Barkskins Read Online Free Page A

The oxen, Roi and Reine, pulled Monsieur Trépagny’s old plow sullenly. A savage fly with a green head battened on their blood. Monsieur Trépagny smeared the animals with river clay, which hardened into dusty clots but could do nothing about the clustering gnats. But Mari, the Indian woman, steeped tamarack bark in spring water and twice daily sluiced their burning eyes. In the long afternoons, with many sighs, she planted the despised garden. One day that summer she sent her two young sons to a place called Odanak, where remnants of her people had fled.
    â€œGoose catch learn them. Many traps learn. Good mens there hunting. Here only garden, cut tree learn.”
    Monsieur Trépagny said acidly that what they would learn would be rebellion against the settlers and warfare.
    â€¢Â Â â€¢Â Â â€¢
    Mindful of his fishing duties René went to the river. Monsieur Trépagny had given him a knife, fishhooks, a waxed linen line and a large basket for the fish. In the river fish were large and angry and several times the linen line parted and he lost a precious hook. But Mari was scornful. “Small fish,” she said. “Good fisherman not Lené. My people make weirs, catch many many. Big many.”
    To divert her irritation he pointed at a stinging nettle in the garden. “We have those in France,” he said.
    â€œYes. Bad plant grow where step whiteman people—those ‘Who is it Coming’— Wenuj. ”
    Mari asked him to leave the fish intact—she would clean them herself. She buried the entrails in the garden and when René asked her if that was the Indian way she gave him a look and said it was a common practice for all fools who grew gardens instead of gathering the riches of the country.
    â€œEels!” she said. “Eels catch. Eels liking us. We river people.”
    She wove three eel traps for him and gave him fish scraps for bait, went with him to the river and showed him likely places to try. Almost every day thereafter he brought her fat eels. She said the Mi’kmaq had many ways to catch eels and that the traps were best for him. When her sons came back from the Abenaki village of Odanak they could show him other ways.
    â€¢Â Â â€¢Â Â â€¢
    In early July the pine trees loosed billows of pollen, yellow plumes like citrine smoke drifting through the forest, mixing with the smoke from burning trees. One morning an old man, his back bent beneath a bundle, his glaring eyes roving left and right, came ricketing out of the pollen clouds from the west trail, which led, as far as René knew, to the end of the world. Above the little mouth stretched a grey mustache like a bit of sheep’s wool caught on a twig. The eyes were like Monsieur Trépagny’s eyes, black and white and rolling. Chamailleur looked at René, who was preparing to go fishing, and started in at once.
    â€œ Salaud! You bastard! Why are you not working?”
    â€œI am. It is part of my duty to supply the house with fish for the table.”
    â€œWhat! With a string and a hook? You must use a net. Have the woman make a net. Or a basket trap. Or you must use a spear. Those are the best ways.”
    â€œFor me the line and hook are best.”
    â€œStupid and obstinate!— oui, stupide et obstiné! I know what is best and you do not. It is good I came. I can see you need correction. My nephew is too easy.”
    René continued stubbornly with his hooks and twisted linen line. But he thought about nets. A net might be better, for the fish were so thick in the river he might get several large ones at the same time. As for Mari’s insufferable speechifying on the ways the Mi’kmaq built different kinds of weirs, how they hunted esturgeon at night with blazing torches and spears—he ignored all she said. He did use the eel traps she had made, excusing himself on the ground that eels were not fish.
    Searching for land to claim when