THE INDIAN CELEBRATION
"The oak, the maple, the birch, I love them all, but nothing is so dear
to the pine as the pine."--_The Murmuring Pine_.
Lydia was tired the day after the party, tired and moody. After she
had told Lizzie and Ma Norton all about the evening, she spent the rest
of the day lying on the lake shore, with a book but not reading. Late
in the afternoon she went into the house and took Florence Dombey from
her accustomed seat in a corner of the living-room.
For a long time she sat with Florence Dombey in her arms, looking from
the hectic china face to the scintillating turquoise of the lake and
listening to the hushed whispering of the pine. Finally with Adam
lumbering jealously after her, she climbed the narrow stairs into the
attic.
Back under the eaves stood a packing box into which Lydia never had
looked. It contained all of little Patience's belongings. Holding
Florence Dombey in one arm, she lifted the lid of the box, catching her
breath a little as she glimpsed the cigar box furniture and a folded
little white dress. Very carefully she laid Florence Dombey beside the
furniture, leaned over and kissed her china lips and closed down the
lid of the box. Then of a sudden she dropped to the floor with her
head against the box and sobbed disconsolately. Adam gave a howl and
crowded into her lap and Lydia hugged him but wept on.
The late afternoon sun sifted through the dusty attic window on her
yellow head. Somewhere near the window a robin began to trill his
vesper song. Over and over he sang it until at last Lydia heard and
raised her head. Suddenly she smiled.
"There, Adam," she said, "now I'm really grown up and I feel better.
Let's go meet Dad."
It was three or four days later that news came that the Levine bill had
passed. It was a compromise bill as John had intimated it would be to
the half breeds in the woods. Only the mixed bloods could sell their
lands. Nevertheless there was great rejoicing in Lake City. Plans
were begun immediately for a Fourth of July celebration upon the
reservation. Kent to his lasting regret missed the celebration.
Immediately after school closed he had gone into Levine's office and
had been sent to inspect Levine's holdings in the northern part of the
State.
Levine returned the last week in June and took charge of the
preparations. Amos, who never had been on the reservation, planned to
go and Levine rented an automobile and invited Lydia, Amos, Billy
Norton and Lizzie to accompany him.
It rained on the third of July, but the fourth dawned clear and hot.
Lydia really saw the dawn for she and Lizzie had undertaken to provide
the picnic lunch and supper for the party of five and they both were
busy in the kitchen at sunrise. At eight o'clock the automobile was at
the door.
John drove the car himself and ordered Lydia in beside him. The rest
packed into the tonneau with the baskets. It seemed as if all Lake
City were headed for the reservation, for Levine's automobile was one
of a huge line of vehicles of every type moving north as rapidly as the
muddy road and the character of the motive power would permit. As they
neared the reservation, about eleven, they began to overtake parties of
young men who had walked the twenty miles.
They passed the Last Chance, which was gaily hung with flags. Its yard
was packed with vehicles. Its bar was running wide open. They swung
on up the black road into the reservation, around a long hill, through
a short bit of wood to the edge of a great meadow where John halted the
car.
On all sides but one were pine woods. The one side was bordered by a
little lake, motionless under the July sun. On the edge of the pines
were set dozens of tents and birch-bark wick-i-ups. In the center of
the meadow was a huge flagpole from which drooped the Stars and
Stripes. Near by was a grandstand and a merry-go-round and everywhere
were hawkers' booths.
Already the meadow was liberally dotted with sight-seers of whom there
seemed to be as many Indians as whites. The mechanical piano in
connection with the merry-go-round shrilled above the calls of vendors.
Overhead in the brazen blue of the sky, buzzards sailed lazily watching.
"Isn't it great!" cried Lydia. "What do we do first?"
"Well," said Levine, "I'm free until three o'clock, when the speeches
begin. There'll be all sorts of Indian games going until then."
"You folks go on," said Lizzie. "I'm going to sit right here. I never
was so comfortable in my life. This may be my only chance to see the
world from an automobile and I don't calculate to lose a minute. I can
see all I want from right here."
The others laughed. "I don't blame you, Liz," said Amos. "I feel a
good deal that way, myself. What's the crowd round the flagpole, John?"
"Let's go see," answered Levine.
"How did you get the Indians to come, Mr. Levine?" asked Billy.
"By offering 'em all the food they could eat. The majority of them
haven't any idea what it's all about. But they're just like white
folks. They like a party. Don't get crowded too close to any of them,
Lydia. They're a dirty lot, poor devils."
The crowd about the flagpole proved to be watching an Indian gambling
game. In another spot, a pipe of peace ceremony was taking place. The
shooting galleries were crowded. Along the lake shore a yelling
audience watched birch canoe races. The merry-go-round held as many
squaws and papooses and stolid bucks as it did whites.
The four returned to the automobile for lunch hot and muddy but well
saturated with the subtle sense of expectation and excitement that was
in the air.
"This is just a celebration and nothing else, John, isn't it?" asked
Amos as he bit into a sandwich.
"That's all," replied Levine. "We thought it was a good way to jolly
the Indians. At the same time it gave folks a reason for coming up
here and seeing what we were fighting for and, last and not least, it
was the Indian Agent's chance to come gracefully over on our side."
"Did he?" asked Lydia.
"He did. He's done more of the actual work of getting the celebration
going than I have."
"I wonder why?" asked Billy, suddenly.
"All there is left for him to do," said Levine. "Lydia, before the
speeches begin, go up in the pines and choose your tract. I'll buy it
for you."
Lydia glanced at Billy. He was thinner this summer than she had ever
seen him. He was looking at her with his deep set gray eyes a little
more somber, she thought, than the occasion warranted. Nevertheless
she stirred uneasily.
"I don't want any Indian lands," she said. "I'd always see Charlie
Jackson in them."
"The whole thing's wrong," muttered Billy.
Levine gave him a quick look, then smiled a little cynically. "You'd
better go along with Lydia and take a look at the pines," he suggested.
"Amos, I've already got your tract picked out. It's ten miles from
here so you can't see it to-day. Come over to the speakers' stand and
help me get things arranged."
"I'd like to look at the pines again, anyhow," said Lydia. "Come
along, Billy."
Lydia was wearing the corduroy outing suit of the year before and was
looking extremely well. Billy, in an ordinary business suit, was not
the man of the world of Graduation night, yet there was a new maturity
in his eyes and the set of his jaw that Lydia liked without really
observing it. Old Lizzie watched the two as they climbed the slope to
the woods. Billy strode along with the slack, irregular gait of the
farmer. Lydia sprang over the ground with quick, easy step.
"Billy's a man grown," Lizzie said to herself, "and he's a nice fellow,
but he don't tug at my old heart strings like Kent does--drat Kent,
anyhow!" She settled herself as conspicuously as possible in the
automobile. "If Elviry Marshall would pass now, I'd be perfectly
happy," she murmured.
Billy and Lydia entered the woods in silence and followed a sun-flecked
aisle until the sound of the celebration was muffled save for the
shrill notes of the mechanical piano, which had but two tunes, "Under
the Bamboo Tree" and the "Miserere."
"I hate to think of it all divided into farms and the pines cut down,"
said Lydia.
Billy leaned against one of the great tree trunks and stared
thoughtfully about him.
"I'm all mixed up, Lydia," he said. "It's all wrong. I know the
things Levine and the rest are doing to get this land are wrong, and
yet I don't see how they can be stopped."
"Well," Lydia fanned herself with her hat, thoughtfully, "for years
people have been telling me awful things Mr. Levine's done to Indians
and I worried and worried over it. And finally, I decided to take Mr.
Levine for the dear side he shows me and to stop thinking about the
Indians."
"You can stop thinking, perhaps," said the young man, "but you can't
stop this situation up here from having an influence on your life.
Everybody in Lake City must be directly or indirectly affected by the
reservation. Everybody, from the legislators to the grocery keepers,
has been grafting on the Indians. Your own father says the thing
that's kept him going for years was the hope of Indian lands. Margery
Marshall's clothed with Indian money."
"And how about the influence on you, Billy?" asked Lydia with a keen
look into the young fellow's rugged face.
"I'm in the process of hating myself," replied Billy, honestly. "I
came up here last month to see how bad off the Indians were. And I saw
the poor starving, diseased brutes and I cursed my white breed. And
yet, Lyd, I saw a tract of pine up in the middle of the reservation
that I'd sell my soul to own! It's on a rise of ground, with a lake on
one edge, and the soil is marvelous, and it belongs to a full-blood."
There was understanding in Lydia's eyes. "Oh, the pines are
wonderful," she exclaimed. "If one could only keep them, forever! And
I suppose that's the way the Indians feel about them too!"
"It's all wrong," muttered Billy. "It's all wrong, and yet," more
firmly, "the reservation is doomed and if we don't take some of it,
Lydia, we'll not be helping the Indians--but just being foolish."
Lydia nodded. A hot breeze drifted through the woods and the pines
sighed deeply.
"To have it and hold it for your children's children," exclaimed Lydia,
passionately. "You and yours to live on it forever. And yet, I'd see
a dead Indian baby and starving squaws behind every tree, I know I
would."
"I tell you what I'm going to do," said Billy, doggedly. "I'm going to
get hold of that tract. I'm not going to deceive myself that it's all
anything but a rotten, thieving game we whites are playing, but I'm
going to do it, anyhow."
"I'd like to myself," Lydia still had the look of understanding, "but
I'm afraid to! I'd be haunted by Charlie Jackson's eyes."
"I'm going to get that tract. I'll pay for it, somehow, and I'll go on
doing what I can to see that the Indians get what's left of a decent
deal."
Again the two listened to the wind in the pines, then Lydia said, "We
must get back for the speeches."
Billy started back, obediently.
"We're grown up, aren't we, Billy?" sighed Lydia. "We've got to decide
what we're going to do and be, and I hate to think about it. I hate
important decisions. Seems as though I'd been dogged by 'em all my
life."
"If I had my way," cried Billy, unexpectedly, "you never should quite
grow up. You'd always be the dear little yellow-haired girl that
tramped her legs off to earn my miserable old school books. And that's
what you always will be to me--the oldest and youngest little girl!
And whether you like me or not, I'll tell you you're not going to have
any worries that I can help you ward off."
They were emerging into the meadow and Lydia laughed up at him
mischievously, "I've always thought I overpaid for those school books.
They were fearfully used up. Oh, the speeches have begun," and Billy
was hard put to it to keep close to her as she rushed toward the
speakers' stand.
Levine had just finished his speech when Billy and Lydia got within
hearing, and he introduced State Senator James Farwell as the chief
speaker of the day. Farwell had considerable history to cover in his
speech. He began with the Magna Charta and worked by elaborate stages
through the French Revolution, the conquest of India, the death of
Warren Hastings, the French and Indian War, the American Revolution and
the Civil War to Lincoln's Gettysburg speech.
His audience, standing in the burning sun, was restless. The Indians,
understanding little that was said, were motionless, but the whites
drifted about, talked in undertones and applauded only when as a
fitting peak to all the efforts of the ages toward freedom, Farwell
placed the present freeing of the Indians from the reservation.
"The great fool!" said Billy to Lydia, as Farwell finally began to bow
himself off the platform.
Levine rose and began, "Ladies and gentlemen, this ends our program.
We thank--"
He was interrupted here by applause from the Indians. Looking round he
saw Charlie Jackson leading forward old Chief Wolf.
"Chief Wolf wants to say a few words," cried Charlie.
"The program is closed," called Levine loudly.
There was a threat in Charlie's voice. "He is going to speak!" And
there was a threat in the Indian voices that answered from the
audience, "Let speak! Let speak."
Levine conferred hastily with Farwell and the Indian Agent, then the
three with manifest reluctance--stood back and Charlie led the old
Indian to the foot of the platform.
Old Wolf was half blind with trachoma. He was emaciated with sickness
and slow starvation. Nevertheless, clad in the beaded buckskin and
eagle feathers of his youth, with his hawk face held high, he was a
heroic figure of a man.
He held up his right hand and began to speak in a trembling old bass,
Charlie's young tenor translating sentence by sentence. With the first
word, the audience became motionless and silent.
"I come from the wick-i-ups of my fathers to say one last word to the
whites. I am an old, old man. The last winter was bitter hard and I
may never see another July sun. I have lived too long. I have seen my
race change from young men strong and daring as eagles, as thrifty and
fat as brown bears, to feeble yellow wolves fit only to lap the carrion
thrown them by the whites, and to lie in the sun and die.
"And I say to you whites, you have done this. You have moved us on and
on, promising always that each resting place shall be ours forever.
You swore by your God, in solemn council, that we could keep this
reservation forever. With room for all the peoples of the world here,
you could not find room for the Indian. You are a race of liars. You
are a race of thieves. You have debauched our young men with your
women. You have ruined our daughters with your men. You have taken
our money. And now you are entering our last home with the hand of
desolation. When the enemy enters the abiding place, the dweller is
doomed. But I place the curse of the Indian Spirit on you and the land
you are stealing. Some day it will be done to you as you have done to
us. Some day--"
Levine stepped forward. "Jackson, take that Indian away," he commanded.
An angry murmur came from the Indians in the audience. A murmur that
as Levine laid hold of old Wolf's arm, grew to strange calls. There
was a surging movement toward the platform. Billy jumped on a box that
he had found for a seat for Lydia.
"Charlie!" he roared, "Charlie! Remember there are women and children
in this crowd."
"What do I care for your women and children?" shouted Charlie.
Then his glance fell on Lydia's golden head. She waved her hand to him
beseechingly. Charlie hesitated for a moment, then spoke loudly in
Indian to the crowd, and led old Wolf from the platform. The movement
forward of the Indians ceased. The whites moved out of the crowd and
for a moment there was a complete segregation of Indians and whites.
Then the mechanical piano which had stopped during the speech-making
suddenly started up with a loud twang of "Under the Bamboo Tree." Two
Indian boys laughed and started on a run for the merry-go-round and the
crowd followed after.
Billy got down from his box with a sigh of relief. "That might have
been an ugly moment," he said, "if Charlie hadn't seen you."
"The poor things! Oh, Billy, the poor, poor things!" exclaimed Lydia.
Billy nodded. "It's all wrong."
The noise of hawkers began again, but something had gone out of the
celebration. The Indians stood about in groups, talking, Charlie and
Chief Wolf the center always of the largest group.
Amos and John joined Billy and Lydia at the machine. "The war dancing
begins at sundown," said Levine. "I told the Indian Agent 'twas a risk
to let them go on, after this episode. But he laughs at me. I don't
like the look of things, though."
"They aren't armed?" asked Amos.
"No, but've got those pesky bows and arrows we were having them show
off with. I don't know but what I'd better get you folks home."
"Shucks," said Amos, "I wouldn't let the Indians think they could scare
us. What could they do, poor sickly devils, anyhow?"
"That's right," said Billy. "There's nothing can happen. I don't
think Charlie Jackson would stand for any violence."
"I don't know about that," Levine spoke thoughtfully. "He's left Doc
Fulton and is living on the reservation again. They always revert."
"Listen! Listen!" cried Lydia,
There was a red glow behind the clouds low in the west. From the foot
of the flagpole came a peculiar beat of drum. A white can beat a drum
to carry one through a Gettysburg. An Indian can beat a drum to carry
one's soul back to the sacrifice of blood upon a stony altar. This
drum beat "magicked" Lydia and Billy. It was more than a tocsin, more
than a dance rhythm, more than the spring call. They hurried to the
roped-off circle round the flagpole, followed by John and Amos.
An Indian in beaded buckskin squatted by the pole, beating a drum.
Above him the flag stirred lazily. The west was crimson. The scent of
sweet grass was heavy. There was a breathless interval while the drum
seemed to urge Lydia's soul from her body.
Then there came the cry again followed by a wordless chant. Into the
ring, in all the multicolored glory of beads and paint, swung a dozen
moccasined braves. They moved in a step impossible to describe,--a
step grave, rhythmic, lilting, now slow, three beats to a step, now
swift, three steps to a beat. Old chiefs, half blind with trachoma,
scarred with scrofula and decrepit with starvation; young bucks, fresh
and still strong, danced side by side, turned by the alchemy of the
drum into like things, young and vivid as dawn.
At intervals, at the bidding of the braves, squaws arose and moved
sedately into the circle. In their dark dresses they moved about the
outer edge of the circle with a side step that scarcely ruffled their
skirts. The west lost its glow. Fires flashed here and there in the
meadow. In the flickering, changing lights the dance went on and on.
The flag fitfully revealed itself above the melting, gliding,
opalescent group about the pole, that by degrees was growing larger as
was the constant rim of somber squaws, with their dumb faces
Sphinx-like in the half light.
Lydia shivered with excitement. Billy pulled her arm through his.
"I don't like this," he muttered.
"What's the matter?" exclaimed Lydia. "Do you think there's going to
be trouble?"
"I don't know. It's just something in the air. I think we'd better
find the folks and get you and Lizzie out of this."
"I don't believe they mean any harm," said Lydia. "Lots of the whites
started home before sunset, anyhow."
"I wish you had," replied Billy. "Gee, here it comes."
The chant suddenly changed to a yell. The drum beat quickened, and the
great circle of dancing Indians broke and charged the crowd of whites.
A number of them drew revolvers and began firing them into the air.
Others drew taut the great bows they carried. The whites plunged
backward precipitately.
Billy thrust Lydia behind him. "Don't move, Lyd," he cried, pushing
aside a threatening buck as he did so.
"Kill 'em whites!" shrieked the squaws.
"Run 'em whites off our reservation!" shouted half a dozen young bucks.
Lydia was trembling but cool. "Good for them! Oh, Billy, good for
them!" she exclaimed.
He did not reply. His great body circled about her, with shoulder and
elbow buffeting off the surging crowd. Thus far the whites had taken
the proceedings as a joke. Then a white woman screamed,--
"Run! It's a massacre!"
"Massacre" is a horrifying word to use to whites in an Indian country.
Men and women both took up the cry,--
"It's a massacre! Run!"
And the great crowd bolted.
Like pursuing wolves, the Indians followed, beating the laggards with
their bows, shouting exultantly. Billy caught Lydia round the waist
and held her in front of him as well as he could, and for a few moments
the rush of the mob carried them on.
Then Lydia heard Billy's voice in her ear. "If this isn't stopped, it
_will_ be a massacre. We've got to find Charles Jackson."
"We may be killed trying to find him!" Lydia cried.
"We've got to make a try for it, anyhow," replied Billy. "Brace your
shoulders back against my chest. I'll try to stop."
They succeeded in holding themselves steadily for a moment against the
mob and in that moment, Billy caught a screaming squaw by the arm.
"Susie, where's Charlie Jackson?"
She jerked her thumb back toward the flag pole and twisted away.
"All right! Now we'll make for the pole, Lydia, get behind me and put
your arms round my waist. Hang on, for heaven's sake."
Lydia did hang on for a few moments. But the flight was now developing
into a free for all fight. And before she knew just how it happened,
Lydia had fallen and feet surged over her.
She buried her face in her arms. It seemed an age to her before Billy
had snatched her to her feet. In reality she was not down for more
than two minutes. Billy swung her against his chest with one arm and
swung out with his other, shouting at Indians and whites alike.
"You damned beasts! You dirty damned beasts."
Lydia, bruised and shaken, clung to him breathlessly, then cried, "Go
ahead, Billy!"
He glanced down at her and saw a streak of blood on her forehead. His
face worked and he began to sob and curse like a madman.
"They've hurt you, the hellhounds! I'll kill somebody for this."
Kicking, striking with his free arm, oaths rolling from his lips, he
burst through the crowd and rushed Lydia to the free space about the
flagpole where Charlie Jackson stood coolly watching the proceedings.
Billy shook his fist under the Indian's nose.
"Get down there and call the pack off or I'll brain you."
Jackson shrugged his shoulders, calmly. "Let 'em have their fun. It's
their last blowout. I hope they do kill Levine and Marshall."
Lydia pulled herself free of Billy. Her voice was trembling, but she
had not lost her head.
"Call them off, Charlie. It'll just mean trouble in the end for all of
you if you don't."
Charlie looked at Lydia closely and his voice changed as he said, "You
got hurt, Lydia? I'm sorry."
"Sorry! You damned brute!" raved Billy. "I tell you, call off this
row!"
The two young men glared at each other. Afterglow and firelight
revealed a ferocity in Billy's face and a cool hatred in Charlie's that
made Lydia gasp. The shouting of the mob, the beating of the drum was
receding toward the road. The flag snapped in the night wind.
Billy put his face closer to Charlie's. The muscles of his jaw knotted
and his hands clenched and unclenched.
"Call it off!" he growled.
Charlie returned Billy's stare for a long moment. Then sullenly,
slowly, he turned and threw out across the night a long, shrill cry.
He gave it again and again. At each repetition the noise of the mob
grew less, and shortly panting, feverish-eyed bucks began to struggle
into the light around the pole.
Then, without a word, Billy led Lydia away. The Indians passing them
shook their bows at them but they were unmolested.
"Can you walk, Lydia? Do you think you're badly hurt?" asked Billy.
"I'm not hurt except for this cut on my head. And I guess I'm scared
and bruised from being stepped on. That's all."
"All! To think of me not scratched and you hurt! Your father ought to
horsewhip me!"
"You saved me from being trampled to death!" cried Lydia, indignantly.
"Oh there's the auto."
There it was, indeed, with old Lizzie standing in the tonneau, wringing
her hands, and Amos and Levine, dust covered and disheveled, guarding
the car with clubs.
They all shouted with relief when they saw the two. Lydia by now had
wiped the blood from her face.
"Billy," cried Levine, "could you run the car and the two women down
the road while Amos and I help the Agent get order here? The worst
seems to be over, for some reason."
"Billy got Charlie Jackson to call the Indians in," said Lydia.
"Good work!" exclaimed Amos. "Are you both all right?"
"Yes," answered Lydia. "Go on! Billy'll take care of us."
"I'll wait for you at the willows, a mile below Last Chance," said
Billy.
"Land," said Lizzie, as the car swung through the hurrying whites, to
the road. "About one picnic a lifetime like this, would do me!"
Billy was an indifferent chauffeur but he reached the willows without
mishap.
"Now," he said, "come out in front of the lamps, Lydia, till I see what
happened to you."
"For heaven's sake, did Lydia get hurt?" screamed Lizzie.
"Don't fuss about me," said Lydia crossly, not offering to follow the
other two out of the car.
Billy turned, lifted her down bodily and led her around to the lamps,
while he told Lizzie what had happened.
The cut on the scalp was slight. Billy washed it out with water from
the brook back of the willows and Lizzie produced a clean pocket
handkerchief with which to bind it. Then they went back to the car and
ate their belated supper. After a time, Lizzie, who had the back seat
to herself, began to snore comfortably.
Little by little, the stars were blotted out by a thin film of clouds.
Sitting under the willows with the murmur of the brook and the
fragrance of marsh grass enveloping them, the two young people did not
talk much.
"Billy, were you scared?" asked Lydia.
"I don't know. I only know I went crazy when I saw you were hurt.
God, Lydia--I couldn't stand that!"
"Billy," whispered Lydia, "you're so good to me and I was so horrid to
you once."
Billy felt her fingers on his knee and instantly the thin little hand
was enveloped in his warm fist. "Do you take it all back, Lydia?"
"Well, the horrid part of it, I do," she hedged.
"That's all right," returned the young man. "I'm willing to fight for
the rest of it. Don't try to pull your hand away, because I intend to
hold it till the folks come. You can't help yourself, so you have no
responsibility in the matter."
So for an hour longer they sat, watching the summer night and waiting.
And sometimes it seemed to Lydia that they were a pioneer man and woman
sitting in their prairie schooner watching for the Indians. And
sometimes it seemed to her that they were the last white man and woman,
that civilization had died and the hordes were coming down upon them.
Finally two dim figures approached. "All right, Lydia?" asked Amos.
"Oh, yes! Yes!" she cried. "Are either of you hurt?"
"No," replied Levine, "but we stayed till I'd got my half-breeds
distributed about to watch that none of the full bloods got out of the
meadow."
"Was any one hurt?" asked Billy.
"Oh, two or three broken heads among both Indians and whites. We got
hold of Charlie Jackson about eleven and locked him up, then we felt
secure."
"You aren't going to hurt Charlie!" cried Lydia.
"No, but we'll shut him up for a week or so," said Amos. "Move over,
Lizzie."
"Goodness," exclaimed Lizzie, "I must have dozed off for a minute!"
In the laughter that followed, Levine started the car homeward.
During the trip, the story was told of Lydia's mishap, Billy and Lydia
interpolating each other in the telling. Amos shook hands with Billy
silently when they had finished and Levine turned round from the wheel
to say,
"I'll not forget this night's work, Bill."
They reached home at daylight. The Celebration made table talk and
newspaper space for several days. No real attempt was made to punish
the Indians. For once, the whites, moved by a sense of tardy and
inadequate justice, withheld their hands.
Kent never ceased to mourn that he had missed the affair. He confided
the fact to Lydia one Sunday that he had told Levine of their
eavesdropping on him in the woods.
"What did he say?" asked Lydia, flushing.
"Gave me this nice fat job," replied Kent.
Lydia stared, then she sighed. "Well, I don't understand men at all!"
And Kent laughed.
Lydia saw a good deal of Billy during the summer. He never spoke of
the accident to her at the Celebration, except to inquire about her
bruises which troubled her for a week or so. Lydia wondered if he was
ashamed of his wild flame of anger and his tears. She herself never
thought of the episode without a thrill, as if she had been close for
once to the primal impulses of life.
Margery Marshall and Elviry went to Atlantic City and Newport this
summer. John Levine was sure to take supper at the cottage once or
twice a week, but he was very busy with his political work and with the
enormous sales of mixed-breed lands to the whites.
It was just before college opened that Amos announced that he was going
to buy the one hundred and twenty acres John had set aside for him.
"How are you going to pay for it?" Lydia asked.
"Don't you worry, I'll tend to that," replied Amos.
Levine was taking supper with them. "Better tell her all about it,
Amos," he said. "You know Lydia is our partner."
"Well, she'll just worry," warned Amos. "John's going to hold it for
me, till I can get the pine cut off. That'll pay for the land."
"How much did you pay for it, Mr. Levine?" asked Lydia.
Levine grinned. "I forget!"
Lydia's gaze was still the round, pellucid gaze of her childhood. She
sat now with her chin cupped in her palm, her blue eyes on Levine. To
the surprise of both the men, however, she said nothing.
After the supper dishes were washed, and Amos was attending to the
chickens, Lydia came slowly out to the front steps where Levine was
sitting. He reached up and catching her hand pulled her down beside
him on the topmost step. She leaned her head against his arm and they
sat in silence, Lydia with her eyes on the dim outline of the pine by
the gate.
"Lydia," said John, finally, "how does the Great Search go on? We
haven't reported for a long time."
"I don't think I make much headway," replied Lydia. "The older I grow,
the less I understand men and I've always felt as if, if there was a
God, He was a man."
"You mean male, rather than female," agreed John.
"Lydia, dear, I wish you did have faith."
"But do you believe, yourself?" urged Lydia.
"Yes, I know that the soul can't die," said the man, quietly. "And the
thing that makes me surest is the feeling I have for you, I know that
I'll have another chance."
"What do you mean?" asked Lydia wonderingly.
"_That_, you'll never know," he replied.
"Well, I know that you're a dear," said the young girl, unexpectedly,
"no matter how you get your Indian lands. And I love you to death."
She patted his cheek caressingly, and John Levine smiled sadly to
himself in the darkness.