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on his hands, he repaired the telephone wires and vaccinated a village. He would turn his hand to anything, help anyone, and in the end no one could do anything for him.
    Elk Girl explained it to me that night. I was exhausted, out of my head with grief, and had thrown myself across the bed without bothering with a cover. Elk Girl came in, covered me, brought the pawakam and laid it beside me, then opened the window and sat there, looking out. She stared up at the stars, and they, serene and wise, looked down on us. Elk Girl didn’t speak. She didn’t say that the stars were where they belonged—but they were.
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WE THOUGHT IT would be a small funeral, just the family and a few friends from the town. But word was carried on the newly extended phone lines and, when these quit, by moccasin telegraph penetrating deep into the woods. People came, white and Indian, from all over the province, people we didn’t know but who had known Sgt. Mike Flannigan.
    The Royal Canadian Mounted Police were well represented, their scarlet dress uniforms punctuating the somber attire of the others. Among the guests was Jonathan Forquet. He came not only for Papa Mike but to stand beside Mama.
    On the day of the funeral she leaned on his arm. He himself was a compelling figure, spare almost to the point of emaciation. His eyes, when he turned them on you, burned with the intensity of a soul about to leave the body, an arrow ready to quit the bow. When the prayers were finished and he spoke I could understand why the Indians regarded him as a holy man.
    â€œThis Mountie we lay to rest today arrested me, kept me jailed for a murder I did not do, refused to give his blessing to my marriage. Yet I am here from across Canada, from Quebec Province. Why? Because when I was starving in body and soul he fed me at his table. He travels now to the west where our people have always traveled. But if he was here he’d laugh in our faces. As he saw it, he did what anybody would do. His own kids died in the diphtheria epidemic, and he was still bringing soup and medicine to people too ill and weak to manage for themselves. But don’t think he wouldn’t go after a trap thief and bring him in, Mountie style. He was there to fight a fire, or pull an abscessed tooth. He entered our lives, one way or another. Look in your heart to see which part of him you carry.”
    Before he left, my father called me to him. He acted as though he had a right to do this, as though he had been here. But it was Papa. Papa was the one to oil my skates, to show me the beaver dam, to explain the migration of birds—it was Papa’s lap that was always there for me.
    Jonathan Forquet never bothered about me, never inquired about me. He was never part of my life. He was off somewhere being holy, preaching to unlettered Indians who were in awe of him.
    Well, I wasn’t in awe of him. I followed him reluctantly, my feet scuffing leaves.
    He walked a little way into the woods, and the musky smell of decayed vegetation under loamy earth made me think of the grave.
    He began speaking again in an intimate way, as though I was his daughter. “You have grown up well. Mrs. Mike is right, there is a look of your mother about you. There is also a look of sadness. Not only because of Sergeant Mike’s death, but it has been in you, I think, a long time. It comes from the way you look at life.”
    â€œDon’t lecture me. Did you find the beaver dam? Did you fix my skates? I don’t even know you. And you don’t know me.”
    â€œI do know you. I brought you your name.”
    â€œYou show up once. One time in sixteen years. Well, you know what I wish? I wish it was my papa I was standing here with.”
    A slight smile hovered about the corners of his mouth. “And that I was where he is?”
    I turned away.
    â€œOh-Be-Joyful’s Daughter—”
    I stopped. I wasn’t used to anyone addressing me by this name.
    He