British Columbia -- Fiction; Man-woman relationships -- Fiction; Revenge -- Fiction; Sawmills -- Fiction
The boy knew very little Chinook and missed half the beauty of what
she went on to say to him. But she told him much about his parents
and a great deal about his sisters that would have been disagreeable
even if translated with discretion. By the time she came to a
climax, her voice rose to a shriek that might have been audible in
the Mill itself, and Quin came out in a rage.
"Get to thunder out of this, you old fool," said Quin, "or I'll have
you kicked off the place!"
She looked at him steadily and held up a long fragment of the silk
before him.
"Mika kumtuks okook, you know him?" she asked with a hideous leer.
And Quin came off the step and went up to her.
"Where you get it, Annie?"
"You know," said Annie. "Tenas toketie have him, you give him, ah.
But who tear him, makum kokshut?"
"Pete?" asked Quin with the devil of a face on him. But Annie walked
a little away and beckoned him to follow. She got him round the
corner and he went with her like a child. He thought he understood.
Annie put out her claw and took his coat.
"I give you klootchman often, now you give me tukamonuk dolla, one
hundred dolla, and I give you pretty Jenny."
Quin blew out his breath and bent down to her.
"You old devil," he said with a wavering grin.
"Me Lejaub? Halo, no, I give you pretty young squaw, that not like
Lejaub. You give me one hundred dolla, see."
Quin sighed and opened his mouth.
"I give it. How you do it, Annie?"
"Now she hate Pete, him pelton," said the witch; "he beat her, kick
her knee, kick her back, kick her belly too, and tear up si'k in
tenas bits, Mr. Quin. She cly like any papoose, she scleam and make
gleat latlah. He tear up si'k and tear her dless, now she half-naked
on the floo'. That bad, and she pretty and say Mr. Quin give me
dless, kloshe Mr. Quin. She love you, she tikegh mika, cly kahkwa
the si'k yours. You come: she go with you. I make so no one know
tings, if you take her yo' house."
His house was on the hill above them. There he lived with not a soul
but his Chinese boy.
"How you make no one know?" he asked.
"Kloshe, I do it," said Annie. "I say to Pete she say to me she lun
away, and not come back, eh?"
But as Quin explained to her, the first person Pete would think of
would be the man who had given her the dress.
"Oh, ya, I know," said Annie. "Kloshe; I very clever klootchman, I
know evelything. She lun away with Shipman Jack this very day and
came tell me so I tell Pete. How that do, Mr. Quin? You tink, eh?"
But Quin was doubtful. Annie urged her scheme on him and still drew
him further down the road.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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