Spring came early in that latitude, and Curtis was profoundly thankful that his first winter had proven unusually short and mild, for it enabled him to provide for his people far better than he had dared to hope. The rations were insufficient at best, and for several days of each alternate week the grown people were hungry as well as cold, though no one actually perished from lack of food. Beyond the wood contract and the hauling of hides each month there was very little work to be done during the winter, not enough to buy the tobacco the men longed for.
They believed in Swift Eagle, however, for he visited every cluster of huts each month, and became acquainted with nearly every family during the winter. No agent had ever taken the like pains to shake the old women by the hand, or to speak as kindly to the old men who sat beside the fire, feeble and bent with rheumatism. The little children all ran to him when he came near, as if he were a friend, and that was a good sign, too. Some of the old chiefs complained, of course—there was so little else for them to do; but they did not blame the Little Father. They were assured of his willingness to do whatever lay within his power to mitigate their poverty. Jennie, who was often at the beds of those who suffered, had won wide acceptance of her lotions by an amused tolerance of the medicine-men, whose mystic paraphernalia interested her exceedingly. The men of magic came at last to sing their curious songs and perform their feats of healing in her presence. "Together we will defeat the evil spirits," they said, and the health of the tribe continued to be very good, in spite of unsanitary housing and the evil influence of the medicine-men. When the missionaries came to have the native doctors suppressed Curtis said: "My policy is to supplant, not to suppress."
The bill which called for the removal of the Tetongs to another reservation was reported killed. The compromise measure for buying out the settlers was "hung up" in the committee-room, and this delay on the part of Congress exasperated the settlers beyond reason, and at a convention held early in April at Pinon City, Joseph Streeter brazenly shouted, "If the government does not remove these Injuns before the first of July we'll make it hot for all concerned," and his threat was wildly cheered and largely quoted thereafter as the utterance of a man not afraid of Congress or anybody else.
Seed-time came without any promise of change, and the white settlers on the reservation went sullenly to their planting, and the cattlemen drove their herds across the boundaries upon the Tetong range as they had been doing for many years. "We are in for another season of it," they said, with the air of being martyrs in the cause of civilization.
Curtis immediately sent warning commands to all the outside ranchers to keep clear of the reservation, and also notified Streeter, Johnson, and others of the settlers on the Elk and the Willow that their cattle must not be allowed to stray beyond certain lines, which he indicated. These orders, according to Calvin, made the settlers "red-headed as wood-peckers. They think you're drawin' the lines down pretty fine."
"I mean to," replied Curtis. "You original settlers are here by right and shall have full opportunity to graze your stock, but those on the outside must keep out. I will seize and impound all stock that does not belong on this land."
Calvin reported this statement to the outside men, and its audacity provoked the most violent threats against the agent, but he rode about unaccompanied and unarmed; but not without defence, for Calvin said to one of the loudest of the boasters, "The man who jerks a gun on Curtis runs a good chance of losing a lung or two," and the remark took effect, for Calvin had somehow acquired a reputation for being "plumb sassy when attack-ted."
Curtis had the army officer's contempt of personal injury, and, in pursuance of his campaign against the invading stockmen, did not hesitate to ride into their round-up camps alone, or accompanied only by Crow Wing, and no blusterer could sustain his reputation in the face of the agent's calm sense of command.
"I am not speaking personally," he said once, to an angry camp of a dozen armed men. "I am here as an officer of the United States army, detailed to special duty as an Indian agent, and I am in command of this reservation. It is of no use to bluster. Your cattlemustbe kept from the Tetong range."
"The grass is going to waste there," the boss argued.
"That does not concern you. It is not the fault of the Tetongs that they have not cattle enough to fill the range."
In the end he had his way, and though the settlers and ranchers hated him, they also respected him. No one thought of attempting to bribe or scare him, and political "pull" had no value in his eyes.
Jennie, meanwhile, had acquired almost mythic fame as a marvellously beautiful and haughty "queen." Calvin was singularly close-mouthed about her, but one or two of the cowboys who had chanced to meet her with the agent spread the most appreciative reports of her beauty and of the garments she wore. She was said to be a singer of opera tunes, and that she played the piano "to beat the Jews." One fellow who had business with the agent reported having met her at the door. "By mighty! she's purty enough to eat," he said to his chum. "Her cheeks are as pink as peaches, and her eyes are jest the brown I like. She's a 'glad rag,' all right."
"Made good use o' your time, didn't ye?" remarked his friend.
"You bet your life! I weren't lettin' nothin' git by me endurin' that minute or two."
"I bet you dursn't go there again."
"I take ye—I'll go to-morrow."
"Without any business, this time? No excuse but jest to see her? You 'ain't got the nerve."
"You'll see. I'm the boy. There ain't no 'rag' gay enough to scare me."
It became a common joke for some lank, brown chap to say carelessly, as he rose from supper, "Well, I guess I'll throw a saddle onto my bald-faced sorrel and ride over and see the agent's sister." In reality, not one of them ever dared to even knock at the door, and when they came to the yards with a consignment of cattle they were as self-conscious as school-boys in a parlor and uneasy as wolves in a trap, till they were once more riding down the trail; then they "broke loose," whooping shrilly and racing like mad, in order to show that they had never been afraid. Calvin continued to call, and his defence of the agent had led to several sharp altercations with his father.
The red people expanded and took on cheer under the coming of the summer, like some larger form of insect life. They were profoundly glad of the warmth. The old men, climbing to some rounded hill-top at dawn, sat reverently to smoke and offer incense to the Great Spirit, which the sun was, and the little children, seeing the sages thus in deep meditation, passed quietly by with a touch of awe.
As the soft winds began to blow, the dingy huts were deserted for the sweeter and wholesomer life of the tepee, which is always ventilated, and which has also a thousand memories of battle and the chase associated with its ribbed walls, its yellowed peak, and its smouldering fires. The sick grew well and the weak became strong as they passed once more from the foul air of their cabins to the inspiriting breath of the mountains, uncontaminated by any smoke of white man's fire. The little girls went forth on the hills to gather flowers for the teachers, and the medicine-men, taking great credit to themselves, said: "See! our incantations again prevailed. The sun is coming back, the grass is green, and the warm winds are breathing upon the hills."
"Ay, but you cannot bring back the buffalo," said those who doubted, for there are sceptics among the redmen as elsewhere. "When you do that, then we will believe that you are really men of magic."
But the people did not respond cheerfully to Curtis when he urged them to plant gardens. They said: "We will do it, Little Father, but it is of no use. For two years we tried it, and each year the hot sun dried our little plants. Our corn withered and our potatoes came to nothing. Do not ask us to again plough the hard earth. It is all a weariness to no result."
To Jennie, Curtis said: "I haven't the heart to push them into doing a useless thing. They are right. I must wait until we have the water of the streams for our own use."
The elder Streeter was very bitter, Calvin reported. "But he ain't no idyot. He won't make no move that the law don't back him up in; but some o' these other yaps are talkin' all kinds of gun-play. But don't you lose any flesh. They got to git by me before they reach you."
Curtis smiled. "Calvin, you're a loyal friend, but I am not a bit nervous."
"That's all right, Captain, but you can't tell what a mob o' these lahees will do. I've seen 'em make some crazy plays—I sure have; but I'll keep one ear lapped back for signs of war."
One beautiful May day Curtis came into the house with shining face.
"Sis, our artists are coming back," he called to Jennie from the hall.
"Are they? Oh, isn't that glorious!" she answered, running to meet him. "When are they to reach here? Whom did you hear from?"
"Lawson. They can't come till some time in June, however."
Jennie's face fell. "In June! I thought you meant they were coming now—right away—this week."
"Lawson furthermore writes that he expects to bring a sculptor with him—a Mr. Parker. You remember those photographs he showed us of some statues of Indians? Well, this is the man who made the figures. His wife is coming as chaperon for Miss Brisbane."
"She still needs a chaperon, does she?"
"It would seem so. Besides, Mrs. Parker goes everywhere with her husband."
"I hope she'll be as nice as Mrs. Wilcox."
"I don't think Lawson would bring any crooked timber along—there must be something worth while in them."
"Well, I am delighted, George. I confess I'm hungry for a message from the outside world; and during the school vacation we can get away once in a while to enjoy ourselves."
The certainty of the return of the artistic colony changed Curtis's entire summer outlook. Work had dragged heavily upon him during February and March, and there were moments when his enthusiasm ebbed. It was a trying position. He began to understand how a man might start in his duties with the most commendable desire, even solemn resolution, to be ever kindly and patient and self-respecting, and end by cursing the redmen and himself most impartially. Misunderstandings are so easy where two races are forced into daily contact, without knowledge of each other's speech, and with only a partial comprehension of each other's outlook on the world. Some of the employés possessed a small vocabulary of common Tetong words, but they could neither explain nor reason about any act. They could only command. Curtis, by means of the sign language, which he had carried to marvellous clearness and swiftness, was able to make himself understood fairly well on most topics, but nevertheless found himself groping at times in the obscure caverns of their thinking.
"Even after a man gets their thought he must comprehend the origin of their motives," he said to Wilson, his clerk. "Everything they do has meaning and sequence. They have developed, like ourselves, through countless generations of life under relatively stable conditions. These material conditions are now giving way, are vanishing, but the mental traits they formed will persist. Think of this when you are impatient with them."
Wilson took a pessimistic view. "I defy the angel Gabriel to keep his temper if he should get himself appointed clerk. If I was a married man I could make a better mark; but there it is—they can't see me." He ended with a deep sigh.
Curtis took advantage of Lawson's letter to write again to Elsie, and though he considered it a very polite and entirely circumspect performance, his fervor of gladness burned through every line, and the girl as she read it fell to musing on the singularity of the situation. He was in her mind very often, now; the romance and the poetry of the work he was doing began at last to appeal to her, and the knowledge that she, in a sense, shared the possibilities with him, was distinctly pleasurable. She had perception enough to feel also the force of the contrast in their lives, he toiling thanklessly on a barren, sun-smit land, in effort to lead a subject race to self-supporting freedom, while she, dabbling in art for art's sake, sat in a secure place and watched him curiously.
"How well he writes," she thought, returning to his letter. His sentences clutched her like strong hands, and she could not escape them. As she read she drew again the splendid lines of his head in profile, and then, a sentence later, it seemed that he was looking straight into her eyes, grave of countenance, involved in some moral question whose solution he considered essential to his happiness and to the welfare of his people. Surely he was a most uncommon soldier. When she had finished reading she was sincerely moved to reply. She had nothing definitely in mind to say, and yet somehow she visualized him at his desk waiting an answer. "The worst of it is, we seem to have no topic in common except his distressing Indians," she said, as she returned to her work. "Even art to him means painting the redmen sympathetically."
But he could not be put aside. He was narrow and one-sided, but he was sincere and manly—and handsome. That was the very worst of it; he was too attractive to be forgotten. Therefore she took up her pen again, being careful to keep close to artistic motives. She spoke of the success of her spring exhibition, and said: "It has confirmed me in the desire to go on valiantly in the same line. That is the reason I am coming back to the Tetongs. I feel that I begin to know them—artistically, I mean; not as you know them—and I need your blazing sunlight to drink up the fogs that I brought from Holland and Belgium. The prismatic flare of color out there pleases me. It's just the white ray split into its primary colors, but I can get it. I'm going to do more of those canvases of the moving figure blended with the landscape; they make a stunning technical problem in vibration as well as in values; and then the critics shout over them, too. I sold the one you liked so well, and also five portraits, and feel vastly encouraged. Owen Field was over from New York and gave me a real hurrah. I am going to exhibit in New York next fall if all goes well with me among the Tetongs."
Jennie thought her brother the handsomest man in the State as they walked up and down the station platform waiting for the express train which was bringing Elsie and Lawson and a famous Parisian-American sculptor and his wife. Curtis was in undress uniform, and in the midst of the slouching crowd of weather-beaten loafers he seemed a man of velvet-green parade grounds and whitewashed palings, commanding lines of polished bayonets.
He was more profoundly stirred at the thought of Elsie's coming than he cared to admit, but Jennie's delight was outspoken. "I didn't know how hungry for a change I was," she said. "They will bring the air of the big city world with them."
The whistle of the far-off train punctuated her sentences. "Oh, George, doesn't it seem impossible that in a few moments the mistress of that great Washington home will descend the car-steps to meet us?"
"Yes, I can't believe it," he replied, and his hands trembled a little as he nervously buttoned his coat.
The train came rapidly to a stop, with singing rods, grinding brakes, and the whiz of escaping steam. Some ordinary mortals tumbled out, and then the wonderful one!
"There they are!" cried Jennie. "And, oh—aren't her clothes maddening!"
Lawson, descending first, helped Elsie to the platform with an accepted lover's firm touch. She wore a blue-cloth tailored suit which fitted marvellously, and her color was more exquisite than ever. Admiring Jennie fairly gasped as the simple elegance of Elsie's habit became manifest, and she had only a glance for the sculptor and his wife.
Elsie, with hands extended, seized upon them both with cordial intensity. A little flurry of hand-shakings followed, and at last Mr. and Mrs. Jerome Parker were introduced. He was a tall man with a bush of yellow beard, while she was dark and plain; but she had a pleasant smile, and her eyes were nice and quiet.
"Do you know, I'm overjoyed to get back!" said Elsie to Curtis. "I don't know why I should be, but I've been eagerly looking for the Cleft Butte all day. Jerome will tell you that I expressed a sort of proprietorship in every prairie-dog."
"We are very glad to have you here again," replied Curtis. "And now that youarehere, we must get your belongings together and get away. We are to camp to-night at the Sandstone Spring."
"A real camp?"
"A real camp. We could drive through, of course, but it would be tiresome, and then I thought you'd enjoy the camp."
"Of course we shall. It's very thoughtful of you."
"Everything will be ready for us. I left Two Horns to look after it."
"Then it will beright," said Lawson, who was beaming with placid joy. "Isn't it good to breathe this air again? It was stifling hot in Alta City. I never knew it to be hotter in the month of June."
While they talked, Crane's Voice was collecting the trunks, and in a few minutes, with Elsie by his side, Curtis drove his three-seated buckboard out upon the floor of the valley, leaving the squalid town behind. Lawson and Mrs. Parker occupied the middle seat, and Jennie and the tall sculptor sat behind. They were all as merry as children. Elsie took off her hat and faced the sun with joyous greeting.
"Isn't this glorious? I've dreamed of this every night for a month."
"That's one thing the Tetong has—good, fresh air, and plenty of it," said Lawson.
"A thin diet, sometimes," Curtis replied. He turned to Elsie. "Your studio is all ready for you, and I have spoken to a number of the head men about you. You'll not lack sitters. They are eager to be immortalized at your convenience."
"You are most kind—I am going to work as never before."
"You mustn't work too hard. I have a plan for an outing. One of my districts lies up in the head-waters of the Willow. I propose that we all go camping up there for a couple of weeks."
"Do you hear that, Osborne?" she called, turning her head.
"I did not—what is it?"
Curtis repeated his suggestion, and Parker shouted with joy. "Just what I want to do," he said.
Curtis went on: "We'll find the redman living there under much more favorable conditions than down in the hot valley. We have a saw-mill up in the pines, and the ladies can stay in the superintendent's house—"
"Oh no!" interrupted Elsie. "We must camp. Don't think of putting us under a roof." A little later she said, in a low voice: "Father is in Chicago, and expects to be out here later. I mean, he's coming to make a tour of the State."
"How is his health?" Curtis asked, politely.
Her face clouded. "He's not at all well. He is older than he realizes. I can see he is failing, and he ought not to go into this senatorial fight." After a pause she said: "He was quite ill in March, and I nursed him; he seemed very grateful, and we've been very good friends since."
"I'm glad of that," he replied, and bent closely to his driving.
"You drive well, Captain."
"An Indian agent needs to be able to do anything."
"May I drive?"
"You will spoil your gloves."
"Please! I'll take them off. I'm a famous whip." She smiled at him with such understanding as they had never before reached, as she stripped her gloves from her hands and dropped them at her feet. "Now let me take the reins," she said. He surrendered them to her unhesitatingly.
"I believe you can drive," he said, exultantly.
Her hands were as beautiful as her face, strong and white, and exquisitely modelled; but he, looking upon them with keen admiration, caught the gleam of a diamond on the engagement finger. This should not have chilled him, but it did. Then he thought:
"It is an engagement ring. She is now fairly bound to Lawson," and a light that was within him went out. It was only a tiny, wavering flame of hope, but it had been burning in opposition to his will all the year.
As she drove, they talked about the grasses and flowers, the mountain range far beyond, the camping trip, and a dozen other impersonal topics which did not satisfy Curtis, though he had no claim to more intimate phrase. She, on her part, was perfectly happy, and retained her hold of the reins and the whip in spite of his protest.
"You must not spoil your beautiful hands," he protested; "they are for higher things. Please return the lines to me."
"Oh no! Please! Just another half-hour—till we reach that butte. I'm stronger than you think. I am accustomed to the whip."
She had her way in this, and drove nearly the entire afternoon. When he took the reins at last, her fingers were cramped and swollen, but her face was deeply flushed with pleasure.
"I've had a delicious drive," she gratefully remarked.
At the foot of a tall butte Curtis turned his team and struck into a road leading to the left. This road at once descended upon a crescent-shaped, natural meadow enclosed by a small stream, like a babe in a sheltering arm. All about were signs of its use as a camping-ground. Sweat lodges, broken tepee-poles, piles of blackened stones, and rings of bowlders told of the many fires that had been built. Willows fringed the creek, while to the south and west rose a tall, bare hill, on which a stone tower stood like a sentinel warrior.
Elsie cried out in delight of the place. "Isn't it romantic!" Already the sun, sinking behind the hill, threw across the meadow a mysterious purple gloom, out of which a couple of tents gleamed like gray bowlders.
"There is your house to-night," said Curtis. "See the tents?"
"How tiny they look!" Elsie exclaimed, in a hushed voice, as though fearing to alarm and put them to flight.
"They are small, but as night falls you will be amazed to discover how snug and homelike they can become."
Two Horns came to meet them, and Parker cried out, "Hello! see the big Indian!"
The chief greeted Lawson with a deep and hearty "Hah! Nawson—my friend. How! How!" And Lawson, with equal ceremony, replied, in Dakota:
"I am well, my brother; how is it with you?"
"My heart is warm towards you."
Elsie gave him her hand, and he took it without embarrassment or awkwardness. "I know you; you make pictures," he said, in his own tongue.
"Jerusalem, but he's a stunner!" said Parker. "Hello, old man! How you vass, ain't it?" and he clapped the old man on the shoulder.
Two Horns looked at him keenly, and the smile faded from his face. "Huh! Big fool," he said to Lawson.
"You mustn't talk to an Indian like that, Parker, if you expect to have his friendship," said Lawson. "Two Horns hates over-familiarity."
"Oh, he does, does he?" laughed Parker. "Kind of a Ward McAllister, hey?"
Lawson, a little later, said, privately: "That was a bad break, Parker; you really must treat these head men with decent respect or they'll hoodoo you so you can't get any models. Two Horns is a gentleman, and you must at least equal him in reserve and dignity or he will report you a buffoon."
Parker, who had done his figures from models procured in Paris from Buffalo Bill's show, opened his eyes wide.
"Lawson, you're joking!"
"You'll find every word I tell you true. I advise you to set to work now and remove your bad impression from Two Horns, who is one of the three principal chiefs. You can't come out here and clap these people on the back and call 'em 'old hoss.' That will do in some of the stories you read, but realities are different. You'll find money won't command these people, either."
"I thought they liked to be treated as equals?"
"They do, but they don't like to have a stranger too free and easy. You haven't been introduced yet."
While Crane's Voice attended to the teams, Jennie and Two Horns worked at getting supper. Their comradeship was charming to see, and the Parkers looked on with amazement. Two Horns, deft, attentive, careful, anticipated every want. Nothing could be finer than the perfectly cheerful assistance he rendered the pretty cook. His manner was like that of an elder brother rather than that of a servant.
"I didn't suppose Indians ever worked around a camp, and especially with a woman," remarked Parker.
"What you don't know about Indians is still a large volume, Parker," retorted Lawson. "If you stay around with this outfit for a few weeks you'll gather a great deal of information useful for a sculptor of redmen."
Elsie took Lawson mildly to task for his sharp reply.
Lawson admitted that it made him impatient when a man like Parker opened his mouth on things he knew nothing about. "You never can tell what your best friend will do, can you? Parker is decidedly fresh. If he keeps on he'll become tiresome."
Elsie presumed on her enormous experience of three months on the reservation, and gave Parker many valuable hints of how to wheedle the Tetongs in personal contact.
"It seems I'm being schooled," he complained.
"You need it," was Lawson's disconcerting reply.
As night fell, and the fire began to glow in the cool, sweet dark with increasing power, they all sat round the flame and planned the trip into the mountains.
"I have some Tetongs up there who are disposed to keep very clear of the agency. Red Wolf is their head man. You may all go with me and see my council with him if you like."
"Oh! that will be glorious fun!" cried Elsie.
But Parker asked, a little anxiously, "You think it safe?" which amused Curtis, and Parker hastened to explain: "You've no idea what a bad reputation these Tetongs have. Anyhow, I would not feel justified in taking Mrs. Parker into any danger."
"She is quite safe," replied Curtis. "I will answer for the action of my wards."
"Well, if you are quite sure!"
"How far away Washington seems now!" remarked Elsie, after a silence. "I feel as if I had gone back to the very beginning of things."
"It seems the end of things for the Tetongs," replied Lawson. "We forget that fact sometimes when we are anxious to have them change to our ways. Barring out a few rudenesses, their old life was a beautiful adaptation of organism to environment. Isn't that so, Curtis?"
"It certainly had its idyllic side."
"But they must have been worried to death for fear of getting scalped," said Parker.
"Oh, they didn't war much till the white man came to disturb them, by crowding one tribe into another tribe's territory. Their 'wars' were small affairs—hardly more than skirmishes. That they were infrequent is evident from the importance given small forays in their 'winter counts.'"
One by one the campers began to yawn, and Jennie and Mrs. Parker withdrew into the tent reserved for the women, but Lawson and Elsie and Curtis still remained about the fire. The girl's eyes were wide with excitement. "Isn't it delicious to be a little speck of life in this limitless world of darkness? Osborne, why didn't we camp last year?"
"I proposed it, but Mattie would not hear to it. I have a notion that you also put my suggestion aside with scorn."
She protested that he was mistaken. "It is the only way to get close to these wild people. I begin to understand them as I sit here beside this fire. What do you suppose Two Horns is thinking about as he sits over there smoking?"
As they talked, Lawson began to yawn also, and at last said: "Elsie Bee Bee, I am sleepy, and I know Curtis is."
"Not at all," protested Curtis. "I'm just coming to myself. As the camp-fire smoulders the night is at its best. Besides, I'm in the midst of a story."
"Well, I didn't sleep very well last night," began Lawson, apologetically. "I think—if you don't mind—"
"Go to bed, Sleepy Head," laughed Elsie. "We'll excuse you."
"I believe I will," and off he went, leaving the two young people alone.
"Go on!" cried Elsie. "Tell me all about it."
Curtis glowed with new fire at this proof of her interest. "Well, there we were, Sergeant Pierce, Standing Elk, and myself, camped in Avalanche Basin, which at that time of the year is as full of storms as a cave is of bats." A yelping cry on the hill back of them interrupted him. "There goes a coyote! Now the night is perfect," he ended, with a note of exultant poetry.
She drew a little nearer to him. "I don't enjoy that cry as well as you do," she said, with a touch of delicious timidity in her voice. "That's the woman of it, isn't it?"
"I know how harmless he is." After a pause, he slowly said: "This is the farthest reach of the imaginable—that you should sit here beside my fire in this wild land. It must seem as much of a dream to you as your splendid home was to me."
"I didn't suppose these things could shake me so. How mysterious the world is when night makes it lone and empty! I never realized it before. That hill behind us, and the wolf—and see those willows by the brook. They might be savages creeping upon us, or great birds resting, or any silent, threatening creature of the darkness. If I were alone my heart would stand still with awe and fear of them."
"They are not mysterious to me," he made answer. "Only in the sense that space and dusk are inexplicable. After all, the wonder of the universe is in our brains, like love, rather than in the object to which we attribute mystery or majesty. To the Tetong, the simplest thing belonging to the white race is mysterious—a button, a cartridge, a tin-plate. 'How are they made? What are they built for?' he asks. So, deeply considered, all nature is inexplicable to us also. We white children of the Great Ruler push the mystery a little further back, that is all. Once I tried to understand the universe; now I am content to enjoy it."
"Tell me, how did you first become interested in these people?"
He hesitated a little before he replied. "Well, I was always interested in them, and when I got out among the Payonnay I tried to get at their notions of life; but they are a strange people—a secretive people—and I couldn't win their confidence for a long time. One day while on a hunting expedition I came suddenly upon a crew of wood-choppers who had an old man tied to a tree and were about to burn him alive—"
"Horrible! Why?"
"No reason at all, so far as I could learn. His wife sat on the ground not far away, wailing in deep despair. What treatment she had suffered I do not know. Naturally, I ordered the men to release the old man, and when they refused I cut his bands. The ruffians were furious with rage, and threatened to tie me up and burn me, too. By this time I was too angry to fear anything. 'If you do, you better pulverize the buttons on my uniform, for the United States government will demand a head for every one of them.' Had I been a civilian they would have killed me."
"They wouldn't have dared!" Elsie shuddered.
"Such men dare do anything when they are safe from discovery—and there is always the Indian to whom a deed of that sort can be laid."
"Did they release the old man?"
"Yes; and he and his wife camped along with me for several days, and their devotion to me was pathetic. Finally I came to understand that he considered himself dead, so far as his tribe was concerned. 'My life belongs to you,' he said. I was just beginning the sign language at that time and I couldn't get very far with him, but I made him understand that I gave his life back to him. He left me at last and returned to the tribe. Thereafter, every redman I met called me friend, and patiently sat while I struggled to learn his language. As I grew proficient they told me things they had concealed from all white men. I ceased to be an enemy. I became an adviser, a chief."
"Did you ever see the old man again?"
"Oh yes. He was my guide on several hunting expeditions. Poor old Siyeh, he died of small-pox. 'The white man's disease,' he called it, bitterly. He wanted to see me, but when he understood that I would be endangered thereby, he said: 'It is well—I will die alone; but tell him I fold my hands on my breast and his hand is between my palms.'" The soldier's voice grew hard and dry as the memory of the old man's death returned upon him.
Elsie shuddered with a new emotion. "You make my head whirl—you and the night. Did that determine your course with regard to them?"
"Yes. I resolved to get at their hearts—their inner thoughts—and my commanders put me forward from time to time as interpreter, where I could serve both the army and the redman. In some strange way all the Northwest tribes came to know of me, and I could go where few men could follow me. It is curious, but they never did seem strange to me. From the first time I met an Indian I felt that he was a man like other men—a father, a son, a brother, like anybody else. Naturally, when the plan for enlisting redmen into the cavalry came to be worked out, I was chosen to command a troop of Shi-an-nay. I received my promotion at that time. My detail as Indian agent came from the same cause, I suppose. I was known to be a friend of the redman, and the department is now experimenting with 'Curtis of the Gray-Horse Troop,'" he added, with a smile. "Such is the story of my life."
"How long will you remain Indian agent?"
"Till I can demonstrate my theory that, properly led, these people can be made happy."
"I am afraid you will live here until you are old," she said, and there was a note of undefinable regret in her voice. "I begin to feel that you really have a problem to solve."
"It lies with us, the dominant race," he said, slowly, "whether the red race shall die or become a strand in the woof of our national life. It is a question of saving our own souls, not of making them grotesque caricatures of American farmers. I am not of those who believe in teaching creeds that are dying out of our own life; to be clean, to be peaceful, to be happy—these are the precepts I would teach them."
"I don't understand you, and I think I would better go to bed," she said, with a return to her ordinary manner. "Good-night."
"Good-night," he replied, and in the utterance of those words was something that stirred her unaccountably.
"He makes life too serious, and too full of responsibility," she thought. "I don't like to feel responsible. All the same, he is fine," she added, in conclusion.
Elsie, being young and of flamelike vitality, was up and ready for a walk while Two Horns was building the fire, and was trying to make him understand her wish to paint him, when Curtis emerged from his tent.
"Good-morning, Captain," she called. "I'm glad you've come. Please tell Two Horns I want to have him sit for me."
Curtis, with a few swift gestures, conveyed her wishes to Two Horns, who replied in a way which made Curtis smile.
Elsie asked, "What does he say?"
"He says, 'Yes, how much?'"
"Oh, the mercenary thing!"
"Not at all," replied Curtis. "His time is worth something. You artists think the redmen ought to sit for nothing."
Two Horns ran through a swift and very graceful series of signs, which Curtis translated rapidly.
"He says: 'I have heard of you. You painted Elk's daughter. I hear you sell these pictures and catch a great pile of money. I think it is right you pay us something when we stand before you for long hours, while you make pictures to sell to rich men in Washington. Now, I drive a team; I earn some days two dollars driving team. If I stop driving team, and come and sit for you, then I lose my two dollars.'"
As he finished, Two Horns smiled at Elsie with a sly twinkle in his eyes which disconcerted her. "You sabbe?" he ended, speaking directly to her.
"I sabbe," she said, in reply.
"Good!" He held out his hand and she took it, and the bargain was sealed. He then returned to his work about the camp.
"Isn't it glorious!" the girl cried, as she looked about her. "It's enough to do an artist all over new." The grass and the willows sparkled with dew-drops. The sky, cloudless save for one long, low, orange-and-purple cape of glory just above the sunrise, canopied a limitless spread of plain to the north and east, while the high butte to the back was like the wall of a temple.
"Oh, let's take a run up that hill," Elsie said, with sudden change of tone. "Come!" and, giving Curtis no time to protest, she scuttled away, swift as a partridge. He followed her, calling:
"Wait a moment, please!"
When he overtook her at the foot of the first incline she was breathless, but her eyes were joyous as a child's and her cheeks were glowing.
"Let me help you," he said; "and if you slip, don't put your hand on the ground; that is the way men get snake-bitten."
"Snakes!" She stopped short. "I forgot—are there rattlesnakes here?"
"There is always danger on the sunny side of these buttes at this time of the year, especially where the rocks crop out."
"Why didn't you tell me?"
"You didn't give me time."
"Do you really think there is danger?"
"Not if you walk slowly and follow me; I'll draw their poison. After they bite me they'll have no virus left for you."
She began to smile roguishly. "You are tired—you want an excuse to rest."
"If I thought you meant that, I'd run up to the summit and back again to show you that I'm younger than my years."
She clapped her hands. "Do it! It will be like the knight in the story—the glove-and-lion story."
"No. On reflection, I will not run; it would compromise my dignity. We will climb soberly, side by side, like Darby and Joan on the hill of life."
With a demure countenance she took his hand, and they scrambled briskly up the slope. When they reached the brow of the hill she was fairly done up, while he, breathing easily, showed little fatigue, although she had felt his powerful arm sustaining her many times on the steeper slopes. She could not speak, and he smilingly said, "I hope I haven't hurried you?"
"You—are—strong," she admitted, brokenly. "I'm not tired, but I can't get breath."
At length they reached the summit and looked about. "What is the meaning of those little towers of stone?" she asked, after a moment's rest.
"Oh, they have different meanings. Sometimes they locate the springs of water, sometimes they indicate the course of a trail. This one was put here by a young fellow to mark the spot from whence he saw a famous herd of buffalo—what time he made a wonderful killing."
"I suppose all this land has been the hunting-ground of these people for ages. Do you suppose they had names for hills like this, and were fond of them like white people?"
"Certainly. They had a geography of their own as complete in its way as ours, and they are wonderfully sure of direction even now. They seldom make a mistake in the correlative positions of streams or mountains, even when confused by a white man's map."
"Itiswonderful, isn't it—that they should have lived here all those years without knowing or caring for the white man's world?"
"They don't care for it now—but I see Two Horns signalling that breakfast is ready, so we had better go."
"Let's run down!"
"Wait!" He caught her. "It will lame you frightfully, I warn you."
"Oh no, it won't."
"Very well, experience is a fine school. If you must run down, we'll go down the shadowed side. Now I'll let you get half-way down and beat you in, after all. One, two, three—go!"
With her skirt caught up in her hand, she started down the hill in reckless flight. She heard his shout and the thud of his prodigious leaps, and just as she reached the level he overtook her and relentlessly left her far behind. Discouraged and panting, she fell into a walk and waited for him to return, as she knew he would.
"Oh, these skirts!" she said, resentfully. "What chance has a woman with yards of cloth binding her? I nearly tumbled headlong."
He did not make her suffer for her defeat, and they returned to camp gay as a couple of children. Lawson smiled benevolently, like an aged uncle, while Elsie told him of their climb. Said he: "When you're as old as I am you will wait for wonders to come your way; you will not seek them."
The breakfast was made merry by Jennie, who waged gentle warfare on Parker, whose preconceived ideas of the people resident on an Indian reservation had been shaken.
"Why, you're very decent," he admitted at last.
"They are all like us—nit," replied Jennie. "We're marked 'special.'"
"Couldn't be any more like you, sis," said Curtis.
"Youshouldn't say that."
"Well, it needed saying, and no one else seemed ready to do it. If Calvin had been here!"
"Who is Calvin?" asked Mrs. Parker.
"I know!" cried Elsie. "He's one of the handsomest young cowboys you ever saw. If you want to do a cow-puncher, Parker, he's your model."
"I certainly must see him. If I don't do a cowboy or a bucking bronco I'm a failure."
As they were ready to start, Elsie again took her place beside Curtis, but Lawson insisted on sitting behind with Jennie. "It's hard luck, Parker, to have to sit with your wife," he said, compassionately.
"Oh, well! I'm used to disappointments," Parker replied, in resigned calm.
Elsie felt the need of justifying herself. "Are you complaining? Am I the assistant driver, or am I not? If I am, here is where I belong."
"When I was coaching in Scotland once—" began Lawson.
"Oh, never mind Scotland!" interrupted Elsie. "See that chain of peaks? Aren't they gorgeous! Do we camp there?"
"Yes," replied Curtis. "Just where that fan-shaped belt of timber begins, I hope to set our tent. The agency is just between those dark ridges."
"It is strange," Elsie said, after a pause. "Last year I waswonderingat everything; now I am looking for familiar things."
"That is the second stage," he answered. "The third will be sympathy."
"What will the fourth be?"
"Affection."
"And the fifth?"
"Devotion."
She laughed. "You place too high a value on your Western land."
"I admit there is to me great charm in these barren foot-hills and the great divide they lead up to," he soberly answered.
As they talked, the swift little horses drummed along the hard road, and by the time the agency flag-pole came in view they had passed over their main points of difference, and were chatting gayly on topics not controversial. Elsie was taking her turn with the reins, her face flushed with the joy and excitement of it, while Jennie and Mrs. Parker, shrieking with pretended fear, clung to their seats with frenzied clasp.
Curtis was as merry as a boy, and his people, seeing him come in smiling and alert, looked at each other in amazement, and Crow Wing said:
"Our Little Father has found a squaw at last."
Whereas, as her lover, Curtis had been careful to consider the effect of every word, he now went to Elsie's service as frankly as Lawson himself, and his thoughtfulness touched her deeply. Her old studio had been put in order, and contained all needful furniture, and her sleeping apartment looked very clean and very comfortable indeed.
Jennie apologized. "Of course, it's like camping compared to your own splendid home, but George said you wouldn't mind that, being an artist. He has an idea an artist can sleep in a palace one night and a pigsty the next, and rejoice."
"He isn't so very far wrong," Elsie valiantly replied. "Of course, the pigsty is a little bit extreme. This is good enough for any one. You are very kind," she added, softly. "It was good of him to take so much trouble."
"George is the best man I ever knew," replied Jennie. "That's why I've never been able to leave him for any other man." She smiled shrewdly. "I'll admit that eligible men have been scarce, and my chances have been few. Well, I must run across and look after dinner. You're to eat with us till you get settled.Weinsist on being hosts this time."
"Surely," said Curtis, as they rose from the table, "being Indian agent is not the grim, vexatious experience I once considered it. If the charm of such company should get reckoned in as one of the perquisites of the office, the crush of applicants would thicken into a riot. I find it hard to return to my work in the office."
"Don't be hasty; we may turn out to be nuisances," responded Elsie.
During the remainder of the day the agent found office work most difficult. His mind wandered to other and pleasanter things, and at last he began to make out a list of the necessaries for the camping trip.
The next day, about four o'clock, Crow Wing and Crawling Elk came into his office bringing a young Tetong, who said he had been struck on the head by a sheep-herder.
Curtis was instantly alert. "Sit down—all of you!" he commanded. "Now, Yellow Hand, tell your story."
Yellow Hand, a tall and sinister-looking fellow, related his adventure sullenly. "I was riding the line of the reservation, as Crawling Elk had told me and as you commanded, when I came upon this sheep-man driving his flocks across the river. I hollered to him to keep away, but he kept on pushing the sheep into the river; then I tried to drive them back. This made him angry and he threw a rock at me, and struck me here." He touched his bandaged head. "I had no gun, so I came away."
"Did you throw rocks at him?" asked Curtis.
"No, I was on my horse."
"You rode among his sheep?"
"Yes."
"Well, that was wrong. You should have reported to me and I would have sent a policeman. You must not make trouble with these men. Come to me or report to Grayman, your head man over there. The ranchers are angry at Washington, and we must be careful not to make them angry at us. I will send Crow back with you and he will remove this man."
As they went out Curtis said to Wilson: "This is the second assault they have made on our boys. They seem determined to involve us in a shooting scrape, in order to influence Congress. We must be very careful. I am afraid I ought not to take this camping trip just now."
"Don't put too much importance on these little scraps, Major. Yellow Hand is always getting into trouble. He's quarrelsome."
"I'd disarm a few of these reckless young fellows if it would do any good."
"It wouldn't. They'd simply borrow a gun of some one, and it won't do to disarm the whole tribe, for if you do these cowboys will swarm in here and run us all out."
"Well, caution every one to be careful. I'm particularly anxious just now, on account of our visitors."
"I don't think you need to be, Major. You take your trip with your friends. I'll guarantee nothing serious happens down here. And as you are not to leave the reservation, I don't see as the department can have any roar coming."
Nevertheless, it was with some misgiving that Curtis made his final arrangements for the start. Crane's Voice and Two Horns had interested Elsie very much; therefore he filled their places with other men, and notified them to be in readiness to accompany the expedition, an order which pleased them mightily. Mary, the mother of Crane's Voice, was to go along as chief cook, under Jennie's direction, while Two Horns took general charge of the camp.
Elsie burdened herself with canvases. "I don't suppose I'll paint a picture while I'm gone, but I'm going to make a bluff at it on the start," she said, as she came out and took her place with the driver amid the mock lamentations of Lawson and Parker and Jennie.
"Can any of you drive—no!" replied Elsie, in German fashion. "Then I am here."
"I like her impudence," said Lawson.
As they drove up the valley, Curtis outlined his plan for using the water on a huge agency garden. "I would lay it out in lots and mark every lot with the name of a family, and require it to be planted and taken care of by that family. There are sites for three such gardens, enough to feed the entire tribe, but so long as a few white men are allowed to use up all the water nothing can be done but continue to feed the Tetongs in idleness, as we are now doing."
As they rose the grass grew greener, and at last Elsie began to discover wild roses growing low in damp places, and at noon, when they stopped for lunch, they were able to eat in the shade of a murmuring aspen, with wild flowers all about them. The stream was swift and cold and clear, hardly to be classed with the turbid, sluggish, discouraged current which seeped past the agency.
"It is a different world up here," Elsie said, again and again. "I can't believe we are only a half-day's drive from the agency. I never saw more delicious greens."
Mrs. Parker, being an amateur botanist, was filled with delight of the thickening flowers. "It is exactly as if we had begun in August and were moving backward towards spring. I feel as though violets were near. It is positively enchanting."
"You'll camp beside violets to-night," replied Curtis.
Lawson pretended to sleep. Parker smoked a pipe while striding along behind the wagon. Elsie drove, and of course Curtis could not leave her to guide the team alone. Necessarily, they talked freely on many topics, and all restraint, all reserve, were away at last. It is difficult to hold a formal and carefully considered conversation in a jolting buckboard climbing towards a great range of shining peaks, and every frank speech brought them into friendlier relation. Considered in this light, the afternoon assumed vast importance.
At last, just on the edge of a small lake entirely enclosed by sparse pines, they drew into camp. To the west the top of a snow mountain could be seen, low down, and against it a thin column of blue smoke was rising. The water, dark as topaz and smooth as oil, reflected the opposite shore, the yellow sky, and the peak with magic clearness, and Elsie was seized with a desire to do something.
"Where is my paint-box? Here is the background for some action—I don't know what—something primeval."
"An Indian in a canoe,à laBrush; or a bear coming down to drink,à laBierstadt," suggested Parker.
"Don't mention that old fogy," cried Elsie.
Lawson interposed. "Well, now, those old chaps had something to say—and that's better than your modern Frenchmen do."
She was soon at work, with Lawson and Parker standing by her side, overlooking her panel and offering advice.
"There's no color in that," Parker said, finally. "It's a black-and-white merely. Its charm is in things you can't paint—the feel of the air, the smell of pine boughs."
"Go away—both of you," she commanded, curtly, and they retreated to the camp, where Curtis was setting the tents, and Jennie, old Mary, and Two Horns, with swift and harmonious action, were bringing appetizing odors out of various cans and boxes, what time the crackle of the fire increased to a gentle roar. There they sat immovably, shamelessly waiting till the call for supper came.
They were all hungry, and Jennie's cooking received such praise as comes from friends who speak and devour—Parker nearly devoured without speaking, so lank and empty was he by reason of his long walk. Elsie seemed to have forgotten her life of luxury, and was reverted to a primitive stage of culture wherein she found everything enjoyable. Her sketch, propped up against a basket by Curtis, was admired unreservedly. Altogether, the trouble and toil of civilized life were forgotten tyrants, so far as these few souls were concerned. They came close to the peace and the care-free tranquillity of the redman, whose ideals they had come to destroy.
As soon as supper was eaten and the men had lighted their cigars, the whole party walked out to the edge of the little pond and lounged about on blankets, and watched the light go out of the sky. Talk grew more subdued as the beauty and the mystery of the night deepened. Elsie listened to every sound, and asked innumerable questions of Curtis. She insisted on knowing the name of every bird or beast whose call could be heard. The young soldier's wood-craft both pleased and astonished her. Mrs. Parker, with her lap full of botanical specimens, was absorbed in the work of classifying them. Parker was a gentleman of leisure, with nothing to do but watch the peaceful coming of the dusk and comment largely on the universe.
It was natural that, as host, Curtis should enjoy a large part of Elsie's company, but neither of them seemed to realize that Lawson was being left quite unheeded in the background, but Jennie was aware of this neglect, and put forth skilful effort to break the force of it. Lawson himself seemed to be entirely unconscious of any loss or threatening disaster.
A little later, as they sat watching the fire grow in power in the deepening darkness, Curtis suddenly lifted his hand.
"Hark!"
All listened. Two Horns spoke first. "One man come, on horse."
"Some messenger for me, probably," said the Captain, composedly. "He is coming fast, too."
As the steady drumming of the horse's hoofs increased in power, Elsie felt something chill creep beneath the roots of her hair. Perhaps the Indians had broken out in war against the whites! Perhaps—
A tall young Tetong slipped from his tired horse and approached the Captain. In his extended hand lay an envelope, which gleamed in the firelight. As Curtis took this letter the messenger, squatting before him, began to roll a cigarette. His lean and powerful face was shadowed by a limp sombrero and his eyes were hidden, but his lips were grave and calm. A quirt dangled from his right wrist, and in the two braids of his hair green eagle-plumes were twisted. The star on the lapel of his embroidered vest showed him to be a police-officer. From the intensity of his attitude it was plain he was studying his agent's face in order to read thereon the character of the message he had brought.
Curtis turned the paper slowly and without excitement. With rapid signs he dismissed the courier. "I have read it. You will camp with Two Horns. Go get some food. Mary will give you meat."
Turning to his guests, he then said: "It is nothing special—merely some papers I forgot to sign before leaving."
"By George! what a picture the fellow made, sitting there!" said Parker. "It was like an illustration in a novel. Why don't you paint that kind of thing, Bee Bee?"
"Because I can't," she replied. "Don't you suppose I saw it? I'd need the skill of Zorn to do a thing as big and mysterious as that. Did you see the intensity of his pose? He expected Captain Curtis to show excitement or alarm. He was very curious to know what it was all about—don't you think so?"
Curtis was amused. "Yes, I suppose he thought the paper more important than it was. The settlers have kept the tribe guessing all the spring by threats of running them off the reservation. Of course they wouldn't openly resort to violence, but there are several irresponsibles who would strike in the dark if they found opportunity."
In spite of his reassuring tone, a vague fear fell over the camping party. Parker was frankly alarmed.
"If you think there is any danger, Captain, I want to get out o' here quick. I'm not here to study the Tetong with his war-paint on."
"If there had been any danger, Mr. Parker, I would not have left my office. I shall have a report similar to this every day while I am away, so please be composed."
The policeman came back, resumed his squatting position before the fire, and began a series of vigorous and dramatic gestures, to which the Captain replied in kind, absorbed, intent, with a face as inscrutable as that of the redman himself. The contrast between the resolute, handsome young white man and the roughhewn Tetong was superb. "There's nothing in it for me," said Parker, "but it's great business for a painter."
Elsie seized a block of paper, and with soft pencil began to sketch them both against the background of mysterious blackness, out of which a pine bole gleamed ashy white.
Suddenly, silently, as though one of the tree-trunks had taken on life, another Tetong appeared in the circle of the firelight and stood with deep-sunk eyes fastened on the Captain's face. Another followed, and still others, till two old men and four young fellows ranged themselves in a semicircle before their agent, with Crane's Voice and Two Horns at the left and a little behind. The old men smoked a long pipe, but the young men rolled cigarettes, taking no part in the council, listening the while with eyes as bright as those of foxes.
It was all sinister and menacing to the Parkers, and all wondered till Curtis turned to say: "They are my mill-hands—good, faithful boys, too."
"Mill-hands!" exclaimed Parker. "They looked uncommonly like a scalping party."
"That is what imagination can do. I thought your faces were extra solemn," remarked Curtis, dryly; but Lawson knew that the agent was not so untroubled as he pretended, for old Crow Killer had a bitter story to relate of the passage of a band of cowboys through his camp. They had stampeded his ponies and shot at him, one bullet passing so close to his ear that it burned the skin, and he was angry.
"They wish to kill us, these cattlemen," he said, sombrely, in conclusion. "If they come again we will fight."
Happily, his vehemence did not reach the comprehension of the women nor the understanding of Parker, and Lawson smoked on as calmly as if these tell-tale gestures were the flecking of shadows cast by the leaping flames. At last the red visitors rose and vanished as silently as they came. They seemed to pass through black curtains, so suddenly they disappeared.
In spite of all reassurance, the women were a little reluctant to go to bed—at least Mrs. Parker and Elsie were.
"I wish the men's tent were not so far off," Mrs. Parker said to Elsie, plaintively.
"I'll ask them to move it, if you wish," returned Elsie, and when Jennie came in she said: "Aren't you a little nervous to-night?"
Jennie looked surprised. "Why, no! Do you mean about sleeping in a tent?"
"Yes," replied Mrs. Parker. "Suppose a wolf or a redman should come?"
Jennie laughed. "You needn't worry—we have a powerful guard. I never am afraid with George."
"But the men are so far away! I wish their tent were close beside ours. I'm not standing on propriety," Mrs. Parker added, as Jennie hesitated. "I'm getting nervous, and I want Jerome where he can hear me if I call to him."
Perceiving that Elsie shared this feeling in no small degree, Jennie soberly conveyed their wish to Curtis.
"Very well, we'll move over. It will take but a moment."
As she heard the men driving the tent-pegs close beside her bed Mrs. Parker sighed peacefully.
"NowI can sleep. There is no comfort like a man in case of wolves, Indians, and burglars," and the fact that the men were laughing did not disturb her.
With a little shock, Elsie realized that Curtis and not Lawson was in her mind as her defender. Of course, he was in command; that accounted for it.
Nevertheless, as she listened to the murmur of their voices she detected herself waiting for Curtis's crisp, clear bass, and not for the nasal tenor of the man whose ring she wore. Her mind was filled, too, with the dramatic figure the young officer made as he sat in gesture-talk with his Tetong wards. In case of trouble the safest place on all the reservation would be by his side, for his people loved and trusted him. She did not go to sleep easily; the excitement, the strangeness of being in a tent, kept her alert long after Jennie and Mrs. Parker were breathing tranquilly on their cots.
One hears everything from a tent. It seems to stand in the midst of the world. It is like being in a diving-bell under water. Life goes on almost uninterruptedly. The girl heard a hundred obscure, singular, sibilant sounds, as of serpents conferring. Mysterious footsteps advanced, paused, retreated. Whispered colloquies arose among the leaves, giving her heart disquiet. Every unfamiliar sound was a threat. The voices of birds and beasts no longer interested her—they scared her; and, try as she would to banish these fancies, her nerves thrilled with every rush of the wind. It was deep night before she dropped asleep.