As something quite unusual at that season in the Dakotas, there had been
a thaw the day before, and a great quantity of mud had been tracked in
on the girls' side by the sewing classes coming from the schoolhouse,
separate from the main mission building, to the upstairs room in which
the sewing work was done.
Hannah Straight Tree quickly swept her portion of the hall, for there
was but little mud on the teachers' side, and was proceeding to her
stairs before Cordelia Running Bird was half way along her floor.
"You have not taken up your dirt! You have swept it over on my side!"
exclaimed Cordelia Running Bird, who, with all her close attention to
her own work, kept a sharp eye on the other's movements.
"There is little, and it will not be much work to take it up with
yours," was Hannah's reply. "When we finished yesterday I lent our
dustpan to the middle dormitory girls--they said theirs was too broken
--and they lost it. Now they say they can borrow the south dormitory
dustpan, and they shall not hunt ours. You can always find things better
than I can, so you must hunt it and take up my dirt," was Hannah
Straight Tree's demand.
"Tokee! How strange you talk!" exclaimed Cordelia Running Bird, in
amazement. "The dormitory girls must ask for a new dustpan if they
break theirs. It is not the rule to lend things, for it makes
confusion; if you lent the dustpan you must find it and take up your
dirt, for I have more to do than you. It is Number 8, and you can tell
it when you see it."
"You are very cross as well as proud and vain--and you have learned the
motto, every word. If I had learned the motto I should try to be good,"
said Hannah Straight Tree.
"The motto does not say a girl can tell us we must do a work that is not
ours, and we must mind her. I shall sweep your dirt back," was the warm
reply.
Cordelia Running Bird gave her broom a sudden push and sent the
sweepings flying backward in a cloud.
"Now look how mean you are! Again I have to sweep my floor!" cried
Hannah Straight Tree, angrily. "Proud--vain--cross--mean!" She
counted the four failings on her fingers.
"Not the least bit do I care," replied Cordelia Running Bird, stung
beyond endurance by Hannah's taunts. "I was not cross at first, but now
I am, because you call me four bad names. I am now glad your little
sister cannot play the games, or motion in one song, or even have an
ugly green dress. I am not sorry that your big and little sister cannot
come to school, and very much I wish I had not learned the motto."
Here the young Sioux girl, who was compelled to battle with hereditary
pride and stubbornness in every effort to do right, forgot the white
mother's admonition that the heart might be a dark place and a cold
place needing to be cleansed of evil thoughts.
Hannah Straight Tree did not hunt the dustpan, but with perseverance
worthy of a better cause, she brushed the sweepings from her floor and
stairs upon a ragged palm-leaf fan which she discovered in a corner,
and, dropping them into the scrub-pail, took them out of doors. Cordelia
brought a shoe-box from her cupboard in the playroom and applied it as
an inconvenient dustpan. Meanwhile dustpan Number 8 remained in the
darkest corner of the middle dormitory closet, where it had been pushed
in the rush of clearing up the day before.
Cordelia Running Bird's work of making clean her floor and stairs was
even harder than she had expected. Never had there seemed so many
errands to and fro by those who did the weekly cleaning in the three
dormitories, numbering quite a force. The thaw had ended in a freezing
snow squall in the night, but a sufficient quantity of mud was clinging
to the broad soles of the government shoes that tramped across
Cordelia's wet floor to insure a startling trail of footprints.
"I cannot keep them up, they come again so fast," she murmured to
herself in grim despair, while wringing out her mop-rag to attack a line
of tracks imprinted by the largest girl in school, in going to and from
the laundry to dispose of laid-off sheets and pillow-cases. "_Ver-ry
hor-r-i-d_ pictures of the ugly issue shoes. I will not wear them. I
am wearing kid store shoes my father buys for every day. The dormitory
girls are shovel-feeted, and I Wish they could not walk one step--only
lie in bed!"
She was overheard by Hannah Straight Tree, coming up the girls' stairs
at that moment. Hannah's own work had been done with little difficulty,
and she had obtained permission to help the middle dormitory girls, for
reasons all her own.
The reckless speech was repeated to the dormitory girls by Hannah
Straight Tree, much to their displeasure.
"The dormitory girls are shovel-feeted, and she wishes they could not
walk one step, only lie in bed!" exclaimed the largest girl, sitting
down on a straw-tick to discuss the matter. "Then we should be
cripples, and, tokee! how many cripples there would be!"
"If they came from both the other dormitories into this to lie down with
the middle dormitory girls, there would be one cripple in each bed, and
in one there would be two cripples," said a broom girl, who was quite
expert at figures, having studied on the problem with the aid of
broom-straws representing cripples.
This portrayal of the startling situation, if Cordelia Running Bird's
wish could be fulfilled, increased the shock of indignation in the
dormitories.
"Ee!" cried one, "we hate the ugly government shoes, of course, and wish
that we could wear the nice shoes from our mission boxes every day. But
we cannot, only Sundays--and we have to change them after Sunday-school
--and when we wear our best clothes for white visitors. Cordelia Running
Bird will not wear the government shoes because her father is an agency
policeman, and can buy store shoes for every day."
"I was always much ashamed of my big feet, and now I am more ashamed,"
complained the largest girl. "If the dormitory girls are shovel-feeted,
every large girl in this school is shovel-feeted."
"Cordelia was very cross about the dustpan, too, but we can pay her
back," said Hannah Straight Tree, adding fresh fuel to the fire.
"Now I shall not show her how to feather-stitch the little blue dress,"
said the largest girl, who was quite famous at embroidery, and had
partly promised to instruct Cordelia Running Bird in her work that day.
"And I shall not help her make the little red dress, as she will be
wanting me next week," resolved a south dormitory bed girl, Emma Two
Bears, who was standing in the doorway. Emma was the most experienced
dressmaker of the large girls' class and was generous, as a rule, in
helping younger girls. "I am sorry now that I cut and made the little
blue waist, but I did not think she would so soon be wishing me a
cripple."
"And you need not praise the little blue and red dresses if she gets
them done; but I am sure she cannot," gloried Hannah Straight Tree.
"Ee! We will not. We will call them ugly issue goods," said one of the
girls.
"Or watch her little sister in the Jack Frost song," said another.
"We will shut our eyes!" exclaimed another.
"And the middle-sized and short girls need not choose Susie in the
games," came from another.
"We will tell them not to. They will choose Dolly," cried a fifth.
"But Dolly looks so horrid, I am much ashamed of her," was Hannah
Straight Tree's answer.
Cordelia Running Bird heard the fierce discussion through the open door,
near which she knelt at work, and the bitter tears ran down her face.
When at length her work was done as well as she was able, and the last
stair wiped, she went back upstairs on tiptoe to inspect her floor and
see if it was dry. She was met by Hannah Straight Tree on the upper
landing, carrying a pail of scrub water, mixed with ashes, from the
dormitory. Hannah set it on the top stair, and then glanced wickedly at
Cordelia through half-closed eyes that meant mischief.
"What if I should tip it over?" she said.
"Ee! You must not. It would freeze, and I should have to scald my hands
with too hot water, thawing it!" exclaiming Cordelia Running Bird,
rushing to prevent her.
In her haste to keep the pail from being overturned Cordelia hit it with
her foot, upsetting it herself. The stairs were deluged with the
contents, Hannah Straight Tree fell back with a laugh. "Now see what
you have done yourself! I did not spill one drop. You cannot say I
did."
Cordelia Running Bird burst into upbraiding exclamations in Dakota,
which, because they wished them to learn to speak English, was a
forbidden language in the school except on Sundays and on holidays. By
an odd mishap of memory, Cordelia was apt to break the rule in moments
of excitement, and she knew the penalty too well.
"Now you have talked Dakota, and you must report yourself," Hannah
Straight Tree said triumphantly. "You wished the dormitory girls would
have to lie in bed--now you must lie in bed yourself. You cannot
feather-stitch or speak to anyone."
The unclean water froze upon the stairs, and Cordelia Running Bird's
work of thawing it with hot water was a long and painful process. When
it was accomplished, though but poorly, she went upstairs a second time,
passing through the front hall to the white mother's room to report that
she had spoken in Dakota.
"Again, Cordelia? How can you forget so often?" said the young white
mother in a seriously inquiring tone.
The little Indian girl's excitement had now given place to
discouragement. She was silent for some time, then she murmured an
original defense.
"The cross thoughts come in Indian, and I speak them out that way.
Che-cha (hateful) means much more in Indian than in English. Dakota
is my own language, and it tells me how to scold just right."
"No, dear, just wrong," was the reply. Then looking at the draggled
little figure with head drooped moodily and smarting hands locked
tightly at the sides, the white mother added, "You have had a cold, hard
time this morning in the hall, I know. Have you been cross about your
work?" The gentle voice invited confidence, but it did not melt
Cordelia Running Bird.
"Yes, ma'am. I was very cross at Hannah Straight Tree and the dormitory
girls. I called the dormitory girls a name, and then a pail of very
dirty water was tipped over on my stairs, so again I had to clean them,
and I screamed at Hannah Straight Tree in Dakota."
"Did Hannah tip it over?"
"No, ma'am, I tipped it over."
With all her sense of injury, Cordelia Running Bird would not tell tales
to divide the blame.
The white mother saw that there was more than she knew of connected with
the trouble in the hall, but seeing that the race mood was upon
Cordelia, she forbore all further questions.
"It has often been explained that if the older pupils spoke Dakota very
much the little ones would speak it, too, and not learn English as they
should," she said. "I'm sorry that the cross thoughts caused you to
forget, Cordelia Running Bird."
"I am very cross now," said Cordelia, fearing her confession might be
misconstrued as a repentance. "I have enemies that I am hating very
hard. I shall be thinking Indian thoughts about them while I lie in
bed."
"I hope the cross thoughts will leave you if you lie in bed, where you
can be alone, and try to drive them out. I will send your dinner to the
dormitory," said the white mother.
"I cannot eat one bite for many days. I wish to starve," Cordelia
Running Bird said, as she turned away.