There happened that which is not always confined to the camp of the
red man. It was the old story-- another woman. Well, has not the world
seen such things before? There are women--even those without the dower
of beauty--of whose strange power no explanation can be given save
that they can, and do, “charm men.” And in no less measure was this
brown-skinned woman a charmer. She had already parted more than one
husband and wife--had destroyed the peace and quiet of more than one
home, when she and George stood where the ways met.
If this had happened some three thousand years ago, and she had lived
on the banks of the Nile, and if you were a poet, or a recorder of
history, no doubt you would have written her down a siren--a dark-eyed
charmer of men--a sorceress of Egypt; but she lived on the Humboldt
river instead, and all this happened within the last four decades, and
she was only a squaw of one of our North American tribes. Neither was
she a pretty squaw judged by our cañons of beauty. Yet are not such
things matters of geography governed by traditions? And when a man
is bewitched by a man, brown-skinned or white, he is very apt to see
charms where another cannot discover them.
Sophy, the siren, came into the camp, and with her coming fled peace.
Poor Susan, unloved and deserted, sat apart and cried her heart out--as
many a white woman has done before her, and since--when powerless
to prevent, or right the wrong that was done her. So, bewitched and
befooled, George gave himself up to the madness that was his undoing.
The money which had been laid by went like water held in the hand. The
camp was neglected; the stores were wasted. The children, from whom the
mother had been banished, went ragged and oftentimes hungry.
It took George a long time to awake from his delirium, but he did
awaken finally--after many months. All things come--some day--to the
writing of “finis.” And no joy falls so soon and so completely as the
joy built on an unsound foundation. One day George came to his senses.
Then he cast the woman out; cast her out, and forever. He brought back
to his home the mother of his children, and she foregave him. Well,
what would you?--she was his wife, and a woman forgives much for the
sake of the children she has held to her breast. So the camp was made
tidy again and the children cared for as of old, and there were new
stores gathered, and money was again saved.
Now George--being an Indian, being a Paiute--had never heard of Colley
Cibber, else he might have been reminded that “we shall find no fiend
in hell can match the fury of a disappointed woman--scorned! slighted!
dismissed without a parting pang.” Neither did George--being a Paiute
Indian--know the meaning of the word “Nemesis.”
That was more than twenty years ago; and for more than twenty years the
woman, Sophy, made his life a series of persecutions. If he builded
aught at the camp, it was torn down; what he raised in his garden was
destroyed; what he bought, was quickly broken. Horses were driven
far astray; and his favorite dogs were poisoned. Then, when she had
exhausted all her ingenuity in these and a hundred other ways of making
his life a torment, she turned her wiles on Doctor Jim, one of the
great medicine men of the tribe, married to Susan’s mother, and an
inmate of George’s camp. Doctor Jim’s long residence in the house had
given to George a certain enviable status among the Indians, and this
prestige the woman now meant to destroy. On Doctor Jim were bestowed
her blandishments, and--like George before him--he was fain to follow
whither she led. With the medicine man’s going, departed the glory of
the house. And it left, in the person of the deserted wife, another
mouth for George to feed; while at the same time the assisting support
which Doctor Jim had given the household was taken away.
Troubles came thick and fast to Old George. He had begun to be called
“Old” George now. One day while he was handling a cartridge it
accidentally exploded and tore away part of his hand. This hampered him
in what work he got to do; and sometimes because of it he was refused
employment. Then the evil fate that had chosen him for a plaything,
threw him from a train running at full speed, and left him lying on
the track with broken legs, and pitifully crippled. He got well after
many weary months while Susan nursed him, and between whiles of nursing
earned the living for the dwellers within the camp. When Spring came,
Susan died.
On George fell the care of the four children. It was harder for him to
work now, and there was less to be earned; yet he worked the harder
for his four. Another year; and there were but two for him to shelter
and to feed. The great White Plague stops not at the camps of the
White man, but has hunted out the Red man in his wick-i-up, and is
fast decreasing the number of the tribe; so two--the older two--of the
children had gone to answer its call, and George was alone with the two
that were hardly more than babies. Mourning for his dead, he must yet
work for the living.
We give our sympathy to the woman left widowed who has little children
looking to her for support. But she seldom fails in her trust, for the
world is usually kind to a woman and ready to lend her aid. Rather give
of your pity to the father who has babes to provide for when there is
no woman to take up the burden with him. He must care for the home, and
must go out in the world, as well, to work. Remember the burden is no
less hard for him to bear even so be he is an Indian. It may not seem
so to you, a white man, but you must recollect that the Indian takes a
different point of view.
Long, long after his children were grown, and the old grandmother
was dead, and George was living in his camp with grandchildren about
him, the woman came again--she, Sophy, came to him--trying to win him
back now that the woman he cared most for was dead. Sophy at last had
tired of her revenge, had tired of jealousy and strife; had tired of
everything in life but the one man who had once cast her off. Doctor
Jim was dead--had died many years before. And so she came to the one
she cared for still--as even she had cared most for. For George she
cared always; so she came and stood at his door. Many snows had come
and gone since his blood had moved at her will; and now it was too late
for her influence to weigh with him. He was old; and when he sat before
the campfire and saw a woman’s face move to and fro in the the smoke
wreaths, it was the face of the woman who best loved him, always--not
the face of the one he had loved for a time--that he saw.
So she went away, and at last there was peace between them. She died
the other day. But George--Old George--lives still, and alone. He goes
to the station day after day, as is his habit, and watches the trains
as they come in, and answers the questions of the inquisitive travelers.
* * * * *
If my characters were white you might call this a love story with a bit
of romance threaded in. Perhaps you will, anyway. For it all depends
upon how you look at it. It is just a little story of what is happening
all the while everywhere in the world. Love and jealousy; hatred and
revenge. It does not very much matter whether they live on the water
side of Beacon street (as they do who stood talking to Old George
yesterday); or whether it is in the wick-i-ups of the sagebrush out on
the great Nevada plains. These things come into the lives of all races
alike.
George paid for the folly of his youth, as the transgressor usually
does have to pay. If you live by the sea in the East, you will perhaps
call this a punishment for George laid upon him as a rebuke by the
“hand of divine Providence.” But if your home is by the Western sea,
and you have knocked about a bit on the rough trails in the West, you
will mayhap see in it only the workings of “natural law.”
That is all. It is a little story, but quite true. It might very easily
have been made a White man’s story; but it isn’t, it is only the true
story of a Paiute.
George is an Indian; but one in a whole tribe--each having his own
story. And the tribe is but one of the race. And the race----
Are we not brothers?
For, the world over, under white skin or skin of bronze-brown, the
human heart throbs the same; for we are brothers--ay! brothers all.
Yet, even so, there is still the point of view.
[Illustration]