Manie still has her idea in the back of her mind. She is going to take advantage of the communal activity to speak to the women and quietly spread the word.

She stops working and muses out loud.

“I remember the days when we didn’t have just one or two moose to share. Those were good days. Not so long ago, really…”

Manie pauses. She waits. After a few moments she adds in a discouraged tone, again as if she is just talking to herself, “I don’t even have enough hide to make a pair of moccasins to give my niece as a wedding gift. I’m so ashamed!”

She pounds away at the pieces of dried meat. The silence is heavy. The women are all deep in thought.

Manie beats a rhythm with her pestle. She gets ready to raise the most sensitive subject of all.

“I wish our sons and daughters were here to help us and to carry on after we are gone. But there’s no one I can teach the things I learned from my own mother.”

The pounding is heavy and sharp. Manie is kneeling on the ground, the mortar wedged between her knees. Her forehead is beaded with sweat. She doesn’t raise her voice, but her voice is tight with anger.

“I feel like a bear in a cage. We no longer have the right to hunt and fish as we please and our own land is forbidden to us. Now they want to shut us up in white men’s houses…”

All the women have stopped working. Then Josephine, the youngest of the group, speaks up. Her voice is trembling.

“You’re right, Manie. My husband is desperate. And now he has started drinking. He drinks too much! It makes him violent. He… he hits me.” She breaks down in tears, and the women gather around to console her.

Philomène nods. “My sixteen-year-old son died in the city. The ministry said he was sick with the measles, but I don’t believe it. I think he was killed by the damned drink. It makes men angry and they lose all reason. If he had been near me, with the family… But to die so far away…”

The women are crying together, bound by their shared anger.

“Perhaps we can help each other…” Manie suggests.

“Yes! Let’s join forces…”

Suddenly the women sit up, on the alert, their faces worried. They have heard an unusual noise. A pickup is driving at high speed on the dirt road. They recognize the creaking of the truck, and their hearts stop.

The pickup charges straight up to the smoke racks before screeching to a stop in a cloud of dust. Two men in rumpled khaki uniforms get out and slam the doors. It’s two game wardens that we know well. They’ve got smug, know-it-all smiles pasted on their faces. Big black revolvers swing from their belts and bang against their thighs.

The men go over to the smoke racks. They sniff, wrinkle their noses.