CHAPTER XXIV
THE NAIL-FILE AND THE CHIPPEWA
AT Many Glaciers they advised us to visit the lovely Waterton Lakes lying in the Canadian extension of Glacier Park.
“There’s only one bad place,—north of Babb. It’s flooded for some miles, but all you have to do is climb the canal bank, and run along the top.”
As people were always advising us to undertake some form of acrobatics, we stored the canal bank in the back of our minds, and started for Babb and Canada.
Babb proved as short of population as of syllables. We went the length of the town, and encountered only one building,—the postoffice and store. That its populace was treated more generously in the matter of syllables we discovered by idly reading the mailing list of Blackfeet citizens, pasted on the wall. Among Babb’s most prominent residents are Killfirst Stingy, Mary Earrings, Susie Swimsunder, Ada Calflooking, Cecile Weaselwoman, Xavier Billetdoux, Joe Scabbyrobe, Alex Biglodgepole and Josephine Underotter Owlchild.
I have been told that many Indian tribes name a child from the greatest event in the life of its oldest living relative. When the child reaches maturity, he earns a name for himself by some characteristic achievement, goaded to it, no doubt, by the horrors of his given name. Thus by a glance at the census lists we are able to readpast history, and compare the amorous agitations of Xavier Billetdoux’ granddaddy with the bucolic and serene existence of Ada Calflooking’s great-aunt. Not a bad way of checking up one’s ancestry against one’s own worth. If we followed the same system, Cornelius Rowed Washington across the Delaware might be rechristened C. Shimmyfoot, while Adolph Foreclosedthewidow’smortgage might earn the nobler surname of Endowsahospital. It is really a remarkable system of shorthand autobiography, enabling a complete stranger to tell whether one belongs to a good family going downhill, or a poor one coming uphill, or a mediocre at a standstill. How many a near Theda Bara who would like to be named Cecile Weaselwoman would have to be content as Mary Ear-rings. How many a purse-proud Biglodgepole would have to confess his grandfather was named Scabbyrobe. Perhaps this is the reason we leave such nomenclature to the heathen Indian.
Reflecting thus, Toby and I amused ourselves with renaming ourselves and our friends, until we reached a place where some altruistic citizen had inundated the road in order to irrigate his patch of land. Here we were supposed to take to the top of the canal, but the bank was high, narrow and shaly. It looked too much like a conspiracy against both us and the canal, so we disregarded our advice and skirted the open land. By leaving the road altogether and keeping to the hills we avoided most of the bog, and got through the rest with a little maneuvering. A mile further we learned that the canal bank had given way under a car the previous day, and carried car and occupants into the water.
The beautiful Flathead Mountains had faded awaybehind us, leaving a prairie country of no charm, dry and burnt. At the border, as at Mexico, we found our little customhouse less formal and more shabby than our neighbor’s, but at both we received clearance and courteous treatment. When we said we came from Massachusetts, the Canadian agent sighed.
“Massachusetts! What do you see in a God-forsaken hole like this to tempt you from such a state? I wish I could go there,—or anywhere away from this place.”
Everywhere we heard the same refrain. Three years of killing drought had scorched the treeless plains to a cinder. The wheat, promise and hope of Alberta, had failed, and immigrants who had gone there expecting to return to the old country in a few years with a fortune, were so completely ruined they could neither go back nor forward, but saw dismal years of stagnation before them.
There are more cheerful places than Alberta in which to face bankruptcy. So near the border, this part of Canada is half American,—American with a cockney accent. But it is newer and rawer than our own west by a decade or two, with less taste apparent, less prosperity, more squalid shiftlessness. The section through which we drove had been mainly conquered by the Mormons, driven into Canada when the United States was most inhospitable to their sect. They in turn have converted many of the immigrants from the old country. The church or tithe lands make sharp contrast in their prosperity, their thousands of sleek, blooded cattle and irrigated fields to the forlorn little settlements of individuals. As every Mormon pays a tenth of all he has to his church it is easy to understand this contrast.
In our six months of travel we had driven over thereservations of the Papago, Pima and Maricopa, the Apache, Hopi, Havasupai, Navajo, Ute, Piute, Pueblo, Shoshone, Blackfeet and Flatheads. We were now on the Blood Indian reservation, though we saw few inhabitants. Those we saw were red-skinned and tall, resembling the other Northern tribes. The country grew less inhabited. We met no other cars and few people. Fifty miles north of Browning, our last town, we came to a lumber camp, and seven miles further our car quietly ceased to move, and rested in peace on a hillside.
Since its wetting in Nambe creek, the ignition had been prone to such sudden stops and starts. From past experience we knew that the ignition system must be completely taken apart, exposing its innermost parts to the daylight. All I knew about it was summed up in my brother’s parting advice, “Never monkey with your ignition.” All Toby knew was that Bill of Santa Fé had taken it apart, done something to it, put it together again, and it ran. So we decided to follow Bill’s procedure as far as we could, and began by taking it apart. That went very well until we discovered some covetous person had removed all the tiny tools used in operating on this part of the engine, leaving us only a monkey wrench and a large pair of pincers. Toby nearly stood on her head trying to unscrew very little screws with the big wrench, and progressed but slowly, as she had to change her entire position with each quarter turn.
After about an hour we had every nut and screw in the forward part of the engine in rows on the running board. My task was to take the parts as Toby unscrewed them, and lay them neatly from left to right, so that we shouldknow in what order to replace them. Then I glanced at the remains which Toby had succeeded in uncovering.
“The distributor needs cleaning,” I said expertly, thereby greatly impressing Toby. I remembered Bill had said the same thing, but for the life of me I couldn’t remember what the distributor was. By opening the cock of our tank, and holding a tin cup beneath, catching a drop at a time we managed in another hour to get enough gasoline to bathe the affected parts, as druggist’s directions say.
So far, not a hitch. And then a little wire flapped before our eyes which seemingly had no connection with any other part. Toby thought it belonged in one place, and for the sake of argument, I held out for another, but neither of us was sure enough to make a point of our opinion. Meanwhile the car could not start until this wire was hitched to something, yet we dared not risk a short-circuit by connecting it to the wrong screw. So we stood still in the hot, dusty road and waited for something to turn up.
“I have a hunch, Toby,” I said, “that when we really give up and go for help, the old lady will begin running again.”
“Then you’d better start at once,” said Toby.
“No, it won’t be as simple as that. We shall have to work for what we get.”
At this moment a Ford containing four men drew up and stopped. We explained our trouble.
“You took it apart without knowing how to put it together again?” said one of them. They exchanged glances which said “How like a woman!”
“When we took it apart,” answered Toby withhauteur, “we knew how to put it together again, but so many things have happened in the meantime that the exact process has slipped our minds. But if you will explain the principles of this ignition system to us I think we can manage.”
The man muttered something about a Ford not having one, and drove on. Like most men, he was willing to stay as long as he could appear in a superior light, but no longer.
Though they were poor consolation, the horizon looked very lonely after they left. Later in the afternoon, two Indian boys with fish-poles over their shoulders sauntered by. Having exhausted our combined knowledge we had decided to give up and telephone to the nearest garage. I hastened to them, not knowing when we should again see a human soul.
“How far away is the nearest garage?” I asked them.
The younger boy giggled, but the older answered in very good, soft-spoken English, “At Browning, fifty miles away.”
A hundred dollars for towing, and days of delay! I caught at a straw.
“Is there by any chance an electrician back at the lumber camp?”
“No, ma’am.”
Then noticing my despair, he added diffidently, “I studied electricity at Carlisle. Perhaps I can help you.”
Our guardian angels fluttered so near we could almost see their wings. Here was Albert Gray, for so he was hight, transplanted from his Chippewa reservation for a two days’ visit to his Blood cousins, for the sole purpose of rescuing us from our latest predicament. Efficiencyand economy must have been the watchword of those ministering spirits of ours, for not only did they send the only electrician within fifty miles, but then sent one whose knowledge, combined with our own, was just sufficient. I do not believe Albert really knew a fuse from a switchbox, but he did remember one essential we had forgotten,—that the points should be a sixteenth of an inch apart. But without tools he said he could do nothing. So we proffered a nail-file, by happy inspiration, with which he ground the points. We screwed together all the parts, connected the mysterious wire by a counting-out rime, and turned the engine. Nothing moved.
I turned my back on the exasperating car, and started to walk the seven miles back to the lumber camp. Then, on remembering my hunch it seemed as if all conditions were now fulfilled, so I returned, put my foot on the starter,—and the engine hummed. And until we reached Boston again, it never ceased to hum.
A prouder moment neither Toby nor I ever had, when by grace of a Chippewa and a nail-file we monkeyed with our ignition fifty miles from a garage,—and conquered it.
I shall always remember slow spoken, polite Albert Gray. Like Lucy of the same sur-name, he made oh, the difference to me!
******
The good looking garage helper at Cardston met us with a beaming smile.
“I’ve filled your radiator,” he said, “and your canteen, and put in oil and gas, and I’ve infatuated all your tires.”
It was this same delightful Mr. Malaprop of whomwe inquired, discussing various automobiles, “Do you like the Marmon?”
“I’m not one myself,” he answered cautiously, “but my father-in-law is, and I get on pretty good with him.”
Through his connections-in-law he obtained for us the privilege of seeing the interior of the new Mormon Temple, which is to rival Salt Lake’s. Our unfailing luck had brought us here at the only interval when Gentiles are allowed to enter a Mormon church, after completion and before its dedication. This little town of not more than five thousand inhabitants, surrounded by the brown, parched prairie, is dominated by a million dollar edifice, far more beautiful than the parent Temple in Utah, and magnificent enough for any city. A perfect creation in itself, fitted like the Temple of Solomon with matched marble and granite brought from the ends of the earth, it looks strangely out of keeping with the bare shacks and ugly little frontier shanties surrounding it. Its architecture was modified from Aztec designs. The young Salt Lake Mormons whose plans won the award in competition with many renowned architects achieved an arrestingly original building of massive dignity and grace, managing at the same time to conform to the exacting requirements of Mormon symbolism. No two rooms are built on the same level, but rise in a gradual ascent to the roof, from which one may look miles over the rolling plains of Alberta. This requirement, which must have caused the designers and builders much anguish, is meant to symbolize the soul’s ascent from a gross and carnal to a spiritual life. The ground floor has many dressing-rooms where those who “work for the dead” change from street clothes to the garmentsprescribed by Mormon ritual. Above are rooms paneled in the most costly woods,—Circassian walnut, tulipwood, mahogany and rosewood,—for the use of the church officials, and beyond these, larger rooms called “Earth,” “Purgatory,” “Heaven,” decorated with beautiful mural paintings with appropriate scenes. “Earth” held great attractions for me, with its frieze of jungle beasts threading their way through gnarled forests,—an able and artistic piece of work, done by Prof. Evans of Salt Lake. The stout little Cockney Mormon who accompanied the Bishop and ourselves through the Temple gave us this information, though from his lips it sounded like “Prof. Heavens, of the Heart Department.” We passed on from Earth to the assembly room in the center of the Temple, a magnificent chamber with an altar, where services are held and marriages performed.
“Here, if you wish,” the Bishop said, “you can be sealed to eternity.”
Toby who had all along, I think, expected to be pounced on as a possible plural wife backed away from the altar, but the Bishop was speaking impersonally. He explained that any Mormon happy in his present matrimonial venture (I use the singular, as polygamy is now illegal both in Canada and the United States) may extend that happiness to eternity, and insure getting the same wife in Heaven by this ceremony. He himself had been sealed,—“the children sitting on each side of us in their white robes,”—the ceremonial garment,—and was secure in the belief that his family happiness would continue after death.
villageA MORMON IRRIGATED VILLAGE.
A MORMON IRRIGATED VILLAGE.
templeTHE “MILLION DOLLAR” MORMON TEMPLE AT CARDSTON, ALBERTA, CANADA.
THE “MILLION DOLLAR” MORMON TEMPLE AT CARDSTON, ALBERTA, CANADA.
We broached with some hesitation the subject of polygamy.The Bishop readily took it up, declaring polygamy entirely abolished.
“Even at its height, not more than three per cent of our men had plural wives,” he said.
“As few as that?”
“Yes.”
“Then since the majority never sanctioned it, the Church has abolished it, and you yourself never practised it, I suppose you consider it wrong?”
“Oh, no—I shouldn’t call it wrong. Why, it was the best advertising we could possibly have had. People heard of the Mormons all over the world, and began talking about them,—all because of polygamy. I don’t suppose we should ever have become so prosperous and powerful without the free advertising it gave us. It enabled us to extend our faith to all corners of the earth. While each church has its parish, bishops, elders and presidents, our system is so complete that in three hours the Head of the church can communicate a mandate to the furthest missionary in Japan or India.”
“But it wasn’t verygoodadvertising, perhaps?”
“Any advertising is good advertising, so long as it gets people talking.”
The way to Waterton Lakes, several hours from Cardston, lay through the tithe lands of the Church,—a mile north, a mile west, and so on, with the monotonous regularity of section roads. Then suddenly emerging from the barren country, we found ourselves again in the Rockies. We motored past a chain of glassy mountain lakes, each one full to the brim with trout, so we had been told. The air sparkled; late July here in the north had the tang of autumn through the golden sun. Forestsof pine edged the shores of the lakes. The same sharply notched peaks we had known at Glacier Park guarded their solitude. This park, under the care of the Canadian government, lies in the hinterland of Glacier. Over its ranges a pack train can make its way in a few days from one park to the other, and a still quicker route is by the intermittent motorboat which carries passengers back and forth during the summer. By road it takes a day or more of rough prairie traveling. With much the same type of scenery as Glacier Park, though perhaps less dramatic, Waterton Lakes should be far more widely visited than they are. These two lovely parks, naturally a continuation of each other, should and could be easily linked more closely together.
At present the accommodations of Waterton Lakes are far inferior to those of Glacier. A few ex-saloons (Alberta “went dry”) offer sandwiches and near beer, but the gaudy paper decorations on the walls, covered with flies, and the inevitable assortment of toothpicks, catsup and dirty cruets on the soiled cloths, are successful destroyers of appetite. I was told that the railroad which had developed Glacier Park so intelligently, building the few necessary hotels with dignity and charm, offered to extend the developments to Waterton Lakes, but that Canada, fearing her tourists would thereby be diverted into the “States,” jealously refused the offer. A short-sighted decision, certainly, for the flood of tourists coming from the States would have been far greater than that turned in the other direction.
Toby and I pitched our little tent on a delightful pebbled beach, planning to stay several days, if the fishing were as good as it had been reported. But after afruitless—or fishless—afternoon of dangling our lines in the water, with no profit except the sight of the hills which guarded the blue sparkle, we returned to our tent at sunset with no prospect of food. We had depended too rashly upon our skill at angling. Hunger can take all the joy out of scenery.
To tell the truth, sleeping in a tent and cooking our own meals had somewhat lost their charms. We preferred a lumpy bed in a stuffy room to a hard bed on the ground; and second-rate meals served at a table someone else had taken the trouble to prepare to third-rate meals prepared with greater trouble by ourselves. As we looked wearily at each other, each hoping the other would offer to make the beds and “rustle” for food, we suddenly realized that we were homesick. We had roughed it enough, and the flesh pots beckoned.
“Let’s go back to Cardston,” I said.
“Let’s,” said Toby, gladly.
And on all that beauty of pure woods and clear sunset we turned and fled to civilization. Fifth-rate civilization it might be, in a province as crude and unlovely as was any part of our own West in the roaring eighties. For the first time in six months we had our backs to the setting sun, the sun which had dazzled our eyes every afternoon since we left the boat at Galveston. We were leaving the great, free West, “where a man can be a man, and a woman can be a woman,” and we were going—home!