Curtis was frankly exclamatory at the size and splendor of Lawson's
apartments. He had accepted the invitation to take breakfast with him
without much thought as to the quality of the breakfast or where it
would be eaten, until he found himself entering the hall of a superb
apartment hotel.
"Why, see here, Lawson," he exclaimed, as he looked about his friend's
suite, "this is too much for any bachelor--it's baronial! I must revise
my judgments. I had a notion you were a hard-working ethnologic sharp."
"So I am," replied Lawson, smiling with frank enjoyment of his visitor's
amazement. "I've been at work two hours at my desk. If you don't believe
it, there's the desk."
The room was filled with books, cases of antique pottery, paintings of
Indians, models of Pueblo dwellings, and other things in keeping, and
was made rich in color by a half-dozen very choice Navajo blankets in
the fine old weaves with the vegetable dyes so dear to the collector.
The long table was heaped with current issues of the latest magazines,
and dozens of books, with markers set to guard some valuable passages,
were piled within reach. It was plainly the library of a student and man
of letters.
Lawson's lean, brown face at once assumed a different aspect to Curtis.
It became more refined, more scholarly, and distinctly less shrewd and
quizzical, and the soldier began to understand the writer's smiling
defiance of Western politicians and millionaire cattle-owners. Plainly a
man of large fortune, with high social connections, what had Lawson to
fear of the mountain West? The menace of the greedy cattlemen troubled
him no more than the howl of the blizzard.
In the same measure that Lawson's power was revealed to him the heart of
the agent sank. He could not but acknowledge that here was the fitting
husband and proper home for Elsie--"while I," he thought, "have only a
barrack in a desolate Indian country to offer her," and he swung deep in
the trough of his sea of doubt.
A map on the wall, lined with red, caught his eye, and he seized upon it
for diversion.
"What is this?" he asked.
"That's my trail-map," replied Lawson. "The red lines represent my
wanderings."
Curtis studied it with expert eyes. "You have ploughed the Arizona
deserts pretty thoroughly."
"Yes, I've spent three summers down in that country studying
cliff-dwellings. It's a mighty alluring region. Last summer I broke away
and got back into the north, but I am greatly taken with the hot
sunshine and loneliness of the desert."
Curtis turned sharply. "What I can't understand, Lawson, is this: How
can you pull up and leave such a home?"--he indicated the room with a
sweep of his hand--"and go out on the painted desert or down the Chaco
and swelter in the heat like a horned toad?"
Lawson smiled. "It _is_ absurd, isn't it? Man's an unaccountable beast.
But come! Breakfast is waiting, and I hope you're hungry."
The dining-room was built on a scale with the library, and the mahogany
table, sparsely covered with dishes, looked small and lonely in the
midst of the shining floor. This feature of the beautiful room impressed
Curtis, and as they took seats opposite each other he remarked, "If I
were not here you would be alone?"
"Yes, quite generally I breakfast alone. I entertain less than you would
think. I'm a busy man when at home."
"Well, the waste of room is criminal, Lawson, that's all I have to
say--criminal. You'll be called upon to answer for it some time."
"I've begun to think so myself," replied the host, significantly.
They talked mountain ranges and Pueblo dwellers, and the theoretical
relation of the mound-builders to the small, brown races of the Rio
Grande Valley, touching also on the future of the redman; and all the
while Curtis was struggling with a benumbing sense of his hopeless
weakness in the face of a rival like Lawson. He gave up all thought of
seeing Elsie again, and resolutely set himself to do the work before
him, eager to return to his duties in the Western foot-hills.
Lawson accompanied him to the Interior Department and introduced him to
the Secretary, who had the preoccupied air of a business man rather than
the assumed leisure of the politician. He shook hands warmly, and asked
his visitors to be seated while he finished a paper in hand. At last he
turned and pleasantly began:
"I'm glad to meet you, Captain. Yours is a distinguished name with us.
We fully recognize the value of your volunteer service, and hope to make
the best use of you. Our mutual friend, Lawson here, threatens to make
you Secretary in my stead." Here he looked over his spectacles with a
grave and accusing air, which amused Lawson greatly.
"Not so bad as that, Mr. Secretary," he laughed. "I merely suggested
that Captain Curtis would make an excellent President."
"Oh, well, it all comes to the same thing." He then became quite
serious. "Now, Captain, I would suggest that you put this whole matter
as you see it, together with your recommendations, into the briefest,
most telling form possible, and be ready to come before the committee
to-morrow. Confer with the commissioner and be ready to meet the queries
of the opposition. Brisbane is behind the cattlemen in this controversy,
and he is a strong man. I agree entirely with you and Lawson that the
Tetongs should remain where they are and be helped in the way you
suggest. Be ready with computations of the cost of satisfying claims of
the settlers, building ditches, etc. Come and see me again before you
return. Good-morning," and he bent to his desk with instant absorption.
Lawson again led the way across the square in search of the
commissioner's office. The large, bare waiting-room was filled with a
dozen or more redmen, all wearing new blue suits and wide black hats.
They were smoking in contemplative silence, with only an occasional word
spoken in undertone. It was plain they were expecting an audience with
the great white chief.
Several of them knew Lawson and cried out: "Ho! Ho!" coming up one by
one to shake hands, but they glowed with pleasure as Curtis began to
sign-talk with them.
"Who are you?" he asked of one. "Oh! Northern Cheyenne--I thought so.
And you--you are Apache?" he said to another. "I can tell that, too.
What are you all waiting for? To see the commissioner? Have you had a
good visit? Yes, I see you have nice new suits. The government is good
to you--sometimes." They laughed at his sharp hits. "Well, don't stay
too long here. The white man will rob you of your good clothes. Be
careful of fire-water."
One old man, whose gestures were peculiarly flowing and dignified,
thereupon signed: "When the white man come to buy our lands we are great
chiefs--very tall; when we ask for our money to be paid to us, then we
are small, like children." This caused a general laugh, in which Curtis
joined. They all wanted to know who he was, and he told them. "Ah! we
are glad for the Tetongs. They have a good man. Tell the commissioner we
are anxious to council and go home--we are weary of this place."
Lawson, meanwhile, had entered the office and now reappeared. "Mr. Brown
will see you at once, Captain."
The acting commissioner wore the troubled look of a man sorely
overworked and badly badgered. He breathed a sigh of ostentatious relief
as he faced his two visitors, who came neither to complain nor to ask
favors. He studied Curtis contemplatively, his pale face set in sad
lines.
"I'm leaning on you in this Tetong business," he began. "I have so many
similar fights all over the West, I can't give you the attention you
deserve. It seems as though our settlers were insane over Indian lands.
I honestly believe, if we should lay out a reservation on the staked
plains there'd be a mad rush for it. 'The Injun has it--let's take it
away from him,' seems to be the universal cry. I am pestered to death
with schemes for cutting down reservations and removing tribes. It would
seem as if these poor, hunted devils might have a thumb-nail's breadth
of the continent they once entirely owned; but no, so long as an acre
exists they are liable to attack. I'm worn out with the attempt to
defend them. I'll have nervous prostration or something worse if this
pressure continues. Yesterday nearly finished me. What kind of pirates
do you raise out there, anyway?"
Curtis listened with amazement to this frank avowal, but Lawson only
laughed, saying, in explanation: "This is one of the commissioner's poor
days. He'll fight till the last ditch--"
"Irrigating ditch!" supplemented the commissioner. "Yes, there's another
nightmare. Beautiful complication! The government puts the Indian on a
reservation so dry that water won't run down hill, and then Lawson or
some other friend of the Indian comes in here and insists on irrigating
ditches being put in, and then I am besieged by civil engineers for
jobs, and wild-eyed contractors twist my door-knobs off. Captain Curtis,
keep out of the Indian service if you have any conscience."
"That's exactly why I recommended him," said Lawson--"because he _has_ a
conscience."
"It'll shorten his life ten years and do no material good. Well, now,
about this Tetong imbroglio."
Immediately he fell upon the problem with the most intense application,
and Curtis had a feeling that his little season of plain speaking had
refreshed him.
Lawson went his way, but Curtis spent the remainder of the day in the
commissioner's office, putting together his defence of the Tetongs,
compiling figures, and drawing maps to show the location of grass and
water. He did not rise from his work till the signal for closing came,
and even then he gathered his papers together and took them home to his
room in the club in order to put the finishing touches to them.
While dressing for his dinner with Lieutenant Kirkman, a classmate and
comrade, he began to wonder how soon he could decently make his
dinner-call on the Brisbanes. It was shameful in him, of course, but he
had suddenly lost interest in the Kirkmans. The day seemed lost because
he had not been able to see Elsie. There was a powerful longing in his
heart, an impatience which he had not experienced since his early
manhood. It was a hunger which had lain dormant--scotched but not
killed--for now it rose from its mysterious lair with augmented power to
break his rest and render all other desires of no account.
That night, after he returned from the Kirkmans', where he had enjoyed
an exquisite little dinner amid a joyous chatter reviving old-time
memories, he found himself not merely wide-awake, but restless. His
brain seemed determined to reveal itself to him completely. Pictures of
his early life and the faces and homes of his friends in the West came
whirling in orderless procession like flights of swift birds--now a
council with the Sioux; now a dinner of the staff of General Miles;
visions of West Point, a flock of them, came also, and the faces of the
girls he had loved with a boy's fancy; and then, as if these were but
whisks of cloud scattering, the walls of great mountain ranges appeared
behind, stern and majestic, sunlit for a moment, only to withdraw
swiftly into gray night; and when he seized upon these sweeping
fragments and attempted to arrange them, Elsie's proud face, with its
dark, changeful eyes and beautiful, curving lips, took central place,
and in the end obscured all the rest.
The Kirkman home, the cheer, the tenderness of the husband towards his
dainty little wife, the obvious rest and satisfaction of the man,
betokening that the ultimate of his desires had been reached, also came
in for consideration by the restless brain of the soldier-mountaineer.
"I shall never be at peace till I have wife and child, that I now
realize," he acknowledged to himself in the deep, solitary places of his
thought.
Then he rose and took up the papers which he had been preparing, and as
he went over them again he came to profounder realization than ever
before of the mighty tragedy whose final act he seemed about to witness.
His heart swelled with a great tenderness towards that fragment of a
proud and free people who sat in wonder before the coming of an infinite
flood of alien races, helpless to stay it, appalled by the breadth and
power of the stream which swept them away. He felt himself in some sense
their chosen friend--their Moses, to lead them out of the desolation in
which they sat bewildered and despairing. Thinking of them and of plans
to help them, he grew weary at last, his brain ceased to grind, and he
slept.