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
you _are_ here, 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 be _right_," 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.