She, Tannis of the Flats,
could never compete with that other. It was well to know so
much, at least.
After a time, she crept softly away, loosed her pony, and lashed
him mercilessly with her whip through the streets of the town and
out the long, dusty river trail. A man turned and looked after
her as she tore past a brightly lighted store on Water Street.
"That was Tannis of the Flats," he said to a companion. "She was
in town last winter, going to school--a beauty and a bit of the
devil, like all those breed girls. What in thunder is she riding
like that for?"
One day, a fortnight later, Carey went over the river alone for a
ramble up the northern trail, and an undisturbed dream of Elinor.
When he came back Tannis was standing at the canoe landing, under
a pine tree, in a rain of finely sifted sunlight. She was
waiting for him and she said, with any preface:
"Mr. Carey, why do you never come to see me, now?"
Carey flushed like any girl. Her tone and look made him feel
very uncomfortable. He remembered, self-reproachfully, that he
must have seemed very neglectful, and he stammered something
about having been busy.
"Not very busy," said Tannis, with her terrible directness. "It
is not that. It is because you are going to Prince Albert to see
a white woman!"
Even in his embarrassment Carey noted that this was the first
time he had ever heard Tannis use the expression, "a white
woman," or any other that would indicate her sense of a
difference between herself and the dominant race.
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