Quotes from Robert Specht

The sun was just coming up over the mountains--blood red and cold. I felt as if I was standing in the mightiest cathedral that had ever been built. There was no end to it, and no beginning. All I could do was look at it and worship.

Now I was going to be myself. I wasn't going to be hard to get along with or go out of my way to say anything mean, but from now on people were going to have to take me for what I was.

Are you too destitute to buy shoes Miss Winters?" "What makes you ask?" "I know the Indians are accustomed to wearing such footgear, but I've never seen respectable white women do so. They prefer shoes. From the rear I might have taken you for a squaw." "Nobody asked you to look at my rear.

The revolver lay heavy against my thigh. I hadn't even thought to use it, I realized. I mentioned it to Mr. Strong. "It was fortunate you didn't. That grizzly would have torn you to pieces.

I never realized how much water a person used until I started packing it up from the creek---water for washing clothes, for washing yourself,for cooking,washing dishes. That's all I seem to do all day is pack water and then dump it out.

That Indian was stuck. From living in one place and eating the white man's food, he'd gotten weak. Flour, sugar, biscuits—none of that stuff can keep you going for long. You need meat in the winter, good fresh meat with plenty of fat on it. But there wasn't any meat around, at least not nearby. The white man had chased it away and the Indian, not being a hunter anymore, didn't have the strength to go any long distance for it.

It was like traveling through a stage setting, the air clear and tingling, the moonlight sparkling off bushes laced with frost.

After a while I found myself near Mary Angus' shack. It looked so lonely and forlorn I almost started to cry. For the first time I really understood why she was staying here, how even though she was sick she could keep on living in a space like that. If you loved somebody enough you could live anywhere.