Project Gutenberg's The Skeleton On Round Island, by Mary Hartwell Catherwood

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Title: The Skeleton On Round Island
From "Mackinac And Lake Stories", 1899

Author: Mary Hartwell Catherwood

Release Date: October 30, 2007 [EBook #23250]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE SKELETON ON ROUND ISLAND ***

Produced by David Widger

THE SKELETON ON ROUND ISLAND

From "Mackinac And Lake Stories", 1899

By Mary Hartwell Catherwood

_On the 15th day of March, 1897, Ignace Pelott died at Mackinac Island,
aged ninety-three years._

_The old quarter-breed, son of a half breed Chippewa mother and
French father, took with him into silence much wilderness lore of the
Northwest. He was full of stories when warmed to recital, though at the
beginning of a talk his gentle eyes dwelt on the listener with anxiety,
and he tapped his forehead--"So many things gone from there!" His
habit of saying "Oh God, yes," or "Oh God, no," was not in the least
irreverent, but simply his mild way of using island English._

_While water lapped the beach before his door and the sun smote sparkles
on the strait, he told about this adventure across the ice, and his
hearer has taken but few liberties with the recital._

THE SKELETON ON ROUND ISLAND

I am to carry Mamselle Rosalin of Green Bay from Mackinac to Cheboygan
that time, and it is the end of March, and the wind have turn from east
to west in the morning. A man will go out with the wind in the east, to
haul wood from Boblo, or cut a hole to fish, and by night he cannot get
home--ice, it is rotten; it goes to pieces quick when the March wind
turns.

I am not afraid for me--long, tall fellow then; eye that can see to
Point aux Pins; I can lift more than any other man that goes in the
boats to Green Bay or the Soo; can swim, run on snow-shoes, go without
eating two, three days, and draw my belt in. Sometimes the ice-floes
carry me miles, for they all go east down the lakes when they start, and
I have landed the other side of Drummond. But when you have a woman with
you--Oh God, yes, that is different.

The way of it is this: I have brought the