do is produce a large dog which is safe around people, but terror on bears. The idea is not to kill the bear, just to drive it away from human habitats. Unfortunately, one dog can't do that on it's own, so while the dog has to be friendly, it still must be a pack animal."
"I see. So your idea is to breed Curly's pups into one of the packs?" Anna asked.
"Actually . . . well, there is another problem," Shar sighed deeply. "I think I mentioned that wolves take one primary mate for life, didn't I? Well, Bruno is one of Dietrich's three-year-old male dogs, and he's something of an oddball. He's been introduced to dozens of females, but he's never reacted favourably toward any of them. More important than that however, he's probably one of the most docile of the breed. So, since we haven't been able to get him to accept any female as a mate, we've been worrying about losing that docile nature, which is an extremely important genetic feature. We've tried breeding him to my bear-dogs as well as Dietrich's, but he's refused to breed with all of our females, so Curly must be something special. We don't really know what to do in this situation. Dietrich spoke to me last night and he has some ideas, but I'm not sure what he'll suggest. He does want to meet you though, so he will be here shortly."
Just then the door to the coffee shop opened and this huge guy, who looked like 'Man Mountain Mike' with a full, belly-long beard and even longer hair, tied back in a pony tail, came inside and headed for our table. Before he even got to us, I would have bet his name was Dietrich and I would have been right. I would have been wrong about my suspicions though, because I suspected that he was going to offer to buy Curly from Anna. Instead he offered to sell Bruno to us very cheaply, with the provision that either he or Shar would have the pick of at least one pup out of each of the first two litters of pups that the two dogs produced.
Recalling the value Shar had placed on the pups made me wonder why he made that offer, but then I remembered that bear-dogs worked in packs. If Bruno was a lone wolf, he didn't have a pack, so he wasn't of much use to either Dietrich or Shar. Suddenly the offer made sense, but I still had second thoughts about taking the man up on the idea. After all I'd seen that monstrous dog and was certain he must have stood well over two feet tall at the shoulder and must have been almost five-feet long. That was one huge damn dog. How in blazes would I ever be able to keep him when we went back home to Victoria? I just shook my head, then told Dietrich I couldn't see how I could manage to keep the dog, especially where I lived. That brought a laugh from both Shar and Dietrich, then he hauled a packet of snapshots out of his pocket and handed them to me.
Since Dietrich had thought he could never get Bruno to breed, he'd taken him to his cabin and trained him as a guard dog. He spent some time bragging about how easy Bruno had been to train and mentioned that the dog stayed in the yard, no matter what was happening that might draw him away. In fact he didn't think Bruno had ever left his yard until the afternoon before, so Dietrich had been out hunting for the dog and had eventually found him as he was returning to the cabin. From the way the dog had been cleaning himself, he'd known Bruno had bred a bitch, but until the ranger had contacted him, he hadn't known which dog. Once he discovered whose dog it was and that we were coming to see Shar, he'd called her and arranged that she'd invite us to breakfast so he could come meet us and see our dog.
That's when Shar piped up, telling us that Dietrich often took Bruno into his cabin on very cold nights and emphasized that the dog was no problem even then. She told me that she sometimes looked after Bruno when Dietrich was out guiding someone in the wild and told me that he was always friendly toward her, but only if she came to the cabin alone. If she came to Dietrich's cabin along with a strange person, neither she nor the other person were allowed on the property, in other words, Bruno had limits to his friendships.
"Well, all this talk about Joe taking your dog is wonderful, but we're supposed to be meeting friends somewhere near Fort Macleod this afternoon," Anna interjected. "So we really don't have time to go chasing around to look at your dog. Besides, we're going to be involved in an archeological dig in a relatively remote area and I'm even having second thoughts about taking Curly along with us. Now don't bother making the suggestion that we leave her here with you either. I don't mean to be insulting, but I just don't know you people well enough to do that."
"Oh, I wouldn't suggest you do that either," Shar shook her head negatively.
"Neither would I, but I have Bruno along in the back of my truck and I'd like you to at least look at him. There's no need for you to take him today, but when you folks come back through here on your way home, you can drop by and spend a little time talking to us," Dietrich said with a smile. "Besides, I want to see this Lab bitch of yours. She must be a very special dog."
Since that eased the pressure for me to take advantage of his offer to take his dog, I was at least able to talk to him about his project. The whole idea was based on the protective instincts of the wolves to form packs and to protect their den area, but he was trying to broaden their focus and increase the size of the area they would protect. At the same time he was trying to breed animals that weren't dangerous to humans. In some ways he was worried that Bruno might be a relatively useless offshoot of his breeding program.
"As far as I can see, he's the perfect guard dog, but since he won't work with a pack, he's not much good as a bear-dog. Your Lab has actually given us a possibility of recovering a portion of his genetic code, allowing me to reintroduce his line into the overall breed, but I'm not counting on it," Dietrich explained, then he sighed. "My problem is that Bruno isn't really a pet and he's never really accepted me as his dominant master, which he would do if he thought of me as leader of his pack. He cooperates, but that cooperation has limits I wouldn't see if he accepted me as an alpha male, so for me he's acting as a companion and guard dog. I don't have an actual need for a guard dog though, so since he refuses to breed he's more or less a liability to me. I was actually hoping that you'd take him off my hands."
I chuckled at that, because the idea was slightly ludicrous. I really didn't need a dog that was the size of a small pony, especially not with my lifestyle, and I certainly wasn't planning to change the way I lived just so I could breed dogs, so I just shook my head.
The conversation wandered off into different subjects as we ate, but by the time we'd all had our fill and were getting prepared to leave, the subject came back to the dogs. Since Curly had been locked in the pickup for quite a while, I suggested that I take her out for a stretch and piddle first, but I asked Dietrich to leave his dog locked away until I put her back in the truck. Luckily there was a patch of rough looking grass across the road from the coffee shop and Curly was in a hurry to find relief, so the initial operation only took a few moments.
Then Dietrich brought his brute out to display him. Bruno was huge. The top of his shoulder was almost even with my lower hip and when Dietrich brought him toward me the dog suddenly surged forward to sniff at my crotch, which naturally made me a bit leery of him. Hell, let's be honest it scared me enough that I jumped away from his nose. Then to everyone's astonishment, he flopped on the ground, rolled onto his back, exposing his throat and whimpering like a pup as he gazed up at me. All I could do was stare, because even a klutz like me knew that he was displaying classic submissive behaviour. In other words he was acting as if he was a lesser member of my pack and I was his alpha male. For a few seconds I wondered if he had been trained to act that way, but one look at Dietrich's face and I knew better. Dietrich looked just as astonished as I felt.
Bruno wouldn't get up from the ground for Dietrich either. It wasn't until I reached down and touched the dog that he moved, then suddenly he scrambled to his feet and acted like a puppy, dancing around and licking my face and hands. Then to make matters even more astounding, he would no longer obey Dietrich's commands, but when I held his leash, he was suddenly the canine version of a perfect gentleman.
"Joe, I'm sorry, but now we have a problem that I didn't see coming," Dietrich looked me in the eye. "Bruno has decided he's your dog. In other words for some reason, he's imprinted on you. The only reason I can think he'd have for doing this is that he must have seen you taking your Lab for a walk. Since she accepted your commands and since he's chosen her as his bitch, he's also accepted you as his pack leader."
"We can see that, but I don't understand why that's such a big problem. After we leave, you can retrain him can't you?" Mimi asked.
"No, up until now, Bruno has seen me as a dominant male, because as he sees it, I act as the dominant male to all of the bear-dog packs. Now though, since he's gone outside of the packs I control for his new mate he will no longer accept me as dominant over him. Anna and Joe are his new pack leaders and if you left and left him behind, his perception would be that he was being abandoned or even outlawed by your pack. Since he has chosen to leave my control, I can never reassert that. It goes against his instincts."
"We had the same sort of thing happen a few years ago," Shar said very quietly, looking as if she was ready to cry. "We're not certain, but we think some tourist's bitch got free while she was in heat and came to my kennel where one of my young dogs bred her. He was chained and not free to follow her when she left, but he went from quite obedient to absolutely feral overnight. I was unable to control him in any way. In fact he became fearful of me and viciously defensive of his territory toward any other dog that approached him. In the long run, after weeks of trying to get him to settle down, I had to euthanise him."
"I refuse to go through that, at least not willingly" Dietrich growled softly, but I could tell his fierce sounding voice was an attempt to mask the fact that he was upset, then he sighed deeply. "Joe, I came here to try to convince you to buy the dog, but now, I will give him to you, no charge of any kind. I really don't want to have to put him down. He's much too good a dog for that. In fact in most ways he is the very best dog in my kennel."
I didn't want to be responsible for putting the dog down either, so to make a very long and extremely emotional story short, I was a sucker and I ended up owning a dog, a very large dog!
Anna was quite unhappy about the idea of having me accept Bruno as a gift from Dietrich, but she understood what had happened far better than I did. In truth she had the final say and reluctantly insisted that I take the animal. As she explained to me, if I hadn't taken Bruno, Dietrich would have had to put the dog down since he was no longer obedient to Dietrich's commands. As a breeder, Dietrich simply couldn't tolerate having a dog around his kennels that refused to obey his commands. I wasn't happy with the idea of accepting him because I hadn't chosen the dog, the dog had chosen me and his timing was extremely inconvenient. However, while I wasn't all that enthusiastic about the idea of owning any dog right then, I didn't want to feel responsible for Bruno being euthanised either, yet those were the only two choices available.
It was a good thing we had cleared out the back seat of the Jeep earlier, because that was the only space we had which was large enough for Bruno, and even that looked small for him. He didn't seem to mind though and Dietrich helped me get him settled by giving me a large hunk of elk hide that had been cured with the hair on it. Once I'd spread that on the back seat and brought Bruno to the open door of the Jeep, he hopped in and settled down, acting as if he knew that spot was his. Since he had a strong musty odour, I rolled down the passenger side window by several inches, which meant that as soon as I'd close the door, Bruno reversed ends and stuck his head out the window. It's a good thing I'd chosen to open the passenger side window and not the driver's side. Bruno's big head was going to make it impossible to use the door mounted, rearview mirror on that side of the Jeep.
After promising to drop by and see both Shar and Dietrich on our way home, we soon climbed into our vehicles and left Canmore, heading for my cousin's ranch near Fort Macleod.
The next few hours were spent driving, and I was pleasantly surprised that Bruno didn't bother me in any way. He spent his time either sniffing at the scenery as he stared out the window, or else quietly curled up and snoozing on the back seat. One strange thing I noticed was his silence. Most dogs would have barked at many of the objects, animals or happenings we saw along the way, but he didn't bark at all, the loudest noise he made was an occasional rumbling growl. Somehow that growl had the same effect as the howl of a wolf, sending queer shivers down my spine. It was creepy, but I knew that I'd just been given a dog whose devotion and protective instincts were paramount. That animal would be willing to die to protect me or mine, and that was a very humbling thought, yet at the same time a comforting one.
Since Ellen seemed more comfortable with Bruno than Mimi did, she rode with me, while Mimi rode with Anna in the camper. We took the lead in the Jeep since I knew of a cutoff which skirted the west side of the Sarcee reserve and saved us a few miles. So although the roads were rougher, which meant we drove slower, I still estimated that in less than four hours we'd be pulling into Fort Macleod. Much to Ellen's disgust we avoided driving through the city of Calgary by taking that bypass though, so I gave in and told her we'd drive through the city on our way home.
That was the first time Ellen had ridden with me and I was actually surprised that she didn't try to act as a seductress, in fact she didn't tease me at all. Instead as we drove along, she impressed me with her intelligence as well as her mature viewpoint on many subjects that we discussed. I also discovered that she was only in Anna's classes because of her interest in the interrelationship of all native peoples and their surroundings, and she'd only taken the course as a second choice. Since UVic didn't offer a course that met her exact needs, which was more to do with First Nations use of plants, she had selected Anna's class on Anthropology as a substitute. Even if it wasn't exactly what she wanted, she'd done her research and found that the course covered many aspects of North American native life which she was interested in. She'd been especially interested because the course was taught by Anna, who she'd heard was a Métis. She'd felt that was a wonderful bonus for her, because she'd be getting 'the straight goods' from someone who 'knew the truth.'
I recalled her telling me that she was interested in the study of the plants that First Nations People used for foods and medicines, but I didn't realize she was also interested in the social aspects of native life as well. Then I remembered Anna saying something about Ellen and Mimi being roommates, so I asked her about that. She swore me to secrecy first, then told me that her parents were paying the rent for a small apartment, but in order for her to live there, she'd needed a roommate who was over eighteen. She laughed and said she had a symbiotic relationship with Mimi, since she provided a place to live at minimal cost, while Mimi provided the legal tenancy requirement. At the same time Mimi was a good source of information about facts and customs of Eastern Métis and other Eastern Tribes of the First Nations.
Of course that led into a discussion about me and my family, because she knew I was Métis, but involved with the Western Tribes. I soon realized that she was using me as a captive subject of her curiosity, but very soon our conversation was mostly about various practices of my grandmother, of all people. Inside of a short time she'd found that Gramma Rose had been what many modern people would call a native healer who understood and used the medicinal properties of native plants. I'd picked up some of Gramma's botanical knowledge, but I couldn't recall all that much of it. Even then most of what I remembered was second hand, because Gramma Rose had taught many of her skills to my mother and I spent much more time in Mom's company. Obviously, I'd learned how to use a few of the basic natural medicines, but as a hunter I'd been more interested in the native plants that I could use as food when I was out in the wild. In other words I knew a lot more about edible roots and fruits than I did about curative teas and healing poultices.
That being the case, I probably gained as much information about plants and their uses from Ellen as she picked up from me that morning. However, I found her to be good company and she certainly helped me to fight off boredom as I drove toward Fort Macleod and my cousin's ranch. Otherwise it might have been a somewhat boring trip, since I usually drove the same route every year at hunting time. Of course the seasons were different, but that only meant a change in the foliage, not the background scenery.
The scenery might have been boring for me, but for Ellen, who had never been east of Kamloops, it seemed that everything she saw that day was wondrous to her. The changing scene as we passed through the foothills and out into the rolling landscape of gentler hills, edging toward the prairies, had her completely fascinated. I have to admit that I was already anticipating the time when we would drive further east, when we'd move out into the flat lands of the prairies. Then she'd have an unimpeded view to the horizon, limited only by the curvature of the earth, no trees, no hills, nothing but open prairie and seemingly unending fields of farmers' crops.
We stopped for a break at Turner Valley where we found a tiny coffee shop, but before we went inside Anna walked Curly, then I walked Bruno. I think Ellen got a slight taste of prairie scenery when I turned east after that and we came out of the foothills, then turned south on the Macleod Trail. At that turnoff, we were just south of Okotoks and only about eighty miles from Fort Macleod itself.
Since we were back on the blacktop highway again, our speed increased, but at the same time, Ellen became a lot quieter. So I waited patiently, but finally I asked her about her growing silence.
"It's silly, but didn't you say we were going to stay at your cousins for the next while? Does that mean we'll be staying on a reserve? If we are, is there anything special I should know?"
"Well, we're staying with my cousin, Chuck and his family. They have a small ranch right on the edge of the Peigan Reserve, but it's not actually on the reserve itself. He and his wife actually bought the lease on the land they ranch, using the money he had made from riding in the rodeo. At one time he was exceptionally good at staying on the back of bucking broncs and since he didn't drink, use drugs or get injured badly, he was able to bank most of his winnings. Nowadays though, he raises horses and cattle, so although he still goes to the rodeos, he no longer rides broncs. Instead he's become a farrier, in other words he shoes the horses that belong to the people involved with the rodeo to earn a good portion of his living."
"Oh . . . um, if he's a native, why doesn't he live on the reserve?"
"Well, in the first place, he and his Dad had a huge fight when Chuck was young and he swore he'd never become a Chief. But then, he's not suited to the job of chief anyway."
"Oh, maybe I shouldn't ask, but what did him and his dad fight about, just so I don't ask a stupid question and get people upset."
"Well, there's no secret about that," I chuckled. "When he was only eighteen, he got a fifteen-year-old Tsuu T'ina girl pregnant, which might not have been a big deal, except that she was the Sarcee chief's daughter. Now since Chuck's father was a chief on the Peigan or Piikani reserve and although both tribes are part of the Siksika, or Blackfoot Nation, there was quite a bit of friction caused by the two kids' actions. Now though, the two of them and their kids are acting like glue to tie the two tribes a bit closer together, not much, but enough to help a little."
"Sounds like a native version of Romeo and Juliet," Ellen giggled, then she frowned. "But you mentioned something about his girlfriend being a Sue-tina or something like that, who or what is that?"
"The Tsuu T'ina, live on the Sarcee reserve. When we took the shortcut to go around Calgary we drove along the edge and even across part of Sarcee territory," I sighed. "As for the rest, do you want the long explanation or the short one?"
"You chose," she grinned. "If I want more information, I'll ask."
"Oh, thanks," I chuckled then frowned. "The Tsuu T'ina people were and are part of the Na Dene, or what is also know as the Athabaska Peoples, so they speak a variant of the Athapaskan language. The Tsuu T'ina people on the Sarcee reserve migrated south hundreds of years ago into the traditional territories of the Blackfoot Confederacy. Now as far as I know, there weren't any major wars between the Tsuu T'ina and the Backfoot nations, but I don't think they were really all that friendly either. Then the federal government came along and willy-nilly, lumped all the nearby prairie nations into one treaty, Treaty #7, which threw the Tsuu T'ina in with the three tribes of the Blackfoot nations. And, just so you know, the Blackfoot Confederacy consists of three nations that are independent of one another, but share culture and language. Those three nations are the Blackfoot or Siksika, the Bloods or Kainai, and the Peigan or Piikani and they all speak a variation of the Algonquian language. So because of Treaty #7, my cousin's tribe and his wife's tribe were virtually forced into association with one another."
"So, really your cousin wasn't exactly consorting with the enemy then, was he?"
"Well - no, it was more a matter of her age and a bit of politics that combined to cause the problem. Of course it didn't help that the two of them met, got involved and took off together, but did all that over the period of one long weekend," I laughed. "Not only that, but they completely disappeared for about four months. Finally Uncle Charlie asked me to find them and I hunted them up, then brought them back from Arizona."
"Arizona?"
"Yeah, that's where they ended up and where Chuck first got his start at shoeing horses. In fact that's where he started being called Chuck, not Little Charlie, which is what everyone up here had called him before. Down there he adopted the name of Chuck Little. Anyway, when I saw Maybelle, Chuck's wife, I soon convinced them to come back to Canada."
"Why did seeing her help convince them to come home?"
"Her belly was bulging," I grinned and winked. "So, I took them to one of the local clinics in Arizona to have her pregnancy checked out, knowing that they'd find out how much it cost to have any medical attention down there. Then I explained that they could have all their medical care handled up here in Canada for nothing, which soon convinced them to come back home. Actually though, one of the reasons they hadn't come back earlier was the fact that Chuck's old car had died, but I had a large enough truck to haul them and their essential belongings back home. That was about twelve or thirteen years ago."
"So, did they name the baby after you?" she giggled.
"How did you know that?" I glanced at her in surprise.
"Oh, if I was the woman, that's what I would have done."
"Yeah, well, you'll get a chance to meet Little Jo this afternoon, but I'll bet by now she wants to be called Josephine. She's getting to that age where a name means a lot, even amongst close relatives."
"Okay, I was wondering about that. You were saying that Chuck is your cousin, weren't you?"
"Yeah, my mother was Uncle Charlie's half sister."
"Ah, that makes sense. So the woman you mentioned earlier, the one you called Gramma Rose, was your Uncle Charlie's mother?"
"Exactly. Mom was Uncle Charlie's older sister, but they had different fathers."
"Umm, there's another story there, right?"
"Well, sort of," I sighed. "You see Gramma Rose had a brief fling with a fiddler during one of the summer celebrations, then later that year she met the guy she eventually married. She didn't realize she was already pregnant when she got together with Grampa Joe. They hadn't had sex before she found out though, and the only guy she'd ever had sex with before him was the fiddler. It wasn't until Mom was getting married that she even found out the name of her real father, since he was a Métis fiddler who had only been in town for a few days. Gramma Rose had never mentioned his name until Mom and Dad were filling out the marriage license."
"Well, do you know his name?"
"Oh yeah, his name was Matoux Delacroix, which is almost all I knew about him for years until I registered as a Métis, but the Métis Council had lots of information about him," I snapped abruptly.
"Umm, something in your tone of voice says you aren't too happy about the man."
"I'm not," I snorted. "He was a scoundrel who travelled across Canada for nearly ten years, leaving pregnant women behind whenever he stopped long enough to seduce another young girl. The Métis registry has tied his name to at least twenty different progeny and the bastard never married any of the women he got pregnant. He didn't even stick around any of them long enough to find out that they were pregnant. Several people have tried to trace him down, but he simply disappeared, and the Council suspects that he was murdered for screwing the wrong woman and getting caught at it."
"Oh?"
"Well, there was a story that sort of fits, but it may be what they call an urban legend, I'm not sure. The tale goes that a young brave got upset with a travelling fiddler who had talked the brave's girlfriend into going for a walk with him. Not long afterward the girl came back crying and when he asked her what was wrong, she said she'd been raped by the fiddler. Well, the young brave went crazy at that, so he got together a few of his friends and they went hunting the rapist. I understand they chased him for days and got back into the high country, where they finally caught the fiddler when he fell down a cliff and broke a leg. It was a rather desolate spot and the story goes that they held him down, castrated the bastard with a rusty tin can lid, then left him there, bleeding like a stuck pig."
"Oh, GROSS! That's sick!"
"Yeah, but remember that was about sixty or seventy years ago and things were a lot wilder then, especially on some of the reserves. In those days there was still a tendency for some of the tribes to take justice into their own hands and rape was a very big deal to them. If the story is true, they probably felt that what they did was justified. You have to understand, if it was Matoux Delacroix, he had a hell of a reputation for being a dirty bastard who treated women like princesses until he got into their pants, then he abandoned them."
"It's still gross."
"Yeah, but I'll bet that story has made more than one guy think twice about using force in order to have sex with a young woman that aroused his desires. So even if it isn't true, I think the story is worth retelling once in a while."
"I suppose, but after all, the man might have been your grandfather."
"Yeah, well, most people have someone in their ancestry that they aren't exactly proud of. If anything, knowing about him might explain a little bit to you about why I act the way I do around women. I may overcompensate a little bit."
"Does Anna know about your grandfather?"
"Oh, yeah, but Anna has her own idea about the world and the people in it. According to her, men act like animals anyway. She thinks some of them are like tomcats or mink, which would describe Matoux Delacroix and she says the rest of mankind acts more like lions or wolves, and really want to have a harem. In fact she says any man who is honest with himself wants to have a harem of willing women at his beck and call."
"So she doesn't believe in monogamy?"
"Oh yeah, she admits that geese and doves are monogamous, but she also says they're just birds and mankind is stupid to emulate them. In fact she calls them dinosaurs with feathers, then goes on to say that they're the leftovers of a dead end branch of the tree of evolution. She even seems to think that part of the reason the dinosaurs died out involved their monogamous breeding habits."
"But what about all the other monogamous animals out there?"
"Hey, I'm on your side, if you want to argue about it, take it up with Anna," I chuckled.
"Oh no, don't get me wrong, I'm not arguing to support monogamy," Ellen giggled, "not when I'm going to be stuck out in the middle of nowhere for a month with you as the only guy around. After a few weeks, Anna's idea is going to make a lot of sense to me because I'm going to be going into my oversexed phase and I'll drive you crazy with my teasing unless you take me to bed. That's what happens if I have to go without sex for more than a few weeks."
"Is that a warning?" I laughed, thinking she was teasing me again.
"Umm, sorta, but not really," she sighed. "I start acting a bit like a nympho when I go without sex for a while, so I guess it's more like a warning of what you can expect to happen. I did tell Anna about my problem, but she just laughed and said we'd deal with my urges when they appeared. I thought you knew about it?"
"Well, Anna did say that at times you had the moral standards of an alley cat."
"Yeah, that's about right," Ellen giggled loudly.
"I guess I'm going to have to buy you a vibrator so you have a toy to keep you away from me."
"Just buy batteries instead. I already have a vibrator packed away in the camper, and it's a big one, so it takes 'C' batteries. Better than that though, you can provide me with a flesh and blood version once in a while and I'll be just fine," she paused and looked over at me, then giggled again. "Dammit, you're blushing!"
"Yeah!" I snorted. "I'm not used to talking about things like this to a young kid like you."
"Young kid?" She squawked loudly. "In two weeks, on May 30th, I'll be celebrating my eighteenth birthday. Since we're out in the prairie provinces now, where the age of majority is eighteen, I'll legally be a woman, so I'll be able to make up my own mind whether I want sex or not."
"Yeah, but I'll still be thirty-four, which is almost twice as old as you, so I can still say no," I couldn't help chuckling.
"Fink," she snapped, but I could tell she wasn't really upset.
"Nympho," I grinned.
"Hmph, did you have to make that sound like an insult?" she tried to growl, then broke into a giggle. "Poor Joe, he's going to be stuck out in the wilderness with three oversexed broads and nowhere to run when we decide to revenge his grandmother."
"Hey now, that's not funny."
"Sorry, but I'll be honest, I'm sure that before too long I'm going to wish you were more like your grandfather in a few specific ways."
"What? Love 'em and leave 'em?"
"Well, at least he was willing to do more than just look at them."
"Hey, hold up right there. You're stepping onto delicate territory. I'm pretty darn touchy about that and Uncle Charlie is even worse. Mom had a rough time while she lived at home and never knew why until the day she got married. In fact she left home when she was only sixteen because of the way people acted toward her. So if you want to be treated well by my family, you might want to put that tale about my grandfather in the very back corner of your mind and leave it there while we're around here."
"Oh, okay. I'll try to keep the fact that I know anything about it to myself, but I think I should warn Anna and Mimi, shouldn't I?"
"Well, Anna knows, but if you do talk to them about it, make sure no one else is close enough to hear you. Like I said, it's a tender subject to some people and there's no reason for us to poke and prod at old wounds."
"Okay, I'll be careful," she nodded vigorously, then sat up straighter as she stared ahead. "Hey is that Fort Macleod ahead of us?"
"Unh huh" I nodded, "and since I've now got a darn dog, we need to stop in there to do a bit of shopping, even if it isn't my favourite town."
"Oh, why is that?"
"Well, let's just say that I've had racial discrimination problems with some of the residents of Fort Macleod," then I chuckled. "I'd be willing to bet that if we all lived there, you would have less racial discrimination problems in that town than Mimi or Anna or I would have."
"What?" she squawked. "I don't believe you."
"Well, you should." I growled, trying not to let my anger show, but not succeeding. "You see Fort Macleod is a railroad town and in the old days, the brakemen, and sometimes even the conductors on the trains were black men. Admittedly, they didn't spend a lot of time in town, but when they were there they had money to spend. At that time the natives who came in from the reserves were often broke, because of the way the government set up the reserve system. Natives were the poorest of the poor and they were made to feel subservient to the white-eyes, especially if they'd been forced to attend one of the Residential schools run by the church."
"You know, I've never really been discriminated against, at least not heavily, but I can sympathize with you because of some of the crap that I have seen," she said quietly. "You said you were discriminated against in this town when you were young, didn't you?"
"Yeah, you're right." I sighed. "Actually I hardly get it at all now, but then some of the people out here claim I've 'gone white,' but they forget that I'm Métis, so I'm half white already. Actually, I don't really fit into either world."
"Ditto," Ellen giggled, "But you know what? You and I, and the gals in the other truck fit into each other's world just fine, so fuck the people in this town if they can't take their heads out of their asses. We'll do just fine without their small minds and stupid prejudices."
I couldn't argue with her opinion, and when I considered what she'd said, I found my temper moderating, which was probably a darn good thing because we were only minutes from Fort Macleod.
Now Fort Macleod isn't what you could call a typical prairie town, but then there is no reason it should be since it sits more or less on a natural geographic divide. To the east, the prairies open out into an immense expanse of relatively flat land, while to the west the foothills gradually bunch higher and higher until they blend into the mountains. In general, because the land to the east is more level and can be irrigated, it's been divided into farms, but the land to the west is more uneven, yet grows great stretches of grass, so it's wonderful ranch country. Fort Macleod serves both the farmers and ranchers, providing the supplies for both sets of needs, and as well it has facilities for purchasing both grain and beef.
For several reasons I've never had good feelings about the town, which was why I encouraged everyone to have a quick meal so we didn't have to spend much time there that day. Then while the women looked around a little bit, I went into a local store and bought some supplies for Bruno and Curly, mostly food, a large collar, a pair of light lead chains, two screw-in stakes and things of that sort. Once that was done, I phoned my cousin, Chuck, and told him where we were, just so we wouldn't take him by surprise when we drove into his yard.
He just laughed at me when I told him that Anna had brought her dog with her and that I'd managed to get my arm twisted into accepting a dog, and had it along as well. I don't think he believed me when I told him how big Bruno was, but since his family had several dogs already he was certain that bringing another dog or two onto the ranch wouldn't be a huge problem.
I just shrugged my shoulders and made up my mind to deal with any problems as they arose, then went looking for the gals. I wanted to get out of Fort Macleod as soon as I could, and wanted to be headed for Chuck's ranch and whatever additional surprises life had in store for us.
We'd already had a few suprises on this trip and somehow I knew we had more surprises hidden just down the road, I just didn't know what they were or just how serious they would be.