The Indians
worshipped him, and the quarter-breeds and half-breeds and occasional
French called him "_mon Pere_" in very much the same tone of voice as
they said "Our Father" in their prayers. These people of the trap-lines
were a revelation to David. They were wild, living in a savage
primitiveness, and yet they reverenced a divinity with a conviction that
amazed him. And they died. That was the tragedy of it. They died--too
easily. He understood, after a while, why a country ten times as large
as the state of Ohio had altogether a population of less than
twenty-five thousand, a fair-sized town. Their belts were drawn too
tight--men, women, and little children--their belts too tight. That was
it! Father Roland emphasized it. Too much hunger in the long, terrible
months of winter, when to keep body and soul together they trapped the
furred creatures for the hordes of luxurious barbarians in the great
cities of the earth. Just a steady, gnawing hunger all through the
winter--hunger for something besides meat, a hunger that got into the
bones, into the eyes, into arms and legs--a hunger that brought
sickness, and then death.
That winter he saw grown men and women die of measles as easily as flies
that had devoured poison.
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