squire, after these ten years of the free life of the plains, and the
soldiers and the Indians. The hunting of the buffalo, the bear, and the
elk exchanged for the tame brush after a wild fox, or the shooting of a
few partridges.
But the family instinct was strong, after all, and his eye gleamed as he
saw the old stone house, with its gables and towers, its glorious lawns
and broad driveway with the elms meeting overhead. Oh, it would satisfy
that part of his nature well to go back as its master. This vision it
was that had filled his eyes as they looked so far away. But then they
came back again and rested on Nikumi and the child.
A certain kind of love had been begotten in his heart for the Indian
maiden by her devotion to him, although he had taken her without a
scruple at the thought of leaving her when circumstances called him
away. But now he felt a faint twinge of the heart as he realized that
the time had come, and a stronger one when he thought that he must part
with the child. "But why need I do it?" he soliloquized. "I can take the
child with me and have her educated in a manner to fit her for my
daughter; if she is as bright as her mother, education and environment
will fit her to fill any position in life, but with Nikumi it is too
late to begin, and she has no white blood to temper the wildness of the
Indian. I will take the child."
Not a care for the mother love and rights. "Only a squaw." What rights
had she compared with this English gentleman who had taken her from her
tribe, and now would cast her back again and take away her child? But
ah, my English gentleman, you reckoned without your ordinary sagacity
when you settled that point without taking into consideration the mother
love and the Indian cunning and watchfulness, their heritage from
generations of warfare with each other.
"What have you got?" she asked in the flowing syllables of the Indian
tongue, for like the majority of Indians, though she understood much
English she never, to the end of her days, deigned to speak it.
"Some words from my friends in the far-away country over the waters,
Nikumi," he answered. "My brother is dead."
"Ah, and you are sad. You will go there to that land?" she said.
"I don't know, Nikumi; I may have to go over, for there is much land and
houses and fields to be cared for. I am going down to see Sarpy, now. He
came up on the boat today."
She watched him as he strode off down past the cattle station towards
the fort. In the summer time her love of her native life asserted
itself, and she left the log quarters which Dr. Gale provided for her,
and occupied a tipi, or tent of skins, down among the cottonwoods and
willows of the bottom lands where portions of her tribe were generally
to be found. When he passed out of sight she took her baby and went to a
tipi a short distance from hers, where a stalwart buck lay on a shaggy
buffalo robe on the shady side, smoking a pipe of kinnikinick, and
playing with some young dogs. She spoke with him a few minutes. He
ceased playing with the dogs, sat up and listened, and finally with a
nod of assent to some request of hers started off towards the fort. She
followed shortly after and glided about from the post store to the
laundresses' quarters, stopping here and there where groups of soldiers
were gathered, and listening attentively to their talk about the news
that had come by the boats.
She learned that these boats were to be loaded with furs from Sarpy's
trading post and go back to St. Louis in a few days. In the meantime the
young buck, who was her brother, had gone by her directions to Sarpy's
trading post, just below the fort. She had told him what she knew and
surmised; that the "pale-faced medicine man," as the Indians called him,
had received a paper from his friends across the great waters towards
the rising sun which told his brother was dead, and that he might have
to go there to care for the houses and lands his brother had left; that
she had heard him say "If I could take the child," and she feared he
might take her papoose away; "and he shall not," she said passionately.
"I must know what he will do. Go you and listen if the medicine man
talks with Sarpy; watch him closely and find out all."
He had followed the Indian trail which skirted along the edge of the
high bluffs on the eastern boundary of the fort, and reached the trading
post from the north. Going in he uttered the single word "tobac," and
while the clerk was handing it out to him he glanced around in the
aimless, stolid Indian manner, as if looking over the blankets and skins
hung against the logs. Back at the further, or southwest, corner of the
store, near a window, and partially screened by a rude desk made of a
box set upon a table and partitioned into pigeon-holes, sat two men. One
of them was Dr. Gale, the other, Peter A. Sarpy.
To the ears of most readers the name will convey no particular
impression; if a resident of Nebraska it would call to mind the fact
that a county in that state was named Sarpy, and the reader might have a
hazy consciousness that an early settler had borne that name; but in the
days of this story and for thirty years later it meant power and fame.
The agent of the American Fur Company in that section, Peter A. Sarpy's
word was law; to him belonged the trading posts, or so it was believed;
he commanded the voyageurs who cordelled the boats and they obeyed.
Every winter he went down the great river before it was frozen over, to
St. Louis, and every spring his boats came up after the ice had broken
up, and before the great mountain rise came on in June, with new goods
that were anxiously looked for, and eagerly seized in exchange for the
buffalo robes, the beaver, mink, otter, and deer skins that had been
collected through the winter. He was of French parentage, a small man,
with the nervous activity of his race; the brightest of black eyes;
careful of his dress, even in the wilds; the polish of the gentleman
always apparent in his punctilious greeting to everyone; but making the
air blue with his ejaculations if his orders were disobeyed or his ire
aroused. Famous the length of the river for his bravery and
determination, he was a man well fitted to push actively the interests
of the company of which he was the agent as well as a member.
The Indian passed noiselessly out and going around to the side of the
building seated himself upon the ground, and pulling his long pipe from
the folds of his blanket, filled it with the "tobac," rested it on the
ground, and leisurely began to smoke. It was no unusual thing for the
Indians thus to sit round the post, and no one took any notice of him,
nor in fact that he was very near the open window, just out of the range
of vision of the two men sitting within.
"So upon me devolves the succession of the estate of Burton Towers,"
Gale was saying to Sarpy, "and my sister-in-law writes that some one is
imperatively needed to look after the estate as there is no male member
of the family left in England."
"And you will leave your wild life of the prairies to go back to the
tame existence of rural English life? Egad, I don't believe I could
stand it even to be master of the beautiful demesnes which belong to my
family. Power is sweet, but Mon Dieu, the narrowness, the
conventionalities, the tameness of existence!"
"No worse than the tameness of this cursed fort for the last year or
two. It was very well at first when the country was new to us and the
Indians showed some fight that gave us a little excitement, but now
we've exhausted all the resources, and an English squire, even, will be
a great improvement. You've some change, you know. St. Louis in winter
gives you a variety."
"What are you going to do with Nikumi and Mary?"
"That's what I want to talk to you about. I find I'm fonder of the child
than I thought, and indeed it gives my heartstrings a bit of a wrench to
leave Nikumi behind; but to take her is out of the question. Mary,
however, I can educate; she is bright enough to profit by it, and young
enough to make an English woman of. I believe I shall try to get her
away quietly, and take her with me."
"You ought to have lived here long enough to have some knowledge of the
Indians, but I'm damned if I think you are smart enough to get that
child away from its mother," said Sarpy.
"Well, I'll try it, anyway. The worst trouble I apprehend is getting
away myself at so short notice. When do your boats go down again?"
"In about a week."
"To leave the troops without any surgeon is rather risky, but they're
pretty healthy at this season, and young Carver has been studying with
me considerably, and can take my place for a short time. If I succeed in
getting leave of absence to go on to Washington, Atkinson will probably
send some one up from St. Louis as soon as possible. I shall have to get
leave of absence from Leavenworth here, and then again from Atkinson at
St. Louis. Then I can send in my resignation after I arrive at
Philadelphia. All this beside the intermediate hardships and delays in
reaching there."
To the Indian outside much of this was unintelligible, but he heard and
understood perfectly "I think I shall try to get her away from her
mother and take her with me," and later the reply that the boats would
go down in about a week.
That was sufficient for him, and he arose, gathered up his blanket that
had dropped down from his shoulders, slipped the pipe into his belt
which held it around his waist, and then his moccasined feet trod the
narrow trail, one over the other, the great toe straight in a line with
the instep, giving the peculiar gait for which the Indian is famous.
He found Nikumi back at her tipi: the kettle was hung from the tripod of
three sticks over the fire, and a savory smell arose which he sniffed
with pleasure as he approached, for Nikumi was favored above her tribe
in the supplies which she received from the camp, and which included
great luxuries to the Indians. Nikumi was very generous to her relatives
and friends, and often shared with them the pot which she had varied
from the original Indian dish of similar origin by diligently observing
the methods of the camp cooks.
She had learned to use dishes, too, and bringing forth two bowls, some
spoons, and a tin cup, ladled some of the savory mixture into them, for
she had evidently learned the same lesson as her white sisters: when you
would get the best service from a man, feed him well.
On the present site of Fort Atkinson may be found, wherever the ground
is plowed over or the piles of bricks and depressions that mark the
cellars of the buildings are overhauled, a profusion of old buttons,
fragments of firearms, cannon balls and shells, and many pieces of delf.
A quaint old antiquarian who lives there has a large collection of them
which he shows with delight.
Who knows but that some of the fragments are pieces of Nikumi's bowl,
for as her brother told her of Gale's words to Sarpy, her face added to
its bronze hue an indescribable grayish tinge, and starting suddenly,
the bowl fell from her hand, striking the stones which formed a circle
for the fire, and broke into fragments. She forgot to eat, and a rapid
flow of words from her lips was accompanied by gestures that almost
spoke. They should keep strict watch of the loading of the boats, she
said, and of the voyageurs in charge of them, and when they saw signs of
departure of them, she would take the child and go--and she pointed, but
spoke no word. He must make a little cave in the hillside, and cover it
with trees and boughs, and she would provide food. When the white
medicine man had gone he could tell her by a strip of red tied in the
branch of a tree like a bird, which could be seen down the ravine from
her hiding place, and she would be found again in her tipi as if she had
never been absent. He grunted assent as well as satisfaction at the
innumerable bowls of soup, and then stretched himself comfortably and
pulled out his pipe.
Meanwhile little Mary, the heroine of this intrigue, was eating soup and
sucking a bone contentedly. Would she be an Indian or an English maiden?
She was an Indian one now and happy, too. And Nikumi? She had come to
her white husband and remained with him contented and happy. He had been
good to her in the main, although he swore at her and abused her
sometimes when he got drunk or played at cards too long, but he was
better than the braves were to their squaws, and she did not have to
work as they did; she had wood and food and she could buy at the trading
post the blankets and the strouding and the gay red cloths, and the
beads with which the squaws delighted to adorn their necks and to stitch
with deer sinew into their moccasins. She had lived each day unconscious
that there might not be a tomorrow like it. But it had dropped from the
skies, this sudden knowledge that had changed everything.
Had she had no child she would doubtless have mourned silently for the
man who had come and taken her life to be lived beside his and then left
her worse than alone; but the greater blow had deadened the force of the
lesser, and only her outraged mother love cried out.
She sat on the buffalo robe inside the tipi and watched the child
rolling about outside with the little fat puppy, hugging it one moment,
savagely spatting it over the eyes the next. She had no right to rebel;
an Indian did what he would with his squaw, how much more a white man,
and to any decree concerning herself she would doubtless have submitted
silently, but to lose her child--that she would not do, and she knew how
to save it.
All unconscious of this intrigue, Gale made his preparations for
departure, and it was soon known through the camp that he was about to
go to the "states."
He had taken pains to conceal the fact of his intended final departure
for England.
He secretly made arrangements with the man who acted as cook for the
boats to take charge of little Mary until they got to St. Louis, where
they could get a servant, and going down the river would take but a few
days.
Gale's condition of mind was not to be envied during the interval before
he started. He scarcely felt the injustice to Nikumi in thus leaving
her, but he could not quite reconcile with even his weak sense of her
rights that he should take the child away from her, and yet he fully
intended to do so. He spent much of the time with Nikumi at her summer
residence, the tipi, and she treated him with the same gentle deference
and quiet submissiveness that were usual to her, so completely deceiving
him that he did not once surmise she knew anything of his plans. The
last two or three days he occupied himself in packing a case of articles
of various kinds that he had accumulated: an Indian pipe of the famous
red pipestone of the Sioux country, with its long flat stem of wood cut
out in various designs and decorated with feathers and bits of metal;
moccasins of deer skin, handsomely beaded and trimmed with fringes, some
of them made by Nikumi's own hands; specimens of the strange Mexican
cloths woven from the plumage of birds, brought by the trading Mexicans
up the Santa Fe trail; a pair of their beautiful blankets, one robe, a
few very fine furs, among them a black bear skin of immense size, a
little mat woven of the perfumed grasses, which the Indians could find
but the white man never, some of the nose and ear rings worn by the
squaws.
Nikumi came to his quarters while he was taking these things down from
the walls and shelves where she had always cared for them with so much
pride. In answer to her inquiring gaze he said: "I go Nikumi, to the far
eastern land, and these I shall take with me to show my friends what we
had that is beautiful in the land of the Indian and the buffalo, that
they wish to know all about." "And when will you return to Nikumi and
Mary?" "I can not tell; I hope before many moons; will you grieve to
have me go Nikumi?" "Nikumi will look every day to the rising sun and
ask the Great Spirit to send her pale-faced medicine man back safely to
her and the child." He put his arms about her with a strange spasm of
heart relenting, realizing for a moment the wrong he was purposing to
commit. But ah, the stronger taking advantage of the weaker. The strong
race using for their own pleasure the weak one. "Ye that are strong
ought to help the weak." He also prepared at Sarpy's trading post, and
by his advice, a smaller package of such things as would be desirable
for little Mary's welfare and comfort.
It was greatly lacking in the articles we should consider necessary
these times, but when we realize that every piece of merchandise which
reached this far away post had to be transported thousands of miles by
river it is matter of wonder how much there was.
The morning of the day before the boats were to start he occupied
himself with some last preparations, giving Nikumi a number of articles
that she had used around his quarters to take to her tipi, and telling
her he would leave money with Sarpy so that she might get what was
necessary for herself and Mary. In the afternoon he went down to the
post and did not return to the quarters until late, where he supped at
the mess table and then went in the direction of Nikumi's tent. He had
devised, he thought, a cunning plan to get Nikumi to go the next morning
for some fresh leaves of a shrub which she often procured for him to mix
in his tobacco, and of which he was very fond; and after her departure
he would make for the boat and embark hastily with little Mary, whom he
would keep. Resolving the broaching of his plan as he approached the
tipi, he did not notice that it failed to show the usual signs of
habitation until he drew near when he observed that the kettle hanging
from the tripod over the circle of stones had no fire beneath it, and no
steam issuing from it, no dogs were playing about, and there was no sign
of Nikumi and little Mary. He began to look about for them; the flap of
skin usually fastened up to form a doorway was dropped down; he put it
up and stooping, entered the tipi. It was almost entirely empty; the
skins which had formed the beds were gone; the dishes seemed to be
there, but the food of which he knew she always kept a supply, was all
gone, and there were no signs of the articles of clothing belonging to
them. Sarpy's words come to him, "I'm damned if I think you are smart
enough to get the child away from its mother," and he knew that Nikumi
had outwitted him. He should never see mother or child again.
He turned and traced angrily the narrow trail to Sarpy's. Striding in
and down the low, dingy, fur odorous room to the rear where Sarpy sat
lazily smoking his pipe he exclaimed, "You were right, Sarpy, Nikumi has
gone with the child." Sarpy took his pipe from his mouth slowly, "Well
I'm sorry you are disappointed, but it will be better for you and the
child, too; she would have grieved herself to death, and worried you
almost to the verge of lunacy first, and you would have had the burden
on your conscience of Nikumi unhappy, and all for no good." "But I'll
not give her up. I had set my heart on it; I shall start a search party
for her at once." "And much good it will do you. There isn't a soldier
in your camp that can find what an Indian chooses to hide, if it is not
more than six feet away from him. You will only inform the camp of your
design and of the fact that a squaw has outwitted you."
Gale knew too well the truth of his statement, but he paced up and down
the building angrily for some time, determining at each turn towards the
door to start out at the head of a search party, but turning again with
an oath toward the rear as the futility of it all was forced upon him.
Sarpy regarded him quietly, a half smile in his eyes. He understood the
conflict of feelings, the pain at leaving Nikumi, not very great, but
enough to cause him some discomfort; the now added pain of separation
from the child, also; the chagrin at being outwitted by a squaw, and one
who had always seemed so submissive, and whom he had not dreamed
possessed so much acuteness; the English obstinacy aroused by
antagonism, all struggling against his knowledge that he could do
nothing. Sarpy in his place would have invoked all the spirits of the
darker regions, but he probably would never have put himself in a like
predicament. To his class, seekers of fortunes in the New World, the
Indian was simply a source of revenue and pleasure, treated fairly well
to be sure, because that was the better policy; while it suited their
convenience to use them they did so; when the need was supplied they
cast them off; possibly Gale, if he analyzed the situation at all,
thought the same, but under the present circumstances, a different set
of emotions dominated him. Nikumi, superior to her tribe, had inspired
inconveniently deep feelings, and he found his fatherly love a factor he
had not counted on.
At last he approached Sarpy, and throwing himself in a chair, took out
one of the two great soothers of man's woes, his pipe, lighted it and
proceeded to mingle its smoke with that of Sarpy's. "I suppose I shall
have to give it up, but I'm damned if I can submit to it with
equanimity, yet; outwitted by an apparently innocent and submissive
squaw, I suppose two months from now I'll be thanking my lucky stars
that I'm not saddled with a brat of an Indian, and at intervals
thereafter shall be falling upon my knees, and repeating the operation.
But I'm blessed if I can see it so now."
"Yes it will be better for you as well as the others, and as soon as you
get away from here you will view it very differently," said Sarpy.
And Nikumi in her cave dug into the bluff, held her baby tight in her
arms, and listened to every sound, while she watched by aid of the rude
but cunningly devised dark lantern, the reptiles and insects which
crawled about, moving only to dispatch a snake or two that were
venomous.
Could Gale have seen her would he have relented and left the child to
her? Has it been the history of the union of the stronger and weaker
races that the stronger have given up their desires?
"You will have to look out for Mary, too, Sarpy, as you have promised to
do for Nikumi. I haven't any more money to leave with you at present,
but I will send you some from England. I don't want her to grow up
without any education at all, and have to slave and toil as squaws do
generally, nor Nikumi either." "I'll see to them," said Sarpy, briefly,
"there isn't much chance for education unless they keep up the post here
and she be permitted to learn with the white children; for I don't
suppose Nikumi will ever let her go away to school as Fontenelle sends
his boys, but she shall have what education she can get and Nikumi shall
not be obliged to go back to her tribe for support as long as I am
here," and the smoke of the Frenchman's and Englishman's pipes ascended
to ratify this compact.
The next day at sunrise the boats dropped swiftly down the river. A
figure at the stern of one of them watched until the last sign of the
landing place faded in the early morning light.
Dr. Gale had played a brief part in the settlement of a new country from
which he now disappeared as if he had never been.
In after years only the few who belonged to that early settlement
remembered that Mary was his child, and told of it sometimes, when they
recounted the adventurous life of those early days. A young man listened
to these reminiscences from the lips of the strange, irascible, but warm
hearted Frenchman, and treasured them in memory. Hence this true tale.
Nikumi released from her reptile inhabited cave by the little red bird
in the tree down the ravine, came back to her tipi. She had kept her
child but she had lost her lover and her life. How should she take it up
again? She had been always quiet and little given to the chatter and
laughter of the young squaws; she was only a little more quiet now, and
Mary's lot was decided; she would always be an Indian woman.