stefansson-wrangel-09-34-014

10.

of my throad outside of it hards a little
and knight wants me to go out to the traps
but my eye is very ach so I can’t go out
when my eye is that way because in evening
I could bearly stand the ach of my eye and
one side of head if anything happen to me
and my death is known there is bead stirp
for bennett school bag. for my only son.
I wish you please take everything to Bennett
that is belong to me I don't know how much
I would be glad to get home to folks."

And yet, no, "happy” was not quite the word
to describe her, either. It was simply her disposition to
be cheerful most of the time, to tend today’s problems today
and trust tomorrow’s to be tended tomorrow. She had been
born with the guileless optimism of a people who lived in
the moment, without worry for the future, and even growing
up in the white man's world and enduring the heartache of an
unhappy marriage had not taken that quality away from her.

To be sure, it was a childlike quality, and in
many ways she had seemed a child in the beginning, before
Knight and the others had turned harsh toward her. Like a
child, she had wanted approval and been too shy to seek it
outright. But when she was bent over her work, sewing, or
scraping a skin, or chewing a hide to the soft suppleness of
glove leather, with silence dram about her like a cloak, if
someone said something kind, or smiled in her direction, her
black secret eyes lighted instantly and the flush under her
olive skin heightened, and she would respond with the quick
shy eagerness of a child anxious to please.

In the beginning she had very much wished to