My mother, she’s gone. My mother said “You can’t even write, you can’t even read. You don’t even know how to count, and you don’t know how to tell time. I am going to take you to Crowfoot school, maybe the nuns will teach you at least how to write your name.”
And that’s how come I ended up there, but I got really lonesome because I was from this end. I didn’t know the boys at the other end of the reserve. So when I got so lonesome, I had to run away. Now, I don’t want you to do what I did, because to this day I cannot read very well. I cannot spell, my grandkids will say, “This is how you spell this”, and they’re just little kids.
How I used to do it, at dinner time, when you go in the dining room, I steal some bread and put it away, because it takes me two days to get home. And then I know, four o’clock, four thirty is the first count. Four o’clock, that’s the time I have to run away from school. Because I had to go through the bushes, you know Crowfoot School, down there and then there’s a creek that winds all the way through to the railroad track You follow that creek. And then when I get to the railroad you go on the other side, because the road is too close. They’ll take you- they’ll take me right back. But I used to go on the north side and start walking.
Halfway to Gleichen, there’s a culvert; you know where the water runs through underneath the railroad. I pick up some gravel and throw them in there. And gravel makes a lot of noise. I do that for two reasons. I do not like garter snakes; I do not like mice, because they are all in there. This way, you do that three or four times, then I can crawl in there half ways, take my boots off, put them together, and use them for pillow, until the next morning, before the sun even comes, start getting daylight, I have to get out of there and go through Gleichen before everybody wakes, before the police start looking in town for me. But I always go through there early in the morning, and make it right to the other end of the reserve. And that’s how I got home.
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