CHAPTER IV

THE COMING OF JETHRO FAWE

Gabriel Druse's house stood on a little knoll on the outskirts of the
town of Manitou, backed by a grove of pines. Its front windows faced the
Sagalac, and the windows behind looked into cool coverts where in old
days many Indian tribes had camped; where Hudson's Bay Company's men had
pitched their tents to buy the red man's furs. But the red man no longer
set up his tepee in these secluded groves; the wapiti and red deer had
fled to the north never to return, the snarling wolf had stolen into
regions more barren; the ceremonial of the ancient people no longer made
weird the lonely nights; the medicine-man's incantations, the harvest-
dance, the green-corn-dance, the sun-dance had gone. The braves, their
women, and their tepees had been shifted to reservations where
Governments solemnly tried to teach them to till the field, and grow
corn, and drive the cart to market; while yet they remembered the herds
of buffalo which had pounded down the prairie like storm-clouds and given
their hides for the tepee; and the swift deer whose skins made the wigwam
luxurious.

Originally Manitou had been the home of Icelanders, Mennonites, and
Doukhobors; settlers from lands where the conditions of earlier centuries
prevailed, who, simple as they were in habits and in life, were
ignorant, primitive, coarse, and none too cleanly.

They had formed an unprogressive polyglot settlement, and the place