THE ELECTION
"Perhaps, after all, I have fulfilled my destiny in being a lute for
the wind. But then why the cones and the broken boughs?"--_The
Murmuring Pine_.
It rained on Election Day, a cold November drizzle that elated the
Democrats. "A rainy day always brings a Democratic victory," said
Amos, gloomily, voicing the general superstition.
The day was a legal holiday and even the saloons were closed. Yet Lake
City was full of drunken men by noon. Every hack, surrey and hotel bus
in town was busy in the pay of one faction or the other hauling voters
to the booths. The Capitol square was deserted but groups of men, some
of them very drunk and some of them very sober, were to be found
throughout the business section of the city, bitterly debating the
reservation question.
There were a great number of Indians in town that day, big dark fellows
in muddy moccasins and faded mackinaws who stood about watching the
machinations of the whites without audible comments.
Toward night the rain stopped and Lydia begged her father to take her
into town to see the parade that would be indulged in by the victorious
party. Amos was not at all averse to taking in the parade, himself.
So nine o'clock found the two at the Square with a great waiting crowd.
There were very few women in the crowd. Those that Lydia saw were
painted and loud-voiced. Amos told her vaguely that they were
"hussies" and that she was not to let go of his arm for an instant.
Lydia didn't know what a hussy was, but she didn't want to stir an inch
from her father's side because of her fear of drunken men. She was in
a quiver of excitement; torn with pity and doubt when she thought of
Charlie Jackson; speechless with apprehension when she thought of the
possibility of Levine's being defeated.
It was close on ten o'clock when the sound of a drum was heard from the
direction of the Methodist Church. The crowd started toward the sound,
then paused as Binny Bates, the barber, in a stove-pipe hat, mounted on
a much excited horse, rode up the street. Binny was a Levine man and
the crowd broke into cheers and cat-calls.
After Binny came the band, playing for dear life "Hail the Conquering
Hero" and after the band, two and two a great line of citizens with
kerosene torches. After the torches came the transparencies: "Levine
Wins!" "The Reservation is Ours." "Back to the land, boys!" "We've
dropped the white men's burden."
And following the transparencies came a surprise for crowd and paraders
alike. Close on the heels of the last white man strode Charlie
Jackson, with a sign, "The land is ours! You have robbed us!" and
after Charlie, perhaps a hundred Indians, tramping silently two by two,
to the faint strain of the band ahead,
"Columbia, the gem of the ocean
The home of the brave and the free--"
For a moment, the crowd was surprised into silence. Then a handful of
mud caught Charlie's sign and a group of college students, with a shout
of "Break up the line! Break up the line," broke into the ranks of the
Indians and in a moment a free for all fight was on.
Amos rushed Lydia down a side street and upon a street car. "Well!
Well! Well!" he kept chuckling. "John ate 'em alive! Well! Well!"
Then in the light of the car he looked at Lydia. "For heaven's sake!
What are you crying for, child?"
"I don't know," faltered Lydia. "I'm--glad for Mr. Levine--but poor
Charlie Jackson! You don't suppose they'll hurt him?"
"Oh, pshaw," replied Amos. "Nothing but an election night fight! The
young Indian went into the parade just to start one."
"How soon will the Indians have to get off the reservation?" asked
Lydia.
"Oh, in a year or so! John's got to get a bill through Congress, you
know."
"Oh." Lydia gave a great sigh of relief; a year or so was a very long
time. She decided to forget the Indians' trouble and rejoice in
Levine's triumph.
It was a triumph that John himself took very quietly. He realized that
he had ahead of him in Congress a long and heavy campaign. The forces
against him were not going to lie down, defeated by his election. But
after the fashion of American elections, there were no protests or
quarrels afterward. The town settled immediately to its old routine
and Levine was dropped from the front pages of the newspapers.
Charlie Jackson was taciturn for a week or so, then he played
brilliantly in the Thanksgiving football game and at the banquet which
followed he was his old genial self.
After Christmas Lydia began seriously to consider how she could earn
the twenty-five dollars that her share in the camping trip would cost.
Lizzie was aghast at the size of the sum and didn't approve of the idea
of camping anyhow. Amos gave his consent to her going, feeling that it
was quite safe; that Lydia never could earn the money.
Lydia was dampened but not daunted. One (in January) Saturday
afternoon, she went to call on Ma Norton. Ma was sitting in her bright
kitchen sewing carpet rags. Ma's hair was beginning to turn gray but
her plump cheeks were red and her gray eyes behind her spectacles were
as clear as a girl's.
"Who's going to chaperone you children?" she asked Lydia.
"Miss Towne. The rest kicked, but I like her."
"You use a good deal of unnecessary slang, my dear," said Ma. "Who of
the boys and girls are going?"
"Charlie and Kent and Olga and I. Margery's crazy to go, only her
mother hasn't given in yet. If she does go, we'll ask Gustus Bach too."
Ma Norton looked at Lydia searchingly. "I didn't know you had anything
to do with Olga or with Margery either, now."
"Goodness!" exclaimed Lydia, "this is Charlie's, party! None of 'em
would go on my invitation. I--I don't quite see why, but I don't have
chums like the rest."
"I wouldn't let it worry me," said Ma. "You've never had time to
lally-gag. That's the secret of it."
Lydia turned this over in her mind thoughtfully for a moment and the
older woman, looking up from her sewing caught on the young face the
look of sadness that should not have been there.
"It would be nice for you to have the camping trip, dear," said Ma.
"You've had so little to do with children your own age. I suppose
you're worrying over the money end?"
Lydia nodded. "That's what I wanted to talk to you about. Every
spring you get some one in to help you clean house. If you'll do it in
Easter vacation, this year, and let me help, why, that would be a
couple of dollars, wouldn't it?"
Ma Norton looked at the slender little figure and thought of the heavy
carpet beating, the shoving of furniture, the cleaning of mattresses
that the stout old colored man hustled through for her every spring.
And she thought of the winter's butter and egg money (nearly forty
dollars it amounted to already) that she was saving for new parlor
curtains. Then she recalled the little figure that had nightly trudged
two miles delivering milk rather than take Billy's school books as a
gift. And Ma Norton smiled a little ruefully as she said,
"All right, you can help me instead of old Job and I'll pay you five
dollars."
"Five dollars for what?" asked Billy. He had come in the side door,
unheeded.
His mother explained the situation. Billy listened attentively,
warming his hands at the stove.
"If I didn't have so much to do at home," said Lydia, "I could work
here Saturdays and Sundays and earn a little, that way."
"Well, you wouldn't, you know," growled Billy. Lydia and Ma Norton
looked up, startled at his tone.
"For the land's sake, Billy, why not?" exclaimed Ma.
"Because, Lydia's getting too big now to do these hired girl stunts.
It was bad enough when she was little. But folks'll never forget 'em
and always think of her as a hired girl if she keeps on."
Lydia gasped and turned scarlet. Ma Norton stared at her son as if she
never had seen him before. Strong and blonde and six feet tall, he
seemed suddenly to his mother no longer a boy but a mature man, and a
very handsome one at that. As a matter of fact, although Billy's gaunt
frame was filling out and his irregular features were maturing into
lines of rugged strength, he never would be handsome. He was looking
at Lydia now with the curious expression of understanding that she
always brought to his gray eyes.
"I'm not ashamed to be a hired girl for your mother, Billy Norton,"
snapped Lydia.
"Well, I'm ashamed for you," answered the young man. "You earn your
money some other way."
Lydia looked meaningly at Billy's big hands, rough and red with milking
and farm work.
"You do hired man's work for your father. How'll you live that down?"
It was Billy's turn to blush. "I'm a man," he replied.
Lydia's voice suddenly quivered. "Then how can I earn money?"
"Dead easy! You make the best fudge in the world. Put some for sale
in the University book store. I'm clerking there an hour every day."
"The very thing!" cried Ma Norton.
"Billy, you are a duck!" shrieked Lydia.
"Gimme something to eat, Ma, before I go out to milk," said Billy, with
a grin that struggled to be modest.
Billy's suggestion proved indeed to be a happy one. He was a willing
pack horse and middleman for Lydia and though the demand for fudge was
never overwhelming, Lydia by the end of May had cleared something over
thirty-five dollars.
Her joy over this method of earning money was not confined to its
relation to her camping trip. She saw herself helping to pay up their
indebtedness to Levine, Marshall having made good his threat to call in
the note. She saw herself gradually developing an enormous trade that
finally should demand a whole store for itself. The store would
develop into a candy factory. The candy factory would grow into a
business that would send Lydia, admired and famous, traveling about the
world in a private yacht.
In the meantime, she expended the whole of four dollars on a pair of
buckskin outing boots and eight dollars on a little corduroy hunting
coat and skirt. When the clothes arrived from the Chicago mail order
house, Amos, Lizzie and Lydia had an exciting hour. Amos had brought
the package home from town with him, and supper had been held back
while Lydia tried on the clothes. Amos and Lizzie smiled when the
young girl pranced out before them. The suit was cheap but well cut,
with belt and pockets and welted seams. The soft buckskin shoes fitted
the slender calves like velvet. With her bright cheeks and her yellow
hair above the fawn-colored corduroy, Lydia looked half boy, half woman.
"My soul, Lydia, they're just grand!" cried Lizzie.
"What boys are going in that crowd?" demanded Amos.
"Charlie and Kent and--Margery's mother's given in--'Gustus Bach. I
told you. Daddy, don't you like the suit?"
"Like it!" exclaimed Amos. "Lydia, I'm stunned by it! It makes me
realize my little girl's growing up to be a pretty woman. I wish I
could have bought you your first suit myself, Lydia. But on a dollar
and a half a day, I swan--"
The brightness suddenly left Lydia's face. "Oh, Daddy," she exclaimed,
"I'm a pig to spend all this money on myself! You take the rest of the
money, for the note."
Amos gave a laugh that was half gay, half grim. "Lydia, you spend
every cent of that money on yourself. You've earned it in more ways
than one. I wish John Levine could see you in it. I guess he will
though. Congress will rest most of the summer. Let's have supper now."
Lydia spun through her Junior examination blissfully. For once marks
and final averages were of little importance to her. For the week
after school closed, she was going camping!
Charlie and Kent were making all the camp preparations. Miss Towne and
the three girls were to be at Lydia's gate with their suitcases at nine
o'clock of a Monday morning. Other than this, they had received no
orders.
Amos had been very sober when he said good-by to Lydia, at half past
six. "It's your first trip, Lydia. Don't do anything you wouldn't
want your mother to see."
Lydia looked at him wonderingly, then threw her arms about his neck.
"Oh, Daddy, I don't want to go off and leave you two whole weeks!"
"It's too late to back out now. Go on and have a good time," said
Amos, picking up his dinner pail. Lydia watched him down the road.
Suddenly she realized how lonely her father must be without her mother.
"I oughtn't to go, Lizzie," she said.
"Shucks! Think of all you'll have to tell us when you get home. Don't
be a cry baby, child."
Promptly at nine Charlie and Kent whirled up to the gate in a carryall.
The driver was the same man who had moved the Dudley family five years
before. He greeted Lydia with a grin.
"You've grow'd some, eh, Lydia? Where's the rest of the women folks?"
"Here come Miss Towne and Olga!" cried Kent. "Margery'll be late, of
course."
At nine-fifteen Margery was driven up in state by Elviry, and at
nine-twenty the carryall was off to the north in a cloud of dust,
leaving Adam howling dismally at the gate.
For fifteen miles the way led up and down hill over a dusty country
road that wound for the most part past great wheat farms and grazing
lands, vividly green under the June sky. Here and there were woods of
young oak and birch, self sowed, replacing the pine long since cleared
off. For the last five miles there were few farms. The rolling hills
disappeared and low lying lakes, surrounded by marshes took their
places. The young rice bordering the lakes was tenderly green and the
marshes were like fields of corn with their thick growth of cat-tail.
Beyond the marshes the hills rose again, with the road winding like a
black ribbon over their curving bosoms into the vivid sky beyond.
"Where the hills begin again, that's the reservation," said Charlie.
"Where are the pines?" asked Lydia. "I thought it was all pines."
"You'll see plenty, before the trip's over. Just beyond that group of
buildings is the reservation line."
The buildings Charlie pointed to were the first that had appeared in
several miles. A two-story, unpainted frame house with several barns
and sheds comprised the group. There was a sign on the front of the
house.
"Last Chance," read Margery, as they clattered by. "For goodness'
sake!" she giggled, "is it a hotel?"
"Look at all the women! One in every window!" cried Olga. "Why, they
must have a lot of maids! Do people come up here in the summer, Kent?"
Kent gave Miss Towne an appealing glance.
"It's a miserable, disreputable place, girls," said the teacher. "Why
look at that when you have these beautiful hills before you? How far
into the reservation do we go, Charlie?"
"About four miles. It's where I camp every year. Margery, did you
bring some paper dolls?"
Margery dimpled and tossed her head. "I wonder how old I'll have to be
before you realize I'm grown up, Charlie!"
Charlie looked at her critically. "Well, when you're eighteen, maybe."
"Lydia'll be twenty-five before she gets through looking like a baby,
but Olga's a young lady now," said Kent. He was eying the girls with
the air of a connoisseur. "Three peaches, aren't they, Miss Towne?"
"I don't see why you say three," objected Gustus. "Ask me and say
four."
The young people laughed and looked at Miss Towne, half startled by
Gustus' audacity. Miss Towne herself was blushing and Olga exclaimed,
"Why, Miss Towne, you _are_ good looking when you blush! And I don't
believe you're so frightfully old!"
It was true. Miss Towne in her outing blouse, a soft felt hat crushed
down on her brown hair, which was now wind-tossed and loosened, her
smooth skin flushed, her gray eyes full of laughter, did not look her
frightful age of thirty-five. In fact, she looked charmingly young.
Her youthful charges looked her over with frank amazement. It was a
tradition in the school to fear and dislike Miss Towne. Charlie had
asked a number of teachers to act as chaperone before he had approached
Miss Towne. She too had at first refused, then had said, "Well, it's
Lydia's first outing. I'll do it for her sake. But don't tell her I
said so." Charlie had kept his own counsel and Miss Towne had delayed
her summer trip to Europe, for the camping trip on the reservation.
"Thank you, children, you brighten my old age very much. Look at the
neat farms we are passing."
"Indian farms," said Charlie. "This one belongs to Chief Cloud."
"Are there many Indian farms?" asked Lydia.
"No, there's not much use for Indians to farm. The Agent is their
middleman, and he eats up all the profits."
"For the Lord's sake, Charlie," protested Kent, "don't begin any
funeral oration! We're no investigating committee. We're out for some
fun."
"Second the motion," said Gustus. "Can I smoke, Miss Towne?"
Miss Towne gave Gustus a clear look. He was a tall, thin boy of
seventeen, with the dark eyes of the Rhine German and with thin
hawk-like features that went with his hollow chest. His father was a
rich brewer and Gustus, always elegantly dressed, was very popular with
the girls. Margery had insisted on his being invited.
"If I were a boy with a chest like yours, I wouldn't smoke," said Miss
Towne, "but do as you please."
With a nonchalant "Thanks," Gustus lighted a cigarette.
"Going to stay in training all summer, Charlie?" asked Kent.
"Yes," grunted Charlie, "but next summer I'll be through with football,
and I'll smoke my head off."
"Oh! the pines!" shrieked Lydia.
A sudden silence fell. The road, curving around a hill, had without
warning entered the pine woods.
In every direction as far as the eye could pierce stretched brown,
columnar aisles, carpeted with the brown of needles and the green of
June undergrowth: aisle on aisle, green arch on green arch, flecked
with sunshine, mighty trunks supporting great swaying boughs, drooping
with their weight of needles.
Except for a muffled thud of horses' hoofs, the carryall moved
soundlessly for the road was thick carpeted with needles.
The others fell to chatting again, but Lydia was too moved for words.
The incense of the pines, their curious murmuring stillness, roused in
her memories that were perhaps half racial. She never had been in a
pine wood before, yet the hushed sense of solemnity it wakened in her
was perfectly familiar. Its incense breathed to her secrets she never
had known, never would understand, yet it seemed to her startled fancy
that she had known and understood them, always.
She was still in a half dream when the blue of a lake glimmered beyond
the far aisles and the carryall drew up with a flourish before three
tents set in the pines on the water's edge.
Charlie and Kent had made their preparations well and they displayed
them proudly. They had rented the three old A tents from the agent, as
well as the seven canvas cots, the dishes and the cooking utensils.
The middle tent had been arranged with a rough slab-table and benches
for a dining- and living-room. The boys' tent with three cots and the
girls' with four, were crowded but comfortable.
"The Indian school is closed for the summer," explained Charlie, "and
the Agent was glad to make a little money extra. He'll pocket it, you
bet. Everything's clean," he added hastily in answer to Miss Towne's
lifting eyebrows. "Blankets, cots and all, even the hammocks yonder, I
had scrubbed with soap and water. I don't live with a doctor for
nothing."
"It's very nice, indeed, boys," said Miss Towne. "Come girls, get out
your aprons. I suppose you're all starved."
"Wait! Wait!" cried Kent. "That's not the way this camp's going to be
run. Charlie, Gustus and me do the cooking. You ladies are company
and don't have to do anything except wash the dishes and make your own
beds."
"Gee!" exclaimed Lydia. "I'd rather cook than wash dishes, any day."
"I never wash dishes," protested Margery.
"I can't do it either," said Olga.
"Can you boys really cook?" asked Miss Towne, in her sharp way.
"Yes, _Ma'am_!" replied Kent. "Charlie learned in the Indian school,
even baking, you know, and he's taught me a lot. Gustus can peel
potatoes, clean fish and such stunts."
Gustus groaned but made no protest.
"I think it's a very nice arrangement," decided Miss Towne. "Come
girls, let's unpack and arrange the tent."
Kent's statement proved no idle boast. The boys could cook. And
though the fare was simple during the entire holiday consisting of
fish, caught in the lake, potatoes, baking powder biscuits and
occasional additions of canned stuff, it was well prepared and there
was plenty of it.
The little camp quickly settled into an orderly routine. The girls
wrangled among themselves about the dish-washing and Gustus was
inclined to complain over the number of potatoes he was obliged to
peel, but beyond this the camp work caused little friction.
Miss Towne was well supplied with French books and made, the young
folks thought, an ideal chaperone. She was tired after her year's work
and spent almost all her time in a hammock. She saw to it that the
girls were in bed by ten o'clock and that all were accounted for at
meal time. Apparently, beyond this, she left her charges to their own
devices. She had taught in the High School too long not to know that
spying and nagging are more demoralizing than no chaperoning at all.
There was a very early pairing off in the camp. Kent devoted himself
to Olga, Gustus to Margery and Charlie to Lydia. Kent and Olga kept
the camp supplied with fish. Excepting at meal time and the bathing
hour, they spent the day in a birchbark canoe on the lake. Gustus and
Margery were the least strenuous of the party and caused Miss Towne, as
a consequence, more uneasiness than the rest. They spent long hours
sitting side by side in a hammock, talking, heaven knows of what! In
the evening when the camp-fire was lighted they were always being
routed out of the shadows by the others and teased into joining the
story telling and singing.
Charlie undertook to show to Lydia the reservation as the Indians knew
it. If Lydia was a little puzzled by his eagerness to make her
understand conditions on the reservation, she gave little thought to
the riddle. This adventure was affecting her deeply. There was the
sudden freedom and relaxation from home responsibilities. There was
the daily and intimate companionship with young people, than whom none
were better dressed than she!--and there were the pines.
She knew and loved the woods at home. But they were second growth
hardwood and birch, and had little in common with the splendor of the
pines. Waking early in the morning, she would creep from the tent and
steal beyond sound and sight of the camp. There in the cathedral
beauty of the pines she would stand drawing deep breaths and staring as
if her eyes must pierce through the outward solemn loneliness of the
forest, to its deeper meaning. She often wondered if in his search for
God, John Levine had ever stood so.
Tramping through the woods with Charlie, she did not talk much, nor did
he. They visited one or two neat Indian farms, but for the most part
Charlie led her from one wick-i-up to the other, deep set in recesses
of the wood, where the only whites to intrude on the Indians were the
occasional government wood cruisers. These wick-i-ups were hovels,
usually in the last stages of poverty and desolation. A squaw,
braiding reed mats, a buck returning with a string of fish, a baby
burrowing in the moss--all of them thin, ragged and dirty, and about
them the hallowed beauty and silence of the primeval pines; this was
the picture Lydia carried of most of the dwellers in these huts.
Sometimes the wick-i-up was occupied by a solitary Indian, nearly
always sick and always old.
Once they came upon a white haired squaw crawling feebly from her
doorway toward a fish that lay at the foot of a tree. Charlie picked
up the fish and he and Lydia helped the old woman back to her hut. In
the hut was an iron pot and a pile of reed mats. That was all.
"She says," explained Charlie, "that she's been sick all winter and
she'd have starved to death only one of her neighbors drops a fish for
her there, every day or so."
"Let's get some food for her at the camp," said Lydia eagerly.
Charlie shook his head. "What's the use! It would just prolong her
agony. She's nearly dead now. The old can go. It's the young ones'
starving that hurts me."
He led Lydia out and again they tramped through the long green aisles.
It was later in the day that they came upon a wick-i-up where there
were three children, besides the father and mother. Two of the
children were half blind with eye trouble. The whole family was
sitting in the sun, about a pot of fish. The grown-ups chatted eagerly
with Charlie, and he translated for Lydia.
"They say it's been a fearful winter. They only had ten dollars this
year out of their Government allowance and they couldn't get work.
They lived on fish and potatoes. The Catholic priest gave them some
wild rice. The baby froze to death or starved, or both. We'll bring
some food over to these folks, Lydia, because there are kids--eh?"
"But, Charlie, what's the Government allowance?"
"Oh, didn't you know?--and you're one of the white lords of creation
too! The Government set aside this land for the Indians in solemn
treaty with them, for ever and ever. Then it deliberately sold off a
big block of it and deposited the money at Washington. The income from
this was to be given to the Indians. There's over two million dollars
there. But by the time it's filtered from Washington to the Indians,
this is the result." He nodded at the half-starved group about the
fish pot. "Damn the dirty, thieving whites," he said, quietly.
Lydia had had four days of this. As they made their way back to the
camp for supper, she said to him, in an unsteady voice, "Charlie, I
can't stand it! Think of that baby that froze to death. And all these
beautiful woods are full of half-starved Indians! Charlie, I can't
stand it!" And Lydia bowed her head on her arm and leaned against a
tree trunk.
"Good Lord, Lydia!" exclaimed Charlie, "I didn't want you to feel that
bad! I just wanted you to see, because you're Levine's friend and
because I like you so much. Please, don't cry!"
"I'm not crying," Lydia lifted reddened eyes to his, "I was just
thinking. What can I do about it, Charlie?"
"You can't do anything. It's too late. But I wanted you to see. I
don't care what girl understands as long as you do. I think an awful
lot of you, Lydia."
He took Lydia's hand and patted it. Lydia looked up at him, thrilled
by his bronze beauty and the note in his voice.
"If I were a white man," said Charlie, "I'd make you love me and marry
me. But I'm an Indian and sooner or later I'll go back to my people.
I'm just making believe I can play the white man's game for a while."
He eyed Lydia wistfully. "But we'll be friends, eh, Lydia?--Always?
Even if I go back to the wick-i-up, you'll be my friend?"
"Oh, yes, Charlie, always," replied Lydia, earnestly, even while there
flashed through her head the half whimsical thought, "Queer kinds of
men want to be friends with me, Mr. Levine, Mr. Marshall, and Charlie.
And they all hate each other!"
After this episode, Charlie was less strenuous about showing Lydia
Indian conditions. That night he resumed a mild flirtation with Olga
that he had dropped when school closed and Olga met him more than half
way.
"Wouldn't that come and get you!" growled Kent to Lydia as Charlie and
Olga paddled away in the canoe, the next morning. "Have you and
Charlie had a fight?"
"Nope," replied Lydia. "But I got sick of investigating the
reservation. Are you and Olga mad at each other?"
"Not so very! Say, Lyd, let's kill time," Kent interrupted himself
with a yawn, "with a tramp up to the settlement for some gum."
Lydia stifled an elaborate yawn, at which Kent grinned. "All right, I
can stand it if you can," she said. "Will you come along, Miss Towne?"
Miss Towne, who had been highly edified by the morning's maneuvering
shook her head and settled herself in her hammock. "No eight mile walk
for me. I'm taking a rest cure. Better wear a hat, Lydia. You're
getting dreadfully burned."
"That's right. Your nose is peeling something fierce," said Kent as
they started off.
"Huh, yours looks like a pickled beet," returned Lydia. "Come on,
pretend I'm Olga and be happy."