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about what a woman of her sort could and could not be asked to do that he refused to relax even in the face of their need. Hadn’t she helped build their house? Hadn’t she carried sods to him? Hadn’t she delivered Charles with only Madame Beausoleil to help? Didn’t she dig the soil of her garden herself, waiting for a spring rain to soften the ground, and planting seeds his mother saved and sent West with her? She could be stooking behind the binder, speeding up the harvest. This, their best crop yet: the first year, only five acres plowed, there were so many other things needing doing: the second year twenty, the third year nearly double that, and now, sixty acres seeded to crop, and where was he? She was terrified a storm might come and they would lose it all, even thought of getting on the binder herself and cutting more crop, or stooking what hadn’t been done yet, even though he would be angry. And what to do with Charles if she did? Tie him beside her to the binder seat? What was it Pierre wanted from her, besides a child, besides a home, besides her unbounded love for him? She watched the sky, cloudless and distant, and the land, flattened now by the high, clear light, without seeing them.
    She was thinking of her first summer here. She had been fearless, riding Tonerre by herself to search for berry patches – had picked pails of Saskatoons and chokecherries, once near the creek a mile to the north where Saskatoon bushes grew abundantly on the banks among the wild roses and wolf willow, beside a group of native women, not even knowing they were there, until they came through the bushes to pick side by side with her. Sophie, unsure what to do, until one of them reached silently in front of her, pulled down a fruit-laden branch she couldn’t reach, and held it for her as Sophie stripped its fruit.
    “Merci,” she had said, smiling, but the Indian woman did not speak or smile, and slipped away through the bushes. Sometimes she thought that perhaps she had dreamt that strange, silent encounter, for it was rare these days to see even one lone Indian, much less a group of them. Bees buzzing by, flies whispering around them, the air rich with the scent of the roses and grasses, the sun bronzing all their skins with its relentless heat, the sky pale and far away. Why was she then so unafraid? Her first taste of freedom, her soul free at last and spreading out as far as the plains allowed – forever – there being no end to them. Or, it might have been the wind; sometimes she was sure it was the wind, what it carried, heat from the sun, glinting particles of sun-matter, scents she had never before smelled, the very distance the wind had covered to reach her.
    She thought of the plagues of mosquitoes, the never-ending swarms of flies, of the thunder and lightning storms followed by rains so heavy and intense that it would be days before they could leave the homestead, even this blazing heat, and in winter its opposite, so cold sometimes that they had had to wear all their clothes in bed to keep warm. This past one had been the very worst of all their winters here, with snow several feet deep on the level, except when a hurricane force wind blew it into ten foot drifts, and bitterly cold day following bitterly cold day, and day after day Pierre shovelling the snow down from the roof and away from the door. She and Pierre had survived only because they had a good supply of food and fuel. But it was a life of their own, a thing they could never have had in the comfortable, God-loving village from which they had come. It was la grande aventure ; it had shown her what it meant to be alive.
    Behind her, Charles murmured to himself and struck his spoon against his bowl gently to listen to the sound the glass made. Still no trace of anything moving far out over the prairie, only a pair of hunting hawks circling above, their shrieks reaching faintly down through layers of blue to where she stood alone in the cabin doorway,