"Wait!" he commanded. "Small Bird, who made these garments, is out in
the kitchen. I want to call her; she can be your maid for this time."
As Small Bird sidled bashfully into the hall Elsie cried out in delight
of her. She was dressed in the old-time Tetong dress, and was
exceedingly comely. Her face was carefully painted and her hair shone
with much brushing and oil. Her teeth were white and even.
"Can she speak English?" asked Elsie.
"Not very well; but she understands. Small Bird, the lady says, thank
you. She thinks they are very fine. Her heart is glad. Go help her
dress."
"Come!" cried Elsie, eagerly, and fairly ran up the stairs in her haste
to be transformed into a woman of the red people.
When she returned she was a sister to Small Bird. Her dark hair was
braided in the Tetong fashion, her face was browned, and her little feet
were clothed in glittering, beaded moccasins.
"You look exactly like some of the old engravings of Mohawk princesses,"
cried Curtis. "Now you are ready to sit by my side and review the
procession."
"Are we to have a procession?"
"Indeed we are, as significant as any mediaeval tournament. I am the
resident duke before whom the review takes place, and I shall be in my
best dress and you are to sit by my side--my bride-elect."
"Oh no!"
"Oh yes. It is decided." He drew himself up haughtily. "I have said it,
and I am chief to-day. It is good, Small Bird," he said, as the Tetong
girl started to go. "My wife likes it very much."
Elsie ran towards the girl and took her by the shoulders as if to make
her understand the better. "Thank you; thank you!"
Small Bird smiled, but surrendered to her timidity, and, turning, ran
swiftly out of the room.
Curtis hooked Elsie in his right arm. "Now all is decreed. You have put
on the garb of my people," and his kiss stopped the protest she
struggled to utter.
Surely the day was a day strangely apart. Everything that could be done
to make it symbolic, to make it idyllic, was done. Curtis appeared after
lunch in a fine costume of buckskin, trimmed with green porcupine quills
and beads, and for a hat he wore a fillet of beaver-skin with a single
feather on the back. Across his shoulder he carried the sash of a finely
beaded tobacco pouch, and in his hand a long fringed bag, very ancient,
containing a peace-pipe, which had been transmitted to Crawling Elk by
his father's father, a very precious thing, worn only by chieftains.
"Oh, I shall paint you in that dress," cried Elsie.
So accoutred, he led the way to the canopied platform under the
flag-pole, where the reviewing party were to sit. In order that no
invidious distinctions might be drawn, two or three of the old chiefs
and their wives had been given seats thereon, and they were already in
place. Not many strangers were present, for Curtis had purposely
refrained from setting a day too long ahead, but Lawson's friends and
some relatives of the employes, and several of the young officers from
the fort made up the outside representation. Maynard was in his
brightest uniform, and Jennie, looking very nice in a muslin gown, and a
broad, white hat, sat by his side.
From the seats in the stand, the camp, swarming with horsemen, could be
seen. Wilson, as grand marshal, was riding to and fro, assisted by
Lawson, who had entered into the game with the self-sacrificing devotion
of a drum-major. His make-up was superb, and when at last he approached,
leading the cavalcade, Elsie did not recognize him. His lean face, dark
with paint, was indistinguishably Tetong, seen from a distance, and he
sat his horse in perfect simulation of his red brethren. He was but
re-enacting scenes of his early life. His hunting-shirt was dark with
use, and his splendid war-bonnet trailed grandly down his back. He rode
by, looking neither to the right nor the left, singing a new song.
"We are passing.
See us passing by.
We are leaving the old behind us.
The new we seek to find. We are passing, passing by."
Crawling Elk followed, holding aloft a spear with a green plume; it was
a turnip thrust through with a sharp-pointed, blackened stick, and
behind him, two and two, came fifty of his young warriors carrying
shining hoes upright, as of old they carried their lances, while at
their shoulders, where quivers of arrows should have swung, dangled trim
sheaves of green wheat and golden barley. The free fluttering of their
feather-ornamented hair, the barbaric painting on their faces and hands,
symbolized the old life, as the green arrows of the grain prefigured the
new. Behind them rode their women, each bearing in her left hand a bunch
of flowers. Those who could read wore on their bosoms a small, shining
medal, and in their hair an eagle feather. No Tetong woman had ever worn
a plume before.
Standing Elk, quaint and bent, rode by, singing a war-song, magnificent
in his dress as war chief, leading some twenty young men. His hands were
empty of the signs of peace, and his face was rapt with dreams of the
past, but his young men carried long-handled forks which flamed in the
sun, and bracelets of green grass encircled their firm, brown arms.
They, too, were painted to signify their clan and their ancestry, and
the "medicine" they affected was on their breasts. Their wives were
close behind, each bearing a stalk of corn in bloom; their beaded
saddles and gay blankets were pleasant to see. Every weapon bespoke
warfare against weeds. Every ornament represented the better nature, the
striving, the aspiration of its wearer.
Then came the school-children, adding a final note of pathos, poor
little brown men and women trudging on foot to symbolize that they must
go through life, plodding in the dust of the white man's chariot
wheel--their toes imprisoned in a shapeless box of leather, their hair
closely clipped, their clothing hot and restrictive. Each carried a book
and a slate, and their faces were very intent and serious as they paced
by on their way from the old to the new. They were followed by the
school-band playing "The Star-Spangled Banner," with splendid disregard
of the broken faith of the government whose song it was.
And so they streamed by, these folk, accounted the most warlike of all
red men, genially carrying out the wishes of their chief, illustrating,
without knowing it, the wondrous change which had come to them; the old
men still clinging to the past, the young men careless of the future,
the children already transformed, and, as they glanced up, some smiling,
some grave and dreaming, Elsie shuddered with a species of awe; it
seemed as if a people were being disintegrated before her eyes; that the
evolution of a race having proceeded for countless ages by almost
imperceptible degrees was now and here rushing, as by mighty bounds,
from war to peace, from hunting to harvesting, from primitive indolence
to ordered thrift. They were, indeed, passing, as the plains and the
wild spaces were passing; as the buffalo had passed; as every wild thing
must pass before the ever-thickening flood of white ploughmen pressing
upon the land.
Twice they circled, and then, as they all massed before him, Curtis rose
to sign to them.
"I am very proud of you. All my friends are pleased. My heart is big
with emotion and my head is full of thoughts. This is a great day for
you and also for me. Some of you are sad, for you long for the old
things--the big, broad plain, the elk, and the buffalo. So do I. I
loved those things also. But you have seen how it is. The water of the
stream never turns back to the spring, the old man never grows young,
the tree that falls does not rise up again. So the old things come never
again. We have always to look ahead. Perhaps, in the happy
hunting-ground all will be different, but here now we must do our best
to live upon the earth. It is the law that, now the game being gone, we
must plough and sow and reap the fruit of the soil. That is the meaning
of all we have done to-day. We have put away the rifle; we here take up
the hoe.
"I am glad; my heart is like a bird; it sings when I see you happy.
Listen--I will tell you a great secret. You see this young woman," he
touched Elsie. "You see she wears the Tetong dress, the same as I; that
means much. It signifies two things: Last year her heart was hard
towards the Tetongs; now it is soft. She is proud of what you have done.
She wears this dress for another reason; she is going to be my wife, and
help me show you the good way." At this moment a chorus of pleased
outcries broke forth. "Now, go to your feast. Let everything be orderly.
To-night we will come to see you dance."
With an outburst of jocular whooping, the young men wheeled their horses
and vanished under cover of a cloud of dust, while the old men and the
women and the children moved sedately back to camp; the women chattering
gayly over the day's exciting shows, and in anticipation of the dance
which was to come.
* * * * *
There were tears in Elsie's eyes as she looked up at Curtis. "They have
so far to go, poor things! They can't realize how long the road to
civilization is."
"I do not care whether they reach what you call civilization or not; the
road to happiness and peace is not long, it is short; they are even now
entering upon it. They can be happy right here, and so can we," he
ended, looking at her with a tender wistfulness. "Can't you understand?"
"You have conquered," she said, with deep feeling. "Under the spell of
this day, I feel your work to be the only thing in the world worth
doing." Her words, her voice, so moved him that he bent and laid a kiss
upon her lips. When he could speak, he said: "Now I want to ask
something of you. I have a leave of absence for six months. Show me the
Old World."