There was a swift, singing sound in the air, and one of the oxen
staggered--bellowed--fell!
The sound of an arrow boring the air isn’t quite like anything else one
may ever hear; and the man knew--before he heard the big steer’s roar
of pain--that the thing he had feared (but had at last come to believe
he had no cause to fear, when weeks passed and it had not happened) had
finally come to them.
Dashing out from the greasewood cover, the Indians--half naked and
wholly devilish--made quick work of their victims. They did not dally
in what they had to do. Back on the plains another wagon--two, three,
four, a train!--was coming; they did not dare to stay to meet such
numbers. They struck only when sure of their strength. Now they were
two to one--nay, ten men to one man! And he, that man, went down with a
wife’s shrieks and the screaming of children’s voices in his ears.
It was the old story of early times and emigrants on the plains. You
have heard it time and again.
After the arrow, the knife; and bloody corpses left by a burning
wagon. Things done to turn sick with horror the next lone wayfarers who
should reach this gruesome spot. Human flesh and bone for the vultures
of the air and the wolves of the desert to feed upon, till--taken from
their preying talon and tooth--they might be laid in the shallow graves
hollowed by the roadside.
Yet one was spared. The wee bonny laddie wrested from the clinging arms
of a dying mother, was held apart to witness a butchery that strained
the childish eyes with terror. He lived, but never was he to forget the
awful scene of that hour in the desert. And when the brutal work was
over, savage arms bore him away to their homes on the heights of near
mountains gashed by many a cañon.
There, for years upon years--growing from babyhood to boyhood--from
boyhood to youth--he lived among them; and so became as one of their
tribe. They were a small tribe--these--of renegade Bannocks; shifting
their camps further and further into the North, and away from the White
Man’s approach as civilization began to force them back. Northward; and
at last into Oregon.
The sturdy little frame remained sturdy. Some children there are who
persist in thriving under the most adverse conditions. And he was
one of these. Yet, it must be admitted, his captors were kind; for
the Indian--savage though he may be--deals gently, always, with his
children; and this boy had become to them as their own.
The baby words of the White Man’s tongue were soon forgotten, and
Indian gutterals took their place. The little feet were moccasined with
deerskin, and the round cheeks daubed with paint. The little body was
kept warm in a rabbitskin robe. Their food was his food--grass seeds
ground into paste, and game; and his friends were themselves. To all
intents and purposes he had become an Indian.
When, at length, he reached early manhood he took to himself an Indian
bride. Then the tribe made him their chief.
* * * * *
Mines in the mountains had brought an army of prospectors into
the once wild country. The mines prospered, and camps--permanent
ones--multiplied. The Red Men saw their enemy growing in numbers beyond
their strength to battle, so the depredations became fewer and fewer,
and finally ceased altogether. “Lo” is something of a philosopher, and
he generally accepts defeat with a better grace than his white brother.
These knew they were beaten, so they were willing to accept peace;
and began to mix, by degrees, with the Whites. They adopted the White
Man’s dress--some learned his speech. The blue-eyed chief, too, whose
position among them was never quite clear to the miners, again learned
the language that seemed as one he had never known.
It was a long time before he came to realize that his chains of
captivity had dropped away--rusted apart by time and circumstances--and
that he might now, if he so chose, go back to the people of his own
blood. He thought of it dully, indifferently, at first--then deeply.
The way was open for him! He could go! But he came to know that down in
the depths of his heart an affection had grown up for these people who
had made him their own, that no other people could lay claim to, ever.
That for all the days of his life his lot was here.
The awful events of that long gone day in the desert were too deeply
branded into his recollection ever to be forgotten (young child though
he was at the time); but the years had dimmed its horrors, and the
associations of a lifetime had dulled his sensibilities.
No! he would remain among them. As he had been, he would still be--one
of them. He had lost all desire to go. How many years had come and gone
since the longing for liberty left him? He could not remember. This was
his home--these were his people--he would stay.
And there he is today. There, a dozen years ago, a San Franciscan,
drawn by the mines, found him; and during a summer’s companionship,
gaining his confidence, learned from his lips his story.
Months later, this thrice strange tale served to entertain half a score
of people who met together in his parlors on his return. They gathered
around the story teller--close listeners--intent on every syllable; but
one there was who went white as she heard. And when she could see him
apart and unnoted, she said:
“He is my brother! I saw them take him away. I was hid behind a
greasewood bush--I do not know how they overlooked me. I saw it
all--everything! Then, those in an emigrant train behind ours, came and
took me with them. I was a little child then--only eight; and he--my
brother--was younger. I thought they had taken him away and killed
him--I never guessed he lived. I know--I am sure this is he. Tell me
all you can; for I must go and find him.”
* * * * *
What that meeting was, no one can say. She found him there surrounded
by those who were his nearest and dearest--a brown-skinned wife and
little bronze bairns--his! She stood face to face with him--she clasped
hands with him; yet a lifetime and all the world lay between. Children
of the loins of one father--born of the same mother--these two had
nothing in common between them--nothing--save the yearning for a
something that was always to lie just beyond.
He yielded to her persuasions and went home with her to see the city by
the sea of which he had heard much, but knew nothing. It was a visit of
but a few days; yet in that time no hour struck for each alike. Try as
each would for a feeling of kinship, the other was ever a stranger.
She showed him the sights of the city, but he was more and more
bewildered by what he saw. At the beach it was better; he seemed to
understand the ocean best, though seeing it for the first time. She
sought to awaken in him an interest in the things of her world. And
to his credit be it said, he honestly tried to respond in the way she
would have him.
But up and away to the Northeast was all he had interest in or heart
for; and so at the end of a week he went back. Going, he pledged
himself to come to her every third year for a week’s stay; for “blood
is thicker than water,” and though they might never strike the same
chord, yet, after all, she was his sister.
The years wax and wane. Every third one brings in fulfillment of the
promise, the very commonplace-looking brother who is something of a
mystery to her metropolitan friends. Time has brought brother and
sister a little more closely together, but it will never bridge the
chasm. Always there is a restraint, a reserve, which comes from a
common knowledge that there are things in his past life he may not
tell--yet, which she guesses with an unspoken, unnamed fear.
Once (when the bronze-brown woman was dead), he tried to accept
civilized life as a finality. The month had not rounded out to
fullness when each saw the futility of the attempt.
Back on the rough Oregon mountains were sons and daughters, “flesh of
his flesh, bone of his bone,” brown-skinned though they were; and he
turned his back on the White Man and his unfamiliar ways, and set his
face toward those whom he knew best and loved.
Somehow, you like and respect the man for going, as you couldn’t had he
stayed.
The story reads like fiction, doesn’t it? But the pity of it is that it
is true.
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