TEEPEE NEIGHBORS
GRACE COOLJDGE
TEEPEE NEIGHBOKS
TEEPEE NEIGHBORS
BY
GRACE COOLIDGE
" Renown and grace are dead ;
The w'me of ii^e is drawn, and the mere lees.
Is left."
MACBETH
BOSTON
THE FOUR SEAS COMPANY
1917
Copyright, 1917, by
THE FOUR SEAS COMPANY
THE FOUR SEAS PRESS
BOSTON MASS. U. 5. A.
In admiration, respect, and expectation
this book is dedicated to the
SOCIETY OF AMERICAN INDIANS
the truest expression and the brightest
present hope of the Indian people.
M578510
Acknowledgment for permission to reprint is due to
the Editors of Collier's Weekly and 1 'he Outlook, in
which some of these sketches first appeared.
CONTENTS
PREFACE 9
THE MAN WITH THE AXE .23
GHOSTS 28
THE GIFT 36
SHADOWS 40
CIVILIZATION 48
"By ANY OTHER NAME" 50
AN INDIAN VICTORY 55
THE PASSING OF FELIX RUNS BEHIND 65
THE POT AND THE KETTLE 77
MOTHERS 79
A BOY'S MOTHER 85
THE DEAD BIRD 96
A VENTURE IN HARD HEARTS 102
THE THROWN-AWAY BABY 109
THE CAPTURE OF EDMUND GOES-IN-LODGE 116
"IN THE KINGDOM OF THE BLIND" 129
LITTLE THINGS 135
A MAN 140
LAZARUS 149
AT THE END OF His ROPE 154
THE LOVE WOMAN 165
THE AGRICULTURALIST 174
THE INFORMERS 178
A MATTER OF CUSTOM 186
THE DAY DREAM 193
THE UNBORN 196
THE MAN'S PART 199
TIT FOR TAT 211
THE OTHER MAD MAN. . .218
PREFACE
THE OBJECTION has often been made to these sketches
that they are too sad. "People won't read such pain
ful stuff," editors have said to me. Then I slowly look
over and consider my pages. Am I justified in chang
ing this, or that? There is only one response possible
for me to make. "I'm sorry, but they're all true. I
cannot alter them." And I gather up my manuscript
with a sigh because I know so intimately and so well
from my owrn personal experience as a near neighbor
to the Indians that these glimpses of them are indeed ac
curate. Every incident, I think, and almost every
character, I have drawn from my life and experience
of nearly ten years spent with the Indians of Wyoming.
Not everything, of course, happened just as it is set
down, incidents and events have been combined, the
sex and names of characters have been altered, but the
whole has its basis in gloomy, even desperate fact ; for
I have seen and heard and handled, and my memory
is stored with much harrowing evidence. For indeed
one of the most appalling, even crushing experiences
that can come to a person, is to live for a while in close
touch with the Indians on a typical reservation —
crushing and appalling, of course, vicariously and in
direct ratio with one's interest in the Indians, for it
9
io Teepee Neighbors
is a noteworthy fact that a great many people live long
on reservations who, at the end, are far indeed from
being either appalled or crushed.
I will try to elucidate a little this statement. In the
first place the Indians are surrounded by white people
mainly of two unfortunate attitudes of mind. The
first is the man who hates the Indian. He lives gen
erally across the boundary line of the reservation; he
toils on his side while the Indian idles on the other;
he pays his grudging taxes while the Indian exists free
of charge; he sees loads of government freight driven
into the agency for free distribution, and he envies. Of
course this freight was bought with the Indians' own
money, at the discretion of the government, not the
Indian ; without indeed the consent or even knowledge
of the owner of the funds. His mind is full of the old
evil stories of the past, told always from the side of
the Indian's enemy. And he broods and he draws
conclusions and he condemns. There are not many of
him, but he talks and harrangues out of all proportion
to his relative importance in size.
Then there is the far larger class of neighboring
whites whose attitude toward the Indian is one of ab
solute indifference and uninterest. Familiarity of an
entirely external sort has bred in them a kind of com
fortable contempt. The Indian is tolerated only on
account of his not inconsiderable by-products; free
Teepee Neighbors u
house-rent, free service, a free automobile, almost free
beef in these days of soaring prices; and so on, and
principally because he offers a field wherein many
indifferent and incompetent individuals may safely
work a little and worry not at all, for in that field there
exists no danger of competition, and once in it is almost
impossible to be ousted.
Thus does the Indian know the white man ; thus, and
in the light of his own old evil stories of the past. It
is not to be wondered at that he regards him as an
altogether unadmirable individual. The sketch called
Civilization is entirely typical of his mental attitude
toward his white neighbor.
By far the most harrowing fact of reservation life is
the great, omnipresent, overwhelming and constant
nearness of death. Indeed, death is no more at home
on the river Styx itself than within the boundary lines
of the ordinary reservation.
The statistics tell us that the normal death rate
among the whites of this country is annually fifteen
per thousand. That means that in the little middle-
western town in which I now live, we may look for
about one hundred and fifty deaths during the year. Of
course so many of these are among the very old people
that the end comes generally as a normal visitation.
Only now and then is the community shocked by the
lantimeliness of a death.
12 Teepee Neighbors
But among the Indians the death rate is a little over
thirty-two per thousand. The difference stated in
numbers does not appear as great, but actually it
means that with the Indians death confronts one on
svery hand. Not one Indian woman, young or old,
of the hundreds I know, has all her children living.
I can recall mothers who even have borne nine, ten,
twelve, fourteen, and have lost them all. When a baby
is born to your Indian neighbor, you look at it with
your heart in your eyes and wonder: How long?
Nothing struck me more forcibly when I left the
reservation — where I was married and where my first
three children were born — and went to live in a white
community, than the wonderful fact that almost every
one of the babies born to my white neighbors lived.
And among the Indians not only the babies die, but
equally the young and apparently strong, — the ones in
whom should exist the hope of the race.
There are reasons for these conditions, of course.
Reduced vitality from constant underfeeding due to
extreme poverty is one of them — I wonder if white
people generally realize that a certain proportion of
their Indian neighbors die of actual starvation every
winter? An almost complete lack of adequate or com
petent medical attendance contributes ; so does super
stition, resulting in the practice, unhindered by the
government, of medicine men and of a certain class of
Teepee Neighbors 13
old women. When I lived in Wyoming a graduate
osteopath might not receive a license to practice med
icine in the state in his way, and yet on the reservation
the medicine man might malpractice unhampered.
The Indian's attitude toward death is interesting.
Personally I found it both illuminating and inspiring.
He is not civilized ; that is, he is not a materialist — for
is not your so-called civilized Indian, the one who lives
in a house rather than a teepee, and who has given up
his paint and nakedness for store-bought clothes? —
therefore he does not, as an axiom of conduct, use
any and every expedient to keep the breath in his body
, — and this regardless of the state of decrepitude of
that body — choosing life invariably rather than death.
Indeed death is not to him the castastrophe it is to the
ordinary human product of civilization. He is no
fatalist like the Oriental, but rather he regards the
coming of his last long sleep simply as he would
the approach of night or winter with their added but
normal rigors. With his native dignity he meets it
fairly in the way. Nor is his mind compelled by fear.
He is able to use his judgment in this greatest crisis
as he would do in any other.
"If you have your leg amputated your life will be
saved; if not, you will die." The doctor speaks; the
interpreter, probably one of the sick man's own chil
dren, makes the meaning plain. The man addressed
14 Teepee Neighbors
smokes his pipe slowly, considering. At length he
draws the stem from his lips and looks up. "I will
die," he says. And from the moment of making his
decision — a natural, though none the less painful, one
to his friends — in his whole attitude of mind he abides
calmly by his choice. His family do not try to deter
him. The wisdom, also the finality of his decision, are
undoubted.
No, the Indian has not the dread, the terror, the total
aversion to death of the civilized man ; and undoubt
edly, as I believe, this is because the material side of life
is not the one which he has been taught and encouraged
to regard as pre-eminent. When he goes, he is not
forever relinquishing so much of value. In the old
days so far indeed was he from being a materialist
that he failed to lay claim to the few necessities
of his existence — what must be possessed belonged to
his women-folk; the teepee, the robes, the travois, etc.
As for him, save for his horses and his weapons, he
stood as naked before God as did the pine tree. And
like the pine tree he took with simple openmindedness
the sun and the storms as they came. That attitude
of spirit gave him another quality which is one of his
greatest assets, that of poise. He can remain unruffled
and unmoved in the face of the gyrations and panic of
the mob. In fact I have never seen a man whose mind
was so unaffected by objective influences as the
Teepee Neighbors 15
Indian's. As an individual, therefore, he comes very
near to being a free and perfect whole. Undoubtedly
in rejecting the Indian we have lost some valuable
ingredients from our national melting pot.
But today, alas ! the Indian is an individual harried
and distressed. Unnatural conditions hedge him about.
Artificial laws hamper him. His native values are
discredited. His horizon has perhaps been enlarged —
but at the cost of being lowered. And always at his
elbow stands Death.
Two qualities, or attitudes of mind toward life as he
knows it, are characteristics of the Indian. One is his
universal and deep love of children. Each new baby
comes as an event, hailed, welcomed, received with
unclouded joy by family, kinsmen and tribesmen alike.
Every baby is everybody's business. I once had a
young father announce to me in this manner the birth
of his first-born. "One more Arapahoe baby !" he cried,
"My wife has a little boy." This intense love of child
hood is a touching quality. It would seem as though
each new little one came as a sort of symbol, of the re
birth of hope, perhaps, or of the resurrection of life.
The other trait is a certain child-like attitude in the
face of the augmenting wretchedness of his existence,
of patience, mixed with a degree of perplexity, best
illustrated, I think, by a conversation I once held with
an old woman who lived across the valley from us.
16 Teepee Neighbors
Six months before this talk took place a young woman
had died, leaving a little girl of about three. I, know
ing that there were no grandparents on either side to
care for the little thing — the government makes no
provision for Indian orphans — sent for the father to
come and see me so that I might ask him for the child.
According to Indian custom the child and its disposal
belong exclusively to the mother. "I am willing
enough," he replied, "but when my wife was dying
she gave the little one to an old woman." (He named
her. She is, by the way, the same woman who figures
in the sketch called Mothers.} "I don't know wheth
er or not this woman really wants her. Wait till they
have stopped feeling so bad and then ask and find out."
I followed his advice. In time I sent one of the young
men, who spoke English, over to the camp with the
message. But the answer she sent back to me was
that she did indeed desire to keep the child. Her own
were long since dead. This one was all that remained
to her. Presently she came across the valley to see
me; to make things, if not clearer, at least more per
sonal. She talked in signs and I understood her as
best I could.
"I have had nine children," was what she said, "and
they are all dead." Indeed her scanty grizzled hair
was short from ceremonial severing, and the last joints
of both little fingers were lacking, an old-fashioned and
Teepee Neighbors 17
extreme demonstration of grief. Then, with her old
eyes on mine — pleasant eyes in a pleasant face, neither
bitter, nor hard, nor desperate as with a sort of inward
start I could not help remarking, but instead, noticeably
sweet and patient — it is a fact of which I suddenly just
then became conscious, that never, no matter what the
provocation, have I heard an Indian indulge in self-
commiseration — with a twist of the wrist she balanced
her old mutilated hand back and forth. "Why?" she
asked me in the sign language. "Why?"
We hear much these days of the "Indian Question."
But on that day, talking to the old woman, there it
seemed to me it was, with one twist of the wrist. The
patient old eyes looked into mine and asked me the
question which civilization has thrust upon the Indian
people. Why? Why?
Why, the Indians ask, why must we and our children
and our old people die for want of medicine and sur
gery, and food and nursing? We have millions in the
United States treasury with which to pay for these
things if only the government would put our own
money into our hands. Why, for the same reason
must we often languish in the jails, waiting perhaps
as much as six months for the next term of our local
court, because none of our friends have money to go
on our bail? Why may an agent throw any one of us
into the agency lockup and keep us there indefinitely
i8 Teepee Neighbors
and without any process of law because he so chooses?
Why may we not invest what money is allowed us, in
teams or farming implements except at the discretion
and by the direction of the agent and from the sources
he selects? Why may we not cross the lin- of our
reservation without the agent's written permit, given or
withheld as he alone sees fit, and limited in time
according to his judgment or wish? Why do many
crimes of Indians against Indians go unpunished while
small misdemeanors against agency employees receive
the maximum sentence the law permits? Why are the
soldiers who are stationed on the reservation, partly,
we understand, to protect us, often the greatest menace
to our women and girls? Why does the goveinment
place our children in the reservation schools where
they must remain between the ages of six and eighteen,
and yet take them no further in their studies than the
fourth grade, where, we understand, little white chil
dren of eight or nine belong? Why, in this connection,
do the big non-reservation schools offer no higher ed
ucation to their students than the eight grammar
grades, and then send them out into the world to
compete with whites from the universities? And yet
we hear of many non-government-educated Indians
who are graduates of high schools and colleges.
Why may we not, because we are Indians, have re
course to the Court of Claims, as may all other peoples,
Teepee Neighbors 19
except by the consent of Congress? Why are laws
relating to us not codified, so that we may have some
way of finding out what is allowed us and what ex
pected of us? Why have not the Indians, who are the
first, the only native Americans, the inherent right of
citizenship? Why, if not otherwise accorded us, does
not the diploma of one of the government's own schools
for us lead directly to it? Why must our eligibility for
citizenship depend upon the favorable report of an
agent, or on the findings of a "Competency Commit
tee?" Why is the Indian Bureau, with its host of em
ployees, still maintained by the government? Why
will the people of the United States allow millions a
year of their taxes to be appropriated by Congress to
carry on the old, worn-out, debilitating, crushing res
ervation system which outgrew its usefulness at least
a generation ago? All Indians now under forty, or
forty-five, except on very remote reservations, such as
the Navajo — though these people have always been
self-supporting through their native industries — have
attended the schools and speak English and know
enough of civilized customs to give them a fair chance
of making a living in the world. Why, then, must this
elaborate paternal system be maintained to support our
few remaining old people? Why?
Not, of course, that my old neighbor with the pleas
ant eyes dreamed of all these complexities, but the
2O Teepee Neighbors
burden and weight of them she, with the rest of her
people, felt, though not discerning. But many, many of
the Indians do dream of them, and their dreams are not
roseate.
This Indian question is the Indians' question. It is
time indeed that their white neighbors in general were
taking it to heart and answering it.
G. C.
Oct. 6, 1916.
TEEPEE NEIGHBOKS
THE MAN WITH THE AXE
IT WAS one of those days in Wyoming, sharp and sting
ing past belief, when you go out with reluctance and
only as you must. But the Half-breed, having some
thing particular to say to me and wishing to impart it
on the instant, had come forth for that purpose, regard
less, His lean pony stood now at our hitching rack, its
head low, one gaunt hip thrust up above the level of the
other, while its master and I, sitting side by side before
the stove, leaned forward, our elbows on our knees, our
eyes glaring at each other. For we were arguing pas
sionately. My friend was in a mood sardonic to the
point of ugliness. He spared no one, his words were
two-edged swords, he flung caution to the dogs.
" — everlastingly crammed down your gullet; ever
lastingly reminded that you're the under dog ; everlast
ingly shown the way and then told with a curl of the
lip that you're incapable of following it. . ."
He gesticulated with abandon, spoke as though he
were declaiming. "There's not a white man living who
hasn't that point of view, bar none."
He had to pause just an instant for breath, long
enough at any rate to let me cry, shaking my finger in
his face : "But look at me ! Look at me !"
He looked. It was his lip that curled, though I was
kind enough not to call his attention to the fact.
"You!" he cried. "Aren't you always sending the
23
24 Teepee Neighbors
white doctor to them? Aren't you always instilling
'white' ideas of hygiene into them? Aren't you the one
who in winter buys arctics for them — fruit of this
vaunted civilization? Isn't it you who advocates their
going to law ? Going to perdition, 7 say !"
"You say other things too. You cry down the med
icine men as much as I do. You denounce the old un
clean ways. You — "
"Yes, I do. I have. But now I say, if a man's got
to die, at least give him the privilege of choosing his
own poison. Your white man not only kills the Indian
but wants to dictate the very manner of his death."
Then at last he took note of my efforts to stay the
torrent of his words.
"I wish you'd be still for just one minute. I think
there's some one knocking."
We both turned our eyes toward the door.
The sound being made against it was not exactly
that of knocking, rather it seemed that an unfamiliar
hand fumbled at the knob.
"Won't you see?" I said.
He crossed the room, seized the handle, flung open
the door. The Half-breed was one who never did
anything by halves.
A muffled old man stood upon the step.
"Come in," cried the Half-breed.
The old man, stamping and shuffling, made encum-
Teepee Neighbors 25
bered, noisy progress across the room. I offered him
my visitor's vacated chair.
He was a very old man and very much wrapped up,
his feet and legs were bound about with gunny sacks ;
his head and shoulders swathed, layer on layer, in
strange, inappropriate materials. Finally his head was
crowned with the folds of a pin "fascinator." The
effect of his lined and wizened face peering from this
roseate frame was indescribable.
He lowered himself safely into the proffered chair,
peeled off a few of his enshrouding layers, stretched
out his old hands toward the blaze, leaned back tent
atively but with satisfaction against the softness of the
upholstery.
"Do you think he wants anything?"
The Half-breed asked him in Indian.
"He says he is cold and as he was driving by he just
thought he would come in."
"Oh ! Well, tell him to stay as long as he likes and
warm up."
The Half-breed found himself another chair and
drew it near to mine. We endeavored, feebly, to con
tinue our discussion, but in the face of those old search
ing eyes our efforts lacked spontaneity. Then we
talked of incidentals; still at the sound of the incom
prehensible words, the old man sat staring at us, de-
tatched and somnolent.
26 Teepee Neighbors
At last his silent presence got upon my nerves.
"Surely he's warmed up now."
"Shall I ask him?"
"Of course not! He'll think I want him to go."
"Which you do."
"Well, but I don't mean that he shall know it."
"Don't think about him."
"He must be bored sitting there idle so long."
"I thought you understood Indians."
I shot him a glance. "I shall give him some pictures
to look at anyway. It will be much better for his mind
than so much vacancy."
The eyes of the Half-breed twinkled suddenly. "By
all means," he cried, "civilize him ! It's never too late
for that, nor they too old. What missionaries the
whites are! What apostles of progress! What — "
"Do you mind giving him this book and telling him
it's got some nice pictures in it? Some of them are
Indian ones."
The old man accepted the book, listened solemnly
to the explanation. Then he settled the volume on his
uncertain knees, opened it at the back, and awkwardly
with a moistened thumb succeeded in lifting and turn
ing its leaves. He bent laboriously to his task.
But he was, I soon discovered, even more disturbing
when occupied than he had been idle. The Half-breed
seemed to feel this also. After a while he went and
Teepee Neighbors 27
stationed himself behind the Indian's chair, looking
over his shoulder at my vaunted pictures.
Then the old man paused and suddenly lifted his
book. He slewed himself about, this way and that, to
get it or his dim eyes more into the light. He peered
closely at the exposed page. The Half-breed as well
leaned a little forward.
"What's the picture?" asked I, curiously.
"It's a naked 'savage' on the ground, and a white
man standing over him with an axe upraised."
In the depths of his old throat the aged Indian chuck
led a little. Then over his shoulder he flung a remark
to the Half-breed who listened, twinkled, then laughed.
I looked up expectantly.
"He says," said the Half-breed slowly, "that if an
Indian had made that picture he would have had the
white man on the ground."
GHOSTS
HE WAS a little boy, a very little boy, but as naughty
as he was small. In the autumn his people put him in
the Government school, thus at a blow robbing him of
his freedom, his tongue — for he might not speak Indian
and knew as yet no English — his tastes, his instincts,
his pursuits; of everything, in short, except his ingenu
ity. Above his sealed mouth his little, up-tilted eyes
ranged and returned, sought and seemed to find; then
his small round face from bearing the stamp of vacancy
grew guardedly eager and finally satisfied to the point
of being actually smug.
One day he was found bending absorbedly over the
agent's back yard fence. On nearer approach he seem
ed to be fishing with rod and string and baited hook.
His game, alas ! was the agent's chickens ! Lying on
the ground at his feet and proving his prowess were
several victims, sprawled in ruffled impotency.
At the sound of his discoverer's voices he turned,
revealing a face alight with a sportsman's triumph. But
the glow faded as a hand reached up and brought him
to earth. Subsequently the same hand gave him a taste
of this world's possible pains and penalties.
Sunday during the hour of service was a favorite
time with him. He could so easily disappear beneath
the pews to emerge only when and where he pleased.
Hands grabbing stealthily at vanishing feet and coat
28
Teepee Neighbors 29
tails were seldom able to check his progress. The
•clergyman finally complained to the superintendent.
Nights in the dormitory were also enlivened by him.
When bigger boys came to bed, shuffling, and mut
tering under their breath, he would wake up — the little
boys had retired two hours earlier. Then when the
lights were out and the door locked for the night from
the outside, he would slip from under the red Govern
ment blankets, and, white-clad and noiseless, progress
from bed to bed, stealing along, a shadow amongst
shadows, till entrenched in a secure corner of cupboard
or window or empty bed, safe from the reach of the
longest arm, he would begin a series of weird, blood-
chilling cries, unearthly, mournful. Clipped listen
ing heads would duck beneath blankets, clutching hands
seek the solidity of Government matresses ; bedfellow
would hug bedfellow; and the hearts of those sons of
warriors would pound painfully. Finally — and valiantly
— some boy would plunge from his bed, and in disgust
kick the little ghost into silence ; then the small disturb
er woud slink away through the shadows, fists dug into
his eyes, and creep into the oblivion of his blankets,
nestling himself against his bedfellow's warm if hostile
back.
The next night he who had kicked was likely to
receive, just before the wailing of the ghost began, a
sudden, unaccountable and vicious pinch.
3O Teepee Neighbors
Of course, before long, rumors of these nocturnal
disturbances reached the ears of those who had in
charge the boys' dormitory.
Lickings were tried on the culprit but proved in
effectual. Other measures were resorted to, but with
out hope; felt beforehand to be inadequate. He was
such a little boy and his naughtiness was so out of all
proportion to his size.
At last in despair the superintendent put him in the
guard house, the real guard house at the Agency, not
the school lock-up, but the place for grown-up offen
ders, for malefactors, ever; the place where — breath
lessly that night in the dormitory it was remembered —
a visiting Ute medicine man, a madman, had been con
fined and had — died And the superintendent had
said that the boy was to be left there for the night.
It was dark in the guard house, and it was cold, and
supper of water and dry bread is a thing soon forgotten.
Also when you have a body that is uncomfortable and
a head that is always daring you to perform just one
feat more . . .
Sitting hunched in the center of the stone floor, list
less, trying to acquire patience, suddenly he realized
that his eye had begun to measure. Then up reached his
Teepee Neighbors 31
hand, following it. There was a very little opening in
the wall above the door where the adobe bricks looked
loose and through which could be seen a patch of vivid
sunset sky . . . The situation seemed impossible — but the
room was deep in shadows, its corners full of night,
and somewhere without an owl cried weirdly ....
The boy felt the spur of necessity, raised to his
tiptoes, propped himself with a knee, strained, grasped,
strove — and then suddenly, attained. The bricks were
easy to pry out. As the sky darkened the opening in his
wall widened. Behind him lay a well of shuddering
darkness, before him the whole wide world. . .
With a thud he came down on the ground outside.
He picked himself up. He looked about. At any rate
there were no ghosts in sight, of medicine men or of
others. But — he was outside the guardhouse when he
had been carefully deposited within it; and he was in
the midst of the Agency. It was nearly dark of course,
but sooner or later he must be discovered, even if he
went home — a dreadful ordeal to undertake in the
night — or if he returned to the school, or if he sought
out the agent's house and gave himself up. His quick
little mind considered all the possibilities.
Somewhere about his clothes he had stowed away a
wad of chewed gum. His hands, thrust into his
pockets for warmth, suddenly came upon it. For com
fort's sake he pulled it out and put it into his mouth . . .
32 Teepee Neighbors
Little uncertain fingers pecked rather than knocked
at the agent's door. The agent looking up from his book
at the sound was surprised to see no shadow against the
lighted glass in the upper half of the door.
"Who on earth — ?" he cried, and opened his door.
A little shaver, earth-stained, begrimed, hatless, stood
at his feet looking upward obliquely from timid eyes.
One hand was pressed against the side of his head.
"Why, it's Johnny !" cried the agent, and a kindly
hand went out to the boy's shoulder. It was as though
the image of the littlest, naughtiest boy of the school,
who should have been cowering alone in the ghost-in
fested guard house, the image which all the evening
had been obtruding itself between the agent and his
book, had now suddenly become corporeal.
"Come in, boy. Come in here. Why, how did you
get out?"
The little fellow obeyed, reluctantly it almost seemed.
Inside, he crowded close against the agent's legs. He
still held a hand to the side of his head. His little, up-
tilted eyes showed perilously near to tears.
At last in a thick uncertain whisper he spoke a single,
all-elucidating word : "Ghosts !"
"You were afraid. I told the superintendent he was
going too far in shutting you up in there."
The little head nodded.
Teepee Neighbors 33
"Why do you hold your head that way? Are you
hurt?"
"Yes. Me hurt."
"Let me see."
The boy removed his hand and bent his head. It
might have been noticed that he turned the injured side
a little from the light.
"You've hurt your head. Right at the edge of your
hair there's a great lump. Let me feel." The explor
ing fingers reached forth gently.
But the boy winced, dodging suddenly.
"No, no! Hurt!"
"Let me put something on it."
"No, no!"
"Just a little hot water.'5
The boy began to cry.
"There ! There ! Don't do that, I won't bother you.
I won't touch it."
"Sure?"
"Of course. Quite sure."
The tears ceased tentatively, but the little up-tilted
eyes were evidently on their guard.
The agent was stirred. Although it was evening
he ordered his team pre-emptorily. While they
waited for the buggy to be brought the boy sat on a
chair, one hand to the side of his head, the other
turning with carefully suppressed avidity the pages of
34 Teepee Neighbors
the comic supplement of the last Sunday paper. At
length he lifted his eyes wistfully. "Hungry," he
whispered.
"Why, of course. Old fool bachelor that I am!"
The man disappeared into his kitchen to return with
plunder.
During the two mile drive to the school the boy
munched contentedly.
"It was no place to have put a child."
"I suppose not," assented the superintendent rue
fully. "It'll not happen again."
Together they carried the boy off to bed. Nothing
would induce him to let them touch his head.
"Morning," he would cry. "Morrow. No tonight."
Then he would burst into a paroxysm of grief.
"Poor little cuss ! Frightened half sick."
In the morning the superintendent sent for him. A
big boy brought him to the office. But he appeared
a very wilted little fellow in the big one's hands. The
sparkle was all gone from his eyes.
"And his head?" asked the superintendent.
As the big boy wheeled him around, and not too
gently, it seemed as though his very knees bent beneath
him. The big one turned to the man's view the space
behind the little one's ear. It was exceedingly clean,
Teepee Neighbors 35
bore indeed the marks of recent and vigorous scrub
bing; there was also a queer jagged cut up into his
hair. That was all.
The big boy spoke. "Tell him," he commanded,
sternly.
But the little one was past speech, sobbing, quite
dissolved in tears.
"Then me, I tell him. Mr. Knight, he ain't got no
bump. That thing behind his ear was gum, chewin'
gum. He—"
"What?" cried the superintendent.
"He was scared after he got out that guard house
so he took his gum and he stuck it — "
But the superintendent laid a helpless head down
on his table.
The big boy stopped, astonished.
"What," he began gleefully, "what you goin' do to
him now?"
There was a moment's silence, then the superintend
ent disclosed one suffused eye.
"Nothing," he said.
THE GIFT
THE OLD couple came in without knocking. It was
nearly dinner time, the morning was very frosty.
Though not tied, their lank, small horses stood by the
hitching rack, their heads drooped in resignation. The
man was old, but wide and powerful of frame, his
wife was a large stately woman; she walked a little
heavily. As I watched her fold her shawl about her
ample bosom, the handsome marked lines of her face
visible in profile, I remembered that it was said about
the camps that once, in her youth, a man had been
shot for her sake. They shook hands as with special
meaning. They gave us searching looks, veiled smiles.
Their faces were kindly; his decidedly aged.
Sitting uncomfortably on the edge of a chair the
old man talked to us in the Indian sign language,
using his gnarled, dark hands.
It seemed that he had brought a gift. We stood in
front of him grasping at his meaning. Christmas was
just past, and in the dance hall there had been the
usual tree, laden with appropriate and plentiful gifts
sent from the East by compassionate friends. A few
years ago the tribe had had no trees, no gifts. It was
wonderful, he thought, that these friends who now
supplied them had never seen him nor his people. He
understood that they lived very, very far away, and
yet — they gave, and in the dark, as it seemed to him.
Teepee Neighbors 37
He thought they might as well have stood at the head
waters of some stream and flung in their possessions
as to give thus strangely to unknown aliens. And see
with what rejoicing their presents were received. He
and his wife, for instance, were an old couple and poor;
he was often sick, himself. Yes, it was his side that
troubled him — and almost constantly, just here, a
growth, he didn't understand it. But one day, to
better it, he had sat down on the floor of his teepee,
had stripped himself to the waist and taking out his
knife he had — removed the excrescence. But the
place had not healed well, it always troubled him more
or less.
The old handsome wife, watching the talk, sighed a
little, her eyes solicitously upon her man.
Well, to them these gifts had come as from above.
He was grateful. He would never see the donors, he
was an old man, he did not know even where they
lived, but — he wanted to make them a present. Not
knowing how to go about doing so he had brought it
to us. It was not, he explained, an ordinary gift such
as Indians love to make to each other, a compliment
which must be returned by bestowing an equal gift.
No, this was a free present. He made the sign which
signifies "Nothing." "No return." We nodded,
understanding.
Then he went down into his clothes, and from some
38 Teepee Neighbors
recess produced a little bundle wrapped in buckskin.
Unfolding it he displayed a veiy ancient flint and steel.
He looked at them long. His wife looked at them.
They had been his companions no doubt in the dim,
romantic days of his youth, the nomadic days of
freedom and desire. Now of course he could get
matches, much quicker and handier, — two boxes for a
nickel — at the trader's. He did not depend on these
as he once had done, but they were old friends . . .
He cradled them tenderly in his hand.
Then smiling, and rising, he held them out to us.
"For our friends," he said. And turning from us, his
wife at his heels, he passed out into the frosty day.
In the strong light of out-doors I noticed suddenly that
both their faces showed grey and pinched.
I recollected at that moment that I was cooking our
dinner and that I should not have let them go. The
old man paused to break off a willow switch with which
to urge on his dejected horses. The wife had climbed
upon the wheel on her way up to the high seat of their
lumber wagon.
Then I ran after them. "Come back," I called. "It's
almost time for dinner. Don't go. Come back."
They came. There was no veiling of their smiles
now. They were undisguisedly glad. They stood
about the stove rubbing their old hands. They beamed
upon me.
Teepee Neighbors 39
I spread a red table cloth on the floor for them and
set upon it their dishes. They ate with a sort of weary
hunger, as though their appetite was difficult to
appease.
At last they got up. He wiped his hands on an old
bandanna, she on some rag of her clothes. They shook
us both by the hand. Then he spoke again. "We
thank your wife because she gave us something to eat.
We were very hungry. We have had nothing but
coffee for nearly two days." He laughed a little, not
wishing to seem to make too much of the statement.
"Now we feel good. We are full. We have nothing
to eat in our house, nothing." He dusted his fingers
together, making that sign which means : "All gone."
"We were just going up to the store to see if they
would trust us once more. After a while when the
snow goes out of the mountains I can haul wood and
sell it at the Post, but now there is no way of earning
money. The traders do not like to trust us. We are
all asking for credit, but what can we do?" The
sentence ended with that balancing gesture of the hand
which denotes a question.
Tenderly I took up from the table the little buckskin
package. "You might have raised some money on
this."
He smiled at me, they both smiled. "This is for our
friends," he said.
SHADOWS
THE GROUND was pale and barren with snow. In a
bend of the river, on a stretch of low meadow land,
where skeleton willows rustled and shivered, was
situated the winter camp of the Indians. On the edge
of the hill which formed the upper tier of the shallow
amphitheatre surrounding the camp, stood a lone tent.
It was perhaps an eighth of a mile distant from the
main body of the camp. In it lived an old man and his
blind wife.
Each day the never-failing Wyoming sun made
strange sport of the grey-white tents. In the morning
when it stood in the east, they seemed to bow in unison
over their trailing shadows which reached toward the
west; in the afternoon the figure would be reversed.
Over their heads, continuously, these strange and
stately dancers waved shadow scarfs, flirted and
agitated them, signalled and beckoned with them.
These were made of the smoke which issued from the
projecting stove-pipes; evanescent, etherial. Day after
day throughout the long winter, whatever the events,
whatever the privation, whatever the painful patience
within the tents, outside this queer posturing went on.
The tent which stood aloof also participated in the
figure dance, but with less abandon, with less throwing
of scarf, for the reason, indeed, that there came from
40
Teepee Neighbors 41
its stove-pipe a smaller quantity of smoke. Perhaps this
was because the old wife was blind. It had been very
hard for her man when, near the time of the birth of
her last child — like his brothers before him, now long
since dead — she had lost her sight. It had come sud
denly, an unlooked-for visitation, the falling of an un
attended shadow, which had engulfed even as it de
scended. Now the old man must needs do more than
half her work. He must fetch the water, split the
wood, which he was obliged first, of course, to drive
up into the hills to obtain. He must do most of the
cooking, and besides he must be continually watchful
of her, for she accepted her setting aside rebelliously,
and constantly would be found overtaxing her powers.
Twice in trying to cook for him she had burned
herself badly. Several times she had lost herself out
side the tent and had been brought back by him, towed
at the end of a horizontally-held stick, laughing, but
ashamed.
In the morning from off their bed she could fold
up the blankets and in the evening spread them out
again. She could cook a little, not forgetting her scars,
and she could sew. When the women came into her
tent to visit her she would sit by them sewing and
smiling.
"Why do you work when we are here to see you?"
they would say, and she, still smiling and holding
42 Teepee Neighbors
together with the tips of her sensitive fingers the edges
of the seam, would answer:
"Because you are here to thread my needle for me."
But necessarily there were many hours when she
must needs sit idle, her strong hands in her lap, her
keen face listening. Sometimes when her man was
long absent and the fire had sunk low, though she had
replenished it with all the wood he had left inside for
her, she would get up, a look of adventure on her face,
and finding the tentflap, she would thrust it aside and
slip out into the sunlight. With her eager hands she
would feel about for more wood, for chips, anything.
Once even, finding no wood ready, she attempted to
split some with the axe. But though she slashed
valiantly the axehead always fell into the snow. She
could never strike the wood with it.
Coming home just then he had laughed at her and
had led her back inside the tent. Even as he did so
he felt that her hands were icy and that underneath
her heavy blanket she shivered and shook. He meant
to be very solicitous of her, but he was an old man, he
liked his pipe and his game of cards, he liked the old
men's talk of other days — and he sometimes forgot.
As for her, whether he remembered or forgot, her
face was always animated with a sort of fiery patience
which made it seem, old and sightless as it undoubtedly
was, somehow young ; as though in some recess of her
Teepee Neighbors 43
soul she were always crying out to Life : "You can
beat me down, you can filch from me everything I have,
but on me, on my true self, the essence of my being,
you dare not lay so much as a finger."
But in the end, when she came to her last grim
grapple with Death, he won, or seemed to win.
On a certain day those in the main camp noticed the
old man out catching and bringing in his horses, then
hitching them to his wagon, and finally, through the
shining of the morning sun, while all in one direction
the tents curtsied to their shadows, driving, rattling
and clattering, away.
There were some who said that she was on the seat
beside him, again there were others who maintained
that he was alone. Subsequently appearances seemed
to show that those latter ones were right, for through
out the greater part of the day a thin, wave ing veil of
smoke, accompanied by its agitated shadow, showed
above and about the solitary lodge. The tent door
opened away from the main camp, therefore even if
she were there and had come out through it to grope
about in the snow for more fuel she would have been
hidden from their sight. Of course she might easily
have felt her way around the corner of the tent and,
carefully avoiding the guy ropes, have followed along
its side to the farther end and there, silhouetted against
the snow, she might have called to them ; an eighth of a
44 Teepee Neighbors
mile is no great distance to see or to hear . . . they
thought of all this afterwards. But this old man and
his blind wife were a couple who lived mainly to them
selves : no doubt this was her doing, for in spite of all
that she had lost she still clung fast to her piide, or
however much of it her long dependence had spared to
her. They were not people who very greatly encouraged
visitors ; she could not minister to them when they did
come, could not cook for them even. And: "Better
hide what may not be displayed," was, I suppose, the
thought in the back of her head. Also they were not
ones to ask favors.
The day wore to its close. The sun set. The shadow
dance ended.
The next morning those who said that she had gone
with her husband pointed triumphantly to the lifeless
tent.
"You see, there is no smoke."
"Can it be that he was going to ask some one of us
to see her, but forgot to do so?" ventured a single
voice. "Or had he meant to send some one from an
other camp to her ? I almost think I shall go over there
and see..."
"No, no. She does not like us to intrude."
"He did not ask me to go over."
"Nor me."
"Nor me."
Teepee Neighbors 45
"Well, we can wait till tomorrow."
It was growing cold, bitterly cold.
"If she were there alone without fire or food she
would certainly call to us."
"Of course, of course."
The women, their shawls flapping, swung their axes
stoutly. The men banked up the tents with snow.
Children shivered about the stoves. One young woman
who had her first baby that night came near freezing
to death, and there was a great to-do to keep the little
one alive after it was finally born into so inhospitable
a world.
On the second morning it was still lifeless about the
solitary camp.
By afternoon the weather grew a little milder. Then
the wind sprang up and blew tempestuously, shaking
the frail tents. The children ventured out to play.
Their eyes, like the eyes of their elders, were forever
turning toward the lone lodge and slipping hastily away
again. The bravest of them strayed over toward it,
fled back, looked, and strayed yet again. About it
there were but few tracks. The children edged near.
No sound issued from within, no boiling of kettle, no
crackling of fire, no stirring, no voice, nor were there
any familiar odors of cooking or of wood smoke. One
very bold boy called her name gently, "Walks First!
Walks First!"
46 Teepee Neighbors
A great gust of wind came, and wrenched and
shook the flimsy tent, ridge pole and all. Then from
within there issued a long, haunting, creaking noise,
unearthly, disquieting. Again and again it sounded,
diminishing as the violence of the gusts subsided. It
was for all the world the sound that a new rope
would make drawn taut over a ridgepole, straining and
groaning as a dead weight bore it down.
Spell-bound the children listened, then, with their
story, they fled back to the camp. They retraced
their steps, followed by the women and by one old
man. The people stood outside the tent, they walked
about; there were plenty of tracks in the snow now.
One or two of the women even called her name,
gently, as had done the boy. But the only answer
came when the wind blew and shook the tent, ridge
pole and all ; and that weird, uneasy grinding, slow and
prolonged, as though a dead weight were being
heavily stirred.
The old man harangued the women: "Open the
tent flap," he said. "Don't be afraid. Put your hands
inside and untie the door strings. Go in."
But the women folded their shawls about them and
bent a little from the wind. "We are afraid," they
faltered.
And still the old man exhorted. And the wind
Teepee Neighbors 47
blew, and that heavy thing, which seemed to be
suspended within the tent, creaked and protested.
The sun dropped low, shining full on the back of
the tent. A little corner of the flap blew up, and then
a strange blurred shadow lay outlined beneath the
opening, and cast itself, writhing, upon the snow at
their feet. ..
You could hear the hissing of the women's breath
as they drew it in sharply. The old man was struck
silent. At last he turned to a boy, that one who had
been the boldest. His old voice shook.
"Get a horse," he said. "Ride as fast as you can.
Tell her husband he must come back."
CIVILIZATION
IT WAS I who brought the story home. I had been
up at the Agency for mail and supplies and there I
had heard it. On my return I found at the house
a young Indian of the tribe. I hastened to divest
myself of my wraps and to go and prepare some sup
per for all of us. When it was ready we sat down
at the table. Then, with chuckles of unrighteous
mirth, I told it.
At a "condemned sale" at the Post, a Mexican
half-breed had, it seemed, bought a horse, but one
which, sleek with Government care and full of Govern
ment oats, appeared mendaciously well. The man was
said to have given less than ten dollars for it. Then
for a few days he had ridden it, saddled sumptuously,
around the Agency, till the covetous eyes of all the
loafers about the store and offices knew it well.
Noticing one old Indian of known possessions whose
eyes seemed to rest with special intensity of longing
upon his horse, the Mexican had approached him,
making a tentative offer of trade. The result was that
he had taken his old well-appearing horse to the man's
ranch — he first frugally removed his saddle and bridle
— and had walked back without it, driving before him
a young cow and her calf, the worth of which must
have been five times or more that of the horse for
which he had exchanged them.
48
Teepee Neighbors 49
My story done, I laughed with unhallowed glee, and
my husband, equally depraved, laughed also. Of
course it was a contemptible thing to have done, but it
was cute to have so cleverly overreached the dull old
man. One considered the slow witted Mexican, the
slower witted Indian ; yes, it was funny . . .
I raised my eyes, and met the stormy ones of my
guest. He was frowning heavily. His gaze was on
his food, on the room, but not on us.
A troubled silence fell. Having seen the lack of
sympathy in his face, we both became quiet.
Then he spoke. "That was a regular white man's
trick," he said.
"BY ANY OTHER NAME"
THE SICK child lay in the center of the room, propped
high with pillows. She was turned so that she faced
the window, and the west; the oblique rays of the set
ting sun shone directly into her eyes, already glazing.
Her bed which was raised but little from the ground,
was composed of quilts, smeared, discolored, stale.
Her long narrow pillows were stuffed to solidity, likely
enough with the down of cat- tails, and covered with
calico of colors sombre or vivid. They lifted her so
high that she was almost in a sitting posture. Her
hands, bent like bird's claws, sprawled upon the bed.
Her matted hair was still more or less restrained in
tight, dusty braids, doubtless plaited before her illness.
Because she had been sick but three days, her arms
and face — all that was visible of her above the covers —
were not so very much wasted ; but her eyes were heavy
and dull, her lips parted to receive the gasping breath,
her nostrils strangely chiselled and distended.
The white doctor pottered about her, breathing
audibly. He was an oldish man, and stout. In the
absence of the Agency physician he had been called in
from the nearby town. This was almost his first exper
ience of huddled, crowded, unsanitary cabins, of ground
made beds, of dying children but lately relinquished
from the hands of the medicine men.
50
Teepee Neighbors 51
The Government field-matron, a big, kindly, untidy
woman, stood by the little window, arranging and re
arranging the row of bottles given to her care by the
doctor. The space of the window-sill being the only
available shelf in sight, she had placed her vials there.
From time to time the doctor rose, bent down again ;
breathed, muttered.
By the stove the child's mother, a gaunt unhappy
looking woman, imperturbably turned over the fried
bread in the boiling grease. She wore the look of one
who had already relinquished hope; who, because her
hold on life still trammelled her, went ever stolidly on
with her petty tasks ; as would go a prisoner, or one
caught in the ceaseless iteration of a tread-mill. She
looked at you — when indeed she troubled to notice you
at all — with the eyes of a fatalist.
About the room, in corners, on low beds, stood or
sat people, Indians, many of them; old, young; even
among them the superseded medicine woman. All
were silent, all patient, all watchful, all resigned.
The doctor puffed and grunted as he moved and bent,
his heavy slow breathing almost covering the sound of
the child's, which was light and shallow and fearfully
rapid.
The rays of the sinking sun penetrated the dingy
panes of the window and shimmered in the fading eyes.
"Can't you hang something across that window?"
52 Teepee Neighbors
said the doctor. "Or, better, give me a hand here and
we'll turn this whole contraption around."
The doctor seized one end of the bed, the field-matron
the other. An old man strode forward, empty pipe
held in one skinny hand — on his arrival the doctor had
at once caused the smoking in the house to cease. He
laid a detaining hand upon the pillows of the child's
bed; with the other, the one that held the pipe, he
motioned toward the sun. He spoke ; but few only of
his words were intelligible to the doctor. There existed
an abyss of black misunderstanding between this phy
sician and his patient's people, and few common words
had they with which to span it.
It was clear that the old man objected to the moving
of the bed.
The doctor looked at the field-matron, the field-
matron at the doctor. Then the doctor turning to the
old man pointed to the sun, then to the child, then laid
a hand upon his eyes. ,
In answer the old man made a sharp gesture of nega
tion. Apparently there was some connection other than
material between the dying sun and the dying child;
some potency, some desirable "medicine."
The cabin wras full of the smell of ground-dwelling
humanity, of the ground itself in the shape of the earth
en floor, of the boiling grease and the frying bread.
The doctor, breathing stertorously, bent low above
Teepee Neighbors 53
the child. He took into his grasp one of her limp arms ;
his fingers touching, groping at the wrist.
"The whiskey, Miss Haines."
The field-matron seized from- her shelf a spoon and
a little bottle labelled "Whiskey," and extended them
to the kneeling man.
But again the old man with the empty pipe strode
forward. He looked upon the bottle disapprovingly;
again his old hands fashioned a fierce negative gesture.
"What the devil — ?" began the doctor.
The old man signalled to a young fellow standing
back against the door. In the Indian tongue he spoke to
him and with great brevity. Then the young man in
terpreted, enunciating with bashful faintness.
"My father he say that stuff no good. On that bot
tle that say 'Whiskey/ Whiskey that somethin' makes
men crazy. That no good for that little girl. She sick.
You a doctor you ought to know that, he say."
The doctor, still kneeling, listened, his eyes imperturb
able ; only his mouth twitched just a little.
"He don't want me to give her this whiskey even if
I think she needs it?"
The old man, watching, waved his hand contempt
uously toward the stove whereon dinner was cooking.
He spoke.
"You might just as well give her coffee," the young
54 Teepee Neighbors
man interpreted. "That what he say. Medicine that
what she want. Give her medicine."
"I see." With a grunt the doctor heaved himself to
his feet. "I'll go outside and fix up some medicine.
I'll — I'll throw this whiskey away/'
The old man slipped back to his place, muttering
gutturally.
The doctor, making a way for himself through the
group of people about the door, left the room.
In a few moments he returned carrying con
spicuously in his hand a larger bottle containing a small
amount of amber-colored fluid. On its label was pen
cilled in large plain letters : Medicine.
The doctor knelt again. Carefully, with the tip of
a spoon inserted between the parted lips, he gave the
child of the "medicine."
His eyes, very solemn, were lifted to the face of the
field-matron, bending above him and above the child.
Her answering eyes were equally solemn.
He spoke, but softly in that hushed room. "It isn't
as though you could change a good thing by merely
changing its environment," he said. "A lesson in
philosophy, Miss Haines; a valuable lesson in philos
ophy. Er — are you keeping something hot at the
feet?"
AN INDIAN VICTORY
THE BABY was sick and that was the reason I had not
paid much attention to Damon the first time he came
that afternoon. Saturdays they let out the boys from
the Government Indian boarding school at one o'clock,
and he had come down on foot to borrow my pony.
He and I had taken to sharing the pony since the baby
had interfered with my horse-back days. He came in
with a smile on his nice boy's face, and asked where
my saddle was. Then I forgot all about him in the
baby's troubles. I suppose it must have been near four
o'clock when he got back again. It was May, but chilly
yet ; at any rate, on the baby's account, I was keeping
a fire in the living-room stove. I remember that Damon
entered without knocking — that's the Indian way — and
slumped down into a chair behind the stove. The
baby's attack seemed to be over ; he was nearly asleep.
I sat on the sofa jiggling his carriage. I was still wip-
ping an occasional tear from my own eyes, and the
baby, poor lamb, every now and again shook all over
with sobs.
For a long time the boy sat quiet, but after a while
I heard little broken sounds coming from behind the
stove, and snuffles. I made haste to emerge from
the gloom into which the afternoon had cast me.
"Why, Damon. Why boy! What on earth is the
matter?"
55
56 Teepee Neighbors
Had I been Indian I should never have been so rude
as to ask a direct question, but — well, it took him a long
time to answer it. He, at least, was Indian enough.
At last he got it out.
"Elk wouldn't sign for me."
"You mean to say you went way down to Goes-in-
Lodge's, where Elk is staying, and that he wouldn't
sign your Carlisle paper, though he promised you to
do it today?"
"Yes, ma'am'," said Damon, and snuffled again.
"But I don't understand at all why he wouldn't. He
has always seemed willing enough for Mr. Knight,
when he goes East next week, to take you with the
other children. Why, boy, what on earth can you do
now? Elk's surely the one who ought to sign for you.
Why do you think he went back on you?"
There was a long pause. At last Damon managed :
"John Pine, he died — Then he stuck again.
Conversation between the naturally reticent Indian
and the as naturally loquacious white man is very likely
to impress one as does an overheard telephone talk;
one man apparently doing all the work.
"Oh, John Pine's dead," said I. "Well, I knew he
was going to die before long, of course. He came
back about Christmas time, wasn't it, from that Kan
sas school, and with consumption? And now he's
dead. So your uncle —
Teepee Neighbors 57
"Yes, ma'am. Elk, he got scared, and he said what
did I want to go off so far for, and couldn't I learn
enough at this here school."
"And then what did you say ?" I didn't want him to
run down till I had got it all out of him.
"I just kept sayin' : I want to go to Carlisle, I want
to go to Carlisle."
"Well, there's Hubert. He's a kind of an uncle to
you, too. He's been off at school. Maybe he could
sign for you. Did you try him?"
"He was to Goes-in Lodge's too. But he just talked
mean to me. He said, why did I want to go and try to
learn to be a white man? He said I'd forget how to
talk Indian, and I'd come back and marry one of them
half-breed girls. And 'look at the ones that's come
back,' he said, 'can they earn any more money than us
fellows here? They ain't white and they ain't Indian.
You better stay here,' he said, 'and this summer I'll
take you out on my ranch with me, and maybe in the
fall me and you'll have a little huntin' trip back of
Black Mountain.' "
"And what did you say to that, boy ?"
"Just the same thing. I kept sayin' : 'I want to go to
Carlisle. I want to go to Carlisle. There ain't never
been one of us Northern Arapahoes graduate from
Carlisle, and I want to be the first one,' I said."
58 Teepee Neighbors
''Well, Damon, there's your mother. Do you think
anyway she could be made to do it?"
"No, ma'am," said Damon, and again he snuffled.
"She's old," said I, "and, being blind that way, it
surely would be hard to make her understand. She'd
just hate to have you go so far. To her it would be
like sending you off to the moon. And she couldn't
realize where the advantage to you would be. Let me
see, you must have other relatives, plenty of them, who
could sign that paper."
"No, ma'am," said Damon again. "Can't nobody
sign for me but just Elk or my mother. That's what
the agent told Mr. Knight."
"But last year anybody could sign for the ones who
went. You know what a time your own cousin,
Tabitha, had. Elk wouldn't give his consent to her
going to Carlisle, and she got just a young man, a
cousin, to sign for her, and she went anyhow."
"Yes, ma'am." said Damon dolefully.
He was young, but when you live on an Indian res
ervation you get your eyes open early to a good deal
of pretty obvious irony. Last year, to further the
interests of an employee who wished to travel East
in charge of the children, and so at the Government's
expense, the regulation requiring actual parents or
guardians to sign their consent for the child to go away
from the reservation to school had been waived. This
Teepee Neighbors 59
year, however, when a lesser govermental light was
desirous of taking the children East, the observance
of the ruling on the question was being more strictly
adhered to.
Poor boy of fourteen! Vaguely, in his groping
child's heart, he craved a little more education than
the reservation school could offer, and he was fired
also with a dim desire to see something of the outside
world in this his one and only chance, living as he did
in so remote a part of the country. Poor youngster!
To be forced thus to fight for the chance a good
government had meant to place within his easy reach,
— on the one hand the indifference of self-seeking
whites, and on the other the ignorance and stubborn
ness of his own purblind people. I wondered how, at
fourteen, my boy, there in the cradle, would face a
similar situation.
We seemed to be in a cul-de-sac, which is the French
for box-canon, a horrid place in which to find yourself
when all your desire is to be at the other side of the
end wall of it.
Well, there I was in my box-canon, off the trail, no
suggestions to offer. I told Damon to keep my pony
all night and to come back tomorrow ; and in the
meantime to tell Mr. Knight, the lesser light, and the
boy's good friend, all his difficulties. Perhaps, among
60 Teepee Neighbors
us all, we might be able to find some way out of the
dilemma.
In the morning I saw a buggy drive through the
ranch gate. The sun was shining, the baby smiling
again. I remember I was just doing the dishes.
"Oh! leave your dishes and come along. We're
going over to Wind River, to get Damon's mother to
sign this paper if we can. This boy's just got to go to
Carlisle, and we'll leave no stone unturned to get him
there."
So I bundled up the baby and put on my linen duster
and threw my heavy coat under the back seat. That's
the way it is in Wyoming; the dust is always with us,
and the cold generally. So we go prepared for any
thing.
The river was high, but we got through it all right.
Government horses are big and strong. We turned
north across "Dobe Flat," then a little eastward up
the long divide between the two rivers. We always call
it five miles to the summit ; it's all of that, a long, heavy,
gradual grade. At the top Mr. Knight pulled up the
team to let them breathe, and we all turned back to
look at the country behind us, the big sunny valley
sloping up to the foothill^ and lined with little brush-
bordered creeks, each one tracing its tortuous way back
to its own cleft canon. Beyond we saw the mountains,
Teepee Neighbors 61
delicate, graceful, snow-sprinkled, and outlining the
whole west of the world.
We stood there at the summit, the hill falling away
from us both ways. You could hear the wind singing
away off ; you always can on the plains, no matter how
still it is. There were a few cactus plants growing near
us, and they were in bloom. The sage smelled good,
that clean, primeval smell that takes you back to the
beginning of all camping, of all life. Everything was
sparkling in the sun, and, most of all, those mountains,
so many of them, in such a wide, powerful line.
We started at a good clip down the other slope. The
road wound through red, sage-covered, rolling country ;
down there, miles ahead of us, we could see the big
river, marked by a wide band of cottonwoods.
The country through which we were passing, though
looking most accessible, was in reality so completely
the reverse that you couldn't help admiring the clever
way the road nosed its passage between the little hills,
down gulches and draws, along hogbacks, finding out
and following the only possible ways.
At last we were nearly down. We passed through
a narrow draw, all pinkish-red sand, very hard and
ancient looking. There the sage grew as high as your
eyes as you sit a horse. It looked gnarled, misformed,
and old, as though it had been the very first thing of
its kingdom created of God. As we came down that
62 Teepee Neighbors
sand-draw I turned my head to the left and hugged
the baby close. You can't see it from the road, but just
a little way back from it there's a box- canon, red and
sandy and sage-covered, where the people over here
on the river bury their dead. I have heard them up
there "crying" at twilight, the age-old lament of grief.
At last we got to the river. Elk's camp stood right
at the edge of the tall timber, within sound of the roar,
if not quite within sight of the water. There stood
three cabins, set at irregular angles, the most primitive
form of human-built house ; rough, dusty logs, the ends
not so much as sawed off even, chinked with red mud,
dirt roofs and floors, crooked door and window frames
of hewn logs. There also stood at one side a tall teepee,
graceful and free, compared to its squat house neigh
bors.
By the side of one of the houses a post was driven
into the ground, and sitting in the dirt, facing it, was
a woman. Her hands held the two ends of a wet cow
hide, scraped of its hair, and which, to soften, she kept
pulling back and forth around the stake. At the
sound of the buggy she turned her face toward us,
listening expectantly. We tied the team to the fence
and all went over to her. Mr. Knight shook hands
with her.
"How! Blind Woman."
I did likewise. "How! How! Blind Woman."
Teepee Neighbors 63
It never seemed to me either polite or considerate to
call her that. But that was her name. We all used it.
Damon hung back.
"You'll have to interpret for us," said Mr. Knight
to him. "There's no one else."
The boy came forward bashfully and stood in the
sunshine by his blind mother. She let the hide slip
from her hands. The ends lay touching her feet, within
reach. She lifted her face to us, her blind face, which
wore, as do the faces of so many of the Indians, a look
of child-like sweetness and agelong patience.
Mr. Knight explained. Damon interpreted. I sat
on. somebody's saddle, which lay on the ground, holding
my baby.
"Six days to get there?"
"Yes."
"And for five years?"
"Yes."
The light faded from the blind face.
"My husband is dead," said the woman. "I have
but two sons. The other one, as you know, is sick.
Five years !"
Damon interpreted on. Then a slow tear stole down
the old woman's face, and another. She wiped them
away with the palms of her hands. Tears ran down
the boy's face also. A sudden sob shook him. They
spoke quietly to each other; scantily.
64 Teepee Neighbors
At last Damon said: "She says to give her the
paper, she will make her mark."
Mr. Knight handed it to her. He guided her hand.
He and I witnessed the crude signature. Then we
went down to the river bank to eat our lunch, leaving
the mother and son together. I felt somehow as
though I could not let the baby out of my arms.
On our way home we were all inclined to be quiet.
The hills were glorious in the afternoon light, long
shadows pointed back from the mountains — it was all
so world-wide, so everlasting looking. It made you feel
the way reading some parts of the Old Testament does,
as though suddenly, mysteriously, you were in touch
with the things that transcend time and space.
THE PASSING OF FELIX RUNS
BEHIND
I DROVE two miles down the river to the ford we use in
summer. It looked solid enough now, but snow lay in
an undisturbed sheet over the ice. I urged my horse
down close to the edge but stopped him there. I was
afraid to venture on it. Last night there had been the
first great freeze of the winter. The ice was so new, I
quailed. But the cold was bitter. It gripped me. My
feet ached. I remember I moved them awkwardly
under the covers, hoping to quicken them a little. Then
I fumbled with the lines. I even spoke to the horse,
starting him forward, straight for the ice. But after
all my heart failed me and I turned him short about
and made him follow his own track back up the river.
His trail was the only one in all that vast waste of
snow.
The old horse went stiffly. I drove him to an up
per ford. Here the water showed, running between
rocks and the ice that clung to their edges. At least
here there was some sound of water moving, not the
deathlike stillness of the lower country. A hot spring
above this upper ford kept the river "open" through
the bitterest weather. I drove into the water. The
little buggy crashed down oft the edge of the ice into
the current and rocked over the stones of the bottom.
65
66 Teepee Neighbors
Then it wrenched up over the ice along the other bank,
creaking and straining. Again, I headed the horse
down the river, we broke through fresh snow, our
slender track making a faint line of bluish shadow on
the virgin whiteness.
Saddle Blanket's camp lay a mile or more below us
in the valley. A clump of bare and ragged cotton-
woods stood over it. There were three squat, careless
cabins, huddled together; there was a corral protecting
a diminutive hay stack ; there stood also an old wagon
and a mowing machine. Smoke was pouring from a
stove pipe which protruded at a crazy angle from one
of the roofs.
Clumsily I freed myself from the blankets and let
myself down to the ground. Cautiously, with stiff
fingers, I tied the horse to one of the rear wheels of
the wagon. His breath steamed in a cloud about me.
In the extreme cold everything creaked uneasily.
Here, at least, though, were tracks in the snow, moc
casin tracks, dog tracks. In a tiny teepee made of
gunny sacks and rags, a mother dog whined miserably
amidst her blind litter.
I stepped over the complaining snow and knocked at
the home-built door of the house from which came the
smoke — I have never been able to accustom myself
to the Indian way of entering without announcement.
A voice from within called out something to me. I
Teepee Neighbors 67
turned the handle, pushed the door, but finally had to
force it with my knee before I managed to open it.
"How !" They cried at sight of me. "How ! How !"
They used my Indian name as they spoke to me. At
least it was warm within. A woman slapped back a
couple of half grown dogs from before the little sheet-
iron stove and made a place for me. With my teeth
I pulled off my gloves and held my aching fingers
above the warmth. I stamped my feet, clumsy in
arctics, upon the dirt floor.
It seemed very dim in the cabin after the glare with
out. I looked about puzzling out the faces. There
were a lot of people there, old ones mostly. They sat
on the floor along the walls, smoking, and talking in
low voices, the accent guttural, the words to me in
comprehensible. But it was easy enough to find the
sick man, the one I had come to see. He was stretched
on a bed in the corner away from the door, on an iron
bed which had, in all probability, been condemned and
thrown out upon the dump behind the Government
school. It was mended and propped with boards from
some store packing-box. He lay back, supported by
pillows and blankets, a veritable death's head, but alive,
looking, knowing, suffering, speaking even. He was
quite horrible. By the foot of the bed, in the dirt, sat
his mother, a blind woman. Except indeed the sick
68 Teepee Neighbors
man, I saw no one in all the roomful who knew English
and so could interpret for me.
When the pain in my hands left me free to think,
I stepped over the ubiquitous puppies to the bed and
reached for his hand, the hot nerveless thing of bones
he held out to me.
"I heard only yesterday that you were so sick,
Felix—"
"I can't hear," he croaked to me. His eyes devoured
me.
I repeated my words in a louder voice.
When they turn deaf that way it is near the end. I
have seen enough of consumption to know that. He
indeed was at the very end; one look at him, one
breath of the tainted air, told you that. There was red
paint on his cheeks, on his forehead, "medicine" paint,
sacred. He was anointed for his passing.
''Can you think of anything I might do for you?"
The low Indian voices had ceased. It was hard to
speak so loud in that still place. You felt Death wait
ing, sinister, implacable, just outside the home-built
door.
"I'm hungry!" rasped that dreadful voice. "I'm
hungry !" The skeleton hands repeated the words in
the Indian sign-language; the whole body said it, the
eyes burned it into me.
"I'll go home," I cried, "and bring you something to
Teepee Neighbors 69
eat." My heart was full of a sort of joy that I had
found one definite thing to fix on, to do for him.
"What shall I bring you, Felix?"
"Meat," he said, "meat. You cook it, in the oven,
and no salt; will you?"
"And oranges," I said, "and bread, shall I bring
you them?"
"No," he croaked again. "Meat, just meat, I'm
hungry."
A lean woman sitting against the opposite wall,
spoke to him, said something in a loud voice. He
turned his death's-head toward her so that he might the
better hear.
"She says bring the bread and the oranges," he got
out, hoarsely. Then he coughed and let his head fall
back upon the pillows.
I looked at the hungry greedy eyes of the lean
woman. I knew her well for a "medicine" woman, the
keeper of the Sacred Pipe, an adherent of the old
heathen ways. She had children by her as she sat, a
little ragged girl and dirty boy. I saw their worn moc
casins and matted hair, their eager eyes and pinched
faces. I saw indeed the greediness of her look but also
I saw in her that most miserable thing, a mother of
hungry children.
"I will bring them," I said. I spoke to her with the
signs of the Indian "hand talk."
7O Teepee Neighbors
I stood with my hand resting on the iron of the
bed's foot, waiting for Felix to revive and speak to me
again. After a little, without lifting his head, he asked,
in Indian, for something. An old woman, taking a short,
black stone pipe from her mouth, got up and brought
him water in a tin cup. He drank noisily, the cup
shaking in his hand. When the old woman had sat
down again, he opened his eyes and turned his face
towards me.
"Felix," I said, "would you be willing to let me bring
you the doctor? There is a kind young doctor at the
Post now. I think he could give you something so
that you would not suffer so much. May I bring him?"
His face brightened. He made as if to acquiesce, but
half a dozen voices from the other side of the room
cried him down. He heard them but could not, I sup
pose, distinguish the words. Then the lean woman got
to her feet suddenly and said something angrily, and
apparently to me.
He smiled up at me deprecatingly. "She says no,"
he said. "She's curing me herself. When I get so I
can walk then I'll go up to the Post with you and see
that doctor."
I smiled back at him some way, what else could I
do? "Very well," I said, "We'll leave it that way."
I saw it all, of course. A free doctor who helped
might be a menace to the prestige of a medicine woman
Teepee Neighbors 71
demanding pay and who — well, didn't help. I under
stood something of the situation in which this blind
woman and her dying son were placed. There had
been trouble recently between them and Elk with
whom they habitually lived. Elk, their relative, was
a hard, imperious man, and had, so it was said in the
camps, turned them both out of his home. They had
then been forced to take refuge where they could, at
least during the bitter winter time; and it was, of
course, not for nothing that this lean woman with the
wild eyes was taking the scanty scraps of food for
them from the mouths of her own children. I knew
well, bitterly well, how it must be. All the possessions
of these two refugees had not yet been converted to the
healer. They two must be kept a little longer. Some
starving cow or pony, some quilt or piece of bead work,
was still to be got hold of. The Indians are not by
nature a grasping people, but when you are a mother
with hungry children at your knee necessity drives you
with a double goad.
Therefore I smiled, promising to drive up at once for
the meat, the four or five miles from the camp to the
Post, cook it in my oven, — without salt— and bring it
to the dying man tomorrow. My hand was still resting
on the iron foot of the cot. Then I felt creeping
fingers, and a hand, an old hand, closed gently over
72 Teepee Neighbors
mine, pressed, seemed to caress. I had no need to look.
It was the blind mother who thus groped for me.
Yes, I understood it all, understood that she realized
what I had been thinking of, the attitude toward her of
her hosts, and that she recognized also friendship when
it came to her. At length I slipped my hands from
tinder hers to take again Felix's in parting. Oh ! the
horrid, pitiful touch of that hand, soiled and sick.
"I will come tomorrow," I cried, in the loud voice I
must needs use. "Tomorrow, tomorrow/' I repeated
in Indian the one word of the sentence that I knew in
that language.
The next day was mild. A "Chinook" wind blew
strongly from the distant ocean. It cut into the snow,
making it look ragged and unnatural.
When I drove this time to Saddle Blanket's, I took
the baby with me. I laid him in a little bed, — im
provised from the top of an old canvass "telescope"-
at my feet, on the floor of the buggy. He could be
warm and covered there, and at the same time leave my
hands free for driving. This time there were people
about outside the camp. An old man came up and tied
my horse for me. I lifted out the baby and carried him
on one arm, my panful of things on the other. I fumb
led at the door. The lean woman from within opened
it. The room was less filled, the air mercifully fresher.
Felix was better, you could see it. There was hope
Teepee Neighbors 73
in his face. The medicine paint was gone. He was
even making out to sit up, after a fashion, still propped
by the litter of blankets and dirty pillows behind him.
He had on a clean shirt, a light one, it was buttoned
decently over his skeleton chest, whereas yesterday his
miserable nakedness had been half disclosed.
I came in stumbling, laughing a little, so encumbered
was I. The blind woman, still sitting on the ground at
the bed foot, turned her face to me. The baby made a
little gurgling sound. The mother heard it. She
reached out her old arms. Then I let the baby slip,
all bundled and hooded as he was, into her lap. Her
hands found everything: the knot of the capstrings, his
rounding cheeks, his little bent ringers. She nestled
him, under her shawl, spoke endearingly to him. He
answered her in his own way.
I was talking at the bedside to Felix, showing him
the food, explaining. He sat with his shoulders bent,
his bony hands resting on the quilts, his long braids
falling forward in the hollows of his chest.
"Thank you !" he cried, "Thank you ! That's good.
I'll eat good."
It came into my mind just then that they had told
me that at the mission school he had attended he had
been one of the Sanctuary boys, one of the servers of
the Mass. Well, he would "eat good" and die a little
less hungry, perhaps, because of my meat and bread.
74 Teepee Neighbors
The lean woman emptied my food into dishes and
pans of hers and handed me back my things. The
children played about with the puppies. Everything
today seemed easy, relaxed. Perhaps, after all, he
was not as near gone as yesterday he had seemed to be.
Consumption is so deceptive.
I went, at last, taking the baby from the reluctant
arms of the blind woman. I promised to return in
a few days with more food. The mother followed me
to the door and stood outside in the sunlight against
the grey walls of the house, smiling and turning toward
me her listening face.
It was two days after that, that my baby was taken
suddenly and seriously ill. He would not eat at all.
We, on that ranch remote from neighbors and help,
hung over him impotently, watched, feared. It had
turned very cold again, but in despair we wrapped him
up, and drove with him the long nineteen miles we
must needs go to the one town of this ranch region
and the only place where medical help of much use
might be had. My husband left me there with the
baby, returning the next day to the ranch and his
duties. He bought food in the town for Felix. My
last words to him were as, bundled to the ears, he sat
gathering up the lines and whip, "The first thing
in the morning, you'll go down to Felix, the first thing.
You won't put it off an hour, will you?"
Teepee Neighbors 75
When he came back at the end of the week he told
me about it. He had gone with the meat and things
only to find the camp deserted. The cabins were there,
squat and wretched under the ragged cotton woods,
the corral still contained the scanty hay stack, the
mowing machine stood blocked with snow. But the
wagon was gone, and the dog teepee. The place was
empty of all life. A short log of wood resting against
the door of the cabin where Felix had been, signified,
in the Indian way, that the place was to be considered
locked. Looking in through the window it could be
seen that the sick man's bed was also gone.
You take the signs for what they mean, of course. It
had happened; evidently, was over; on some rocky
ledge, in the scant, frozen earth of that wilderness of
snow and sunlight stretching back from the river, they
had buried him. His skeleton, racked body, the long
hair smoothed and anointed, the face painted ceremon
ially, dressed in all his best — which for this even the
cupidity of the lean medicine woman had spared to
him — beaded moccasins on his feet, wrapped in new
quilts, many, many of them, a great, stark motley
bundle, they had laid him in that freezing bed, and on
top of him, as he lay, they had placed the cup from
Avhich on the day of my first visit the old woman
had given him to drink, the dishes and pans which had
held the food I had brought him, his pillows and dingy
76 Teepee Neighbors
quilts. The iron bed mended with boards no doubt
was thrown dismembered at the side of the grave.
I could see it all ; the blind woman standing in her
scant rags, and thin, torn shawl, perhaps the blood
streaming from her legs, which, in her sorrow, she had
gashed with knives, her hair falling loose, her half -un
covered flesh shivering in the bitter cold ; and wailing
—wailing, half a song, half a cry. Other wromen had
dug his grave : She was blind ! Other women had
swaddled him for his long sleep: She was blind!
Other women had seen the last flicker in his eyes, the
look of love meant for her: She was blind. But she
might cry for him, standing, swaying and uncertain, by
the grave, hearing the heavy, creaking steps of those
who bore him.
Afterwards she must needs go patiently back to life,
must take up her lonely, stumbling burden, until she
also should be borne to her shallow grave. Back she
must creep, shorn of her son, naked of her goods, a
public care, a never ceasing burden on her tribe.
It was nearly a year before I so much as set eyes
on her again. In our wandering Indian world it is often
that way ; long distance, long time, may separate those
whose hearts have for a moment beaten in friendship.
I remember also, that when my husband told me
that Felix was gone, with a heavy heart, seeking soft
words, I sat down to write to Damon, his young
brother away at school, my sorry news.
THE POT AND THE KETTLE
SHE THUDDED into my room, grunting a little and
closing the door behind her noisily. Then she flung
the solid, square bulk of herself into a chair, with
rough abandon shaking back from her face her
grizzled hair. When I came in to salute her she was
grumbling under her breath.
"How!" said I. "I'm glad to see you. But what
are you doing here? I thought you were washing for
the trader's woman."
"Yes. Me wash."
"Well, it's dinner time."
Her keen little eyes shot me a glance. "Yes. Me
hungry."
"Well," I began, "I suppose the trader's folks eat
dinner, don't they?"
She hitched her shawl, settled herself back into the
chair with a jerk, cleared her throat, spat into the
stove. "Yes, heap cook. Big one, black woman. Me
no like um. No good!" Her big hand leaped from
beneath her shawl and was thrust out to one side, the
fingers opening in that derisive, unmistakable gesture
which means indeed "No good!"
The old woman laughed with her big coarse voice,
eyeing me sharply.
"You kimme dinner," she said. "You clean. Black
77
78 Teepee Neighbors
woman, that dirty. No good ! No good !" Her liana*
proclaimed disgust.
Her grizzled locks straggled stiffly about her neck,
short and shaggy and unbraided. So often had she
hacked them off in mourning, so often worn them veil-
like about her weeping face, that now, as with her
"white" sisters, many long-time widows or the mothers
of long-since dead children still wear black, so she
never gathered her hair into even a semblance of that
order which had proclaimed her once happy state. Her
checked outing flannel shawl — a bed sheet in reality —
was soiled and grimy ; where lately she had stood at the
tub her dress was splashed and wet, her moccasins also
were sodden.
She grumbled on. "You kimme eat. All day, heap
work, no eat. No good ! No good !"
I had gone back to my duties in the kitchen but I
could hear her flinging herself about in the chair.
"Dirty. Dirty. Heap work. No eat. Buffalo-sol
dier-woman."
I peeped at her through the door-way. Back and
forth before her bulky middle she drew the edge of her
hand, saw-like, in the "hungry" sign.
"Hungry. You kimme eat. She dirty. No good.
But you my friend. You clean."
Again she spat into the stove, wiping with a corner
of her grimy shawl the sweat from her fat face.
MOTHERS
THEY CAME in the middle of the afternoon, an old
bent woman with ragged clothes and hair; her sleeves
hanging open — in the way old people make their
dresses — afforded a glimpse of withered discolored
arms ; and with her a young woman, neatly braided
and shod, a little carmine paint on each rounded cheek.
Entering they went to the baby carriage and bent above
it. The younger woman, holding back with slender
pointed fingers her shawl, leaned down over the baby.
"Is he sick?"
"Yes," I said. I was stupid with weariness. Half
of the night before we had been up with him, and
added to that physical strain there was the constant
wearing of anxiety.
The younger woman interpreted for the old one.
Together they stooped above the child, speaking to
each other in low voices.
I offered them chairs. "Won't you sit down?"
They did so. Absently the old woman held out her
fingers toward the stove. The air was full of the chill
of spring. I talked to them a little but with effort.
They must have noticed.
"And how many children have you, Katherine?"
She looked at me a little heavily. "Three," she said.
It is so seldom that you see an Indian mother sep-
79
8o Teepee Neighbors
arated from her children that I suppose I must have
stared at her in surprise. At any rate she explained.
"Two are dead," she said. The words were spoken
with a faintly breathed sigh.
"Oh!" I said, "Oh!"
No doubt the old woman guessed what we were
saying, for she turned to me, and, half behind the
girl's back, made with her hands certain signs. I
looked hastily at the younger woman. She smiled at
me a little out of the corners of her eyes.
"And one isn't born yet," she went on.
I smiled too, that sweet intimate smile that women
know.
"When?" I asked.
"In June, I guess."
"Then you'll be happy again."
She rocked her arms suddenly in her shawl and a
vague tenderness crept into her eyes. She smiled at
me again.
Then they sat, each on her chair, talking to one an
other occasionally in low tones, their eyes straying over
the pictures that hung on the walls, drifting back to the
baby.
I was alone on the ranch that afternoon and was due
to be so all the evening.
"Your man away?"
"Yes."
Teepee Neighbors 81
She interpreted to the old woman.
"When he come back?"
"About bedtime, I think."
At last I got up and, I am afraid with reluctance,
went to cook them some supper. I had not intended to
do so for just myself ; a little bread would have sufficed
me. But I remembered that it was the hungry time of
the year when money was gone and credit stretched
to the breaking point. I knew they must need my
food.
They sat on the floor to eat. Chairs did very well
for ordinary use but when it was a question of enjoying
the sparse carnal pleasures of life, borrowed customs
could not be allowed to stand in the way of one's
gratification. They devoured the food almost vor
aciously. But very soon the old woman ceased eating.
With her old dark hands she took the meat from her
plate and some of the bread and tied these fragments
of food in a corner of her shawl. The young woman
looked at me uncertainly.
"She say she take that home to her man."
"Oh ! that's all right."
Then it was that I noticed that the old hands,
fumbling with the corner of the shawl, were marred.
The last joint of each little ringer was massing. You
never see young hands thus marked, but the old ones
are often so. It is an ancient custom, that of maiming
82 Teepee Neighbors
one's self in token of mourning, of slashing and sever
ing and scarring one's self.
"She has no children living, has she?"
"No," answered the girl.
"I wonder how many she has had."
According to Indian etiquette one must hint rather
then question.
The young woman spoke to her gently, then looked
up at me. "Nine," she said.
The old woman raised her hands, nine of their fin
gers elevated. Then she spread her hands upon her
lap and stared at them strangely, with who knew what
of pain and recollection in her rheumy eyes.
I shook my head deprecatingly. There seemed to be
nothing adequate to say.
The girl gathered up their empty dishes. "Shall I
put them in the kitchen ?"
"Do, please."
I thought then that they would surely go. I wanted
to be alone. I wanted to look at my baby, to listen to
his breathing; I wanted to hoard the sight of him.
But their presence and their talk continually intervened.
"It's getting late."
They looked at the baby, at the darkening windows,
at the baby again.
"Yes." They smiled at me faintly.
And still they sat.
Teepee Neighbors 83
An owl across the river cried out dismally. I stole
a furtive look at them. The Indians believe that the
owl's cry is that of some vagabond marauding ghost.
To them it is the wail of the dead. They made no
sign, and yet I knew that they had heard.
After that there was silence. Twice the young girl
looked at the clock. I had never previously had any of
my Indian callers stay thus into the night, braving a
return through the haunted dark.
And still they sat.
"Is anyone at your camp?"
"Her man, he's there."
The windows grew quite black. Again the owl
broke forth in his sudden mournful melody. Then
the old woman spoke energetically to the young one.
The girl turned toward me.
"She says, 'ain't you 'fraid here?' "
"Oh ! no," I answered.
"But— alone?"
"No."
"You not 'fraid to stay here till your man come
home?"
I shook my head, smiling. The girl interpreted.
Then they both looked at the baby. With a little
grunt the old woman got up, gathering her shawl about
her. The other followed her example.
"She say, then we go home. We think maybe you
84 Teepee Neighbors
'fraid. Her man, he hungry; there ain't much to eat
over there."
There was no doubt but what they went with re
lief, you could see it in their stride, in the set of their
shoulders. They covered their heads with their shawls
and, one behind the other, they drifted silently away
into the night.
"Goodbye," I called after them.
And they cried back something to me out of the
dark.
I closed the door to sink down beside the carriage.
Then again, forlorn and sweet, from out of the
night, sounded the cry of the owl.
A BOY'S MOTHER
Tap, tap, tap.
I sat up in bed with a jerk. "Wake up !" I whis
pered, "Wake up! There's somebody knocking/' I
shook my husband a little by the arm.
He opened a sleepy eye. "Can't be," he grumbled.
"Why, it's the middle of the night. I never heard of
anybody coming into the ranch at this hour."
Then fumblingly, tentatively, it sounded again: tap.
tap, tap; and ended faintly, as with an apology.
"By Jove!" he cried, and jumped out of bed.
Through the high, scantily-curtained window the
moonlight poured in a flood, half revealing the familiar
objects of the room, a little distorted and meta
morphosed.
He opened the door a crack. No one lived near
our place except the Indians, so we seldom locked up
of a night. Then followed a sound of talking, A
voice as timid, as deprecating, as had been the knocking
answered my husband.
He turned back into the room. "It's one of the boys
from the Government school," he said. "He lives way
off down the river and they're letting him go home
early, though the regular vacation doesn't begin till the
end of the week. He says he stopped at the hot springs
for a swim and his horse got away. He doesn't know
85
86 Teepee Neighbors
very well any of the Indians who live up this way and
asks if we will let him come in here and sleep for the
rest of the night."
"Why, of course. Which boy is it?"
"It's that youngest son of Island Woman's, Herman
Island, I think they call him. He's just a little shaver,
twelve or so, I should say. Is the spare-room bed
made up?"
I answered that it was. He got into some clothes
and disappeared to conduct our nocturnal guest to it.
"That was sensible of him to come here, wasn't it?"
I said when he had returned. "I never knew one of
the boys to do that before, yet I'm sure I always try
to make them feel at home when they drop in."
"He seems a plausible kid, but shy, I couldn't get
much out of him."
We settled down to sleep. But I was struggling
with a thought. Though it seemed an unworthy one
it very much wanted to escape in words.
"Are you asleep? Do you — do you suppose he
could be running away?"
He turned over suddenly. "I thought of that," he
said.
"They've had so much trouble with the big boys
lately that way. I hate to suspect him, but — "
"Oh! well; go to sleep. We can call up the super
intendent in the morning."
Teepee Neighbors 87
"The boy may be gone by the morning. But still we
couldn't get the school in the night, there'd be no one
in the office to answer the phone. If he stays for
breakfast and hangs around and just acts natural I
shall conclude that everything is all right."
''Oh ! I guess it is. Go to sleep before the baby
wakes up again."
Morning disclosed our boy sitting on the flat rock
that served us for a step at our living-room door. He
was imperturbable, and unhurried. "Well, Herman ;
aren't you sleepy after being up so late?"
He lifted his eyes to me. Soft eyes, they were, for
an Indian's, a little wistful, inclined to be pathetic,
very shy, almost furtive.
"No, ma'am." He turned from me with his little
drooping smile.
"Weren't you afraid of ghosts, running around in
the night that way?"
He shot me a shy glance. "A little bit."
"Well, they didn't get you. I don't believe they
bother good boys. Are they letting you go home early
because you live so far away? How far is it to your
place? Forty miles? Fifty?"
"It's a long way. I don't know how far. My mother,
she sick. I just hear it yesterday."
"Oh ! I'm so sorry. But where do you think your
horse can be?"
88 Teepee Neighbors
He pointed to the low hills opposite. "I guess he
joined some -bunch over there. I find him easy, I
think. I know his tracks."
Inside the house the baby whimpered a little. I
went to her. "Herman, would you mind holding her
for me while I get breakfast? I can do it so much
quicker if you will."
He settled himself more solidly upon the door step,
lifted a face lit by a young, sweet smile. "I hold her,"
he said. Then, shyly, "My mother, she got a baby, a
boy though."
I brought the baby, tied up Indian way in her little
blanket, and handed her down to him. He stretched
up his short, boy's arms to receive her. The clothes
he wore were of the regulation government variety;
iron grey, patched, not too clean, misfits. The coat
and shoes were two sizes too big for him.
While I cooked, and set my table, I could hear great
conversation in progress on the door-step, gurgles and
little squeals, interspersed with soft encouraging words.
No one seemed to be in a hurry for the meal.
Breakfast over, I supplied Herman with a stereo
scope and pictures while I took the baby into the
kitchen to give her her bath. Presently the boy fol
lowed me ; the splashing and laughing allured him. He
crept in at the door, a little drooping, altogether shy,
Teepee Neighbors 89
almost furtive. He had no eyes for me. His sweet
winning smile was turned toward the baby.
"How big is your mother's baby?"
He smiled reminiscently. " 'Bout like this one, I
guess." He looked up at me suddenly. "He got teeth,"
he said, "two."
We laughed together over the teeth. I wouldn't for
the world have called up the superintendent.
After a while: "Well, I guess now I go look for
my horse." He got his hat, sidled toward the door.
At the last moment he smiled back at me shyly.
"Thank you," he said.
"Oh! You're welcome. It was very sensible and
nice of you to have come. I do want you boys to feel
that we are always your friends." I was waxing sen
timental. "Goodbye, and be sure you stop again."
I watched him, in his ungainly clothes, trudging
toward the lower gate.
"I wonder ..." I said, "I wonder . . ." The baby
had fallen asleep on my lap. "That's not at all the
direction he said the horse was in."
The next time I saw the superintendent was at the
end of the short vacation. What he said to me caused
me to cease wondering suddenly. I began to tell him
the story of our nocturnal visitor. Half way through
he wheeled about on me: "Why on earth didn't you
call me up?"
90 Teepee Neighbors
I looked at him blankly. Could the thing that he
implied be true? I remembered those wistful eyes,
that sweet, sweet smile, the short, boy's arms held up
for my baby. I remembered how little and mis formed
he had looked trudging toward the wrong gate. "It
was Herman Island," I ventured.
"Herman Island! Oh, I know! Pulled out that
night somehow. Must have gone by the window, for
the dormitory door was locked. Hadn't any more
horse than a jack-rabbit. And the nerve of him to
stop at your place ! Knew well enough no one would
look for him there. The other children, the whole two
hundred of them, are back from their holiday, but we
can't find hide nor hair of him."
"He said his mother was sick."
"Likely enough. She's a frail sort of woman.
Sometimes when he runs away she brings him back.
Oh yes! he's a chronic case; gone half the time. This
trip we've had half the Indian police out after him,
but nobody seems able to locate him. Shucks ! I wish
you'd called me up."
"I — I really couldn't have anyway, he was so sweet
with the baby."
He withered me with a look. "You'd have saved
him a licking, for I tell you I won't do a thing to that
boy when I get him back, not a blame thing—"
Teepee Neighbors 91
"Such a little boy, and such glib lying. My good
ness !" said I.
"That's why we've got him here at the government
school. They couldn't hold him at all at the Mission.
We don't seem to be doing much better."
A few weeks after that I drove in to the school
grounds. The boys, drawn up in a long row graduated
according to size, were standing to salute the flag,
which at sunset was being hauled down. I stopped
to watch them. At the end of the row, quite out of
his proper place, stood a boy of twelve or so, his coat
and boots several sizes too big for him. The line
wavered and broke, the boys scattering in all direc
tions ; only the misfit boy walked alone. He halted
strangely in his gait.
The superintendent came out to me. "How d'ye do?"
he said. He pointed to the slow-moving boy. "See
Herman? Yes, we got him back. It took a couple of
policemen and the agent in person to do it. I licked
him till — well, I licked him good and proper, I can
tell you. But — do you know — we caught him that very
night sliding down the rain pipe. Oh ! He beats any
thing I ever saw. That's why I put the ball and chain
on him."
"The— what?"
"Ball and chain. I suppose that if an inspector
caught him with it he'd give me something to remem-
92 Teepee Neighbors
her, but by Jove ! the agent's always after me for not
holding that boy. What am I to do? I wish some of
those cocky inspectors would stay awhile and tackle
one or two of our chronic cases. They just come and
take a look and slip away to some other field. We
have to do all the devising." He turned toward the
retreating figure of the boy. "Hey there, Herman!
You hurry up and get those chores done, d'ye hear?"
The slow-moving boy lifted patient unsmiling eyes,
dropped them again, toiled haltingly on his way.
"How long shall you keep it on him?"
"Oh ! till I think he's reformed. But you can't tell.
He's a sure slick one."
The next time I went to the school I asked for the
boy. The superintendent shot me a side-long look.
"Gone," he said. "That ball and chain business got
on my nerves — "
"It's been on mine !" I interrupted.
" — so I took it off. I declare I hadn't got it stowed
away yet before he was gone." He looked at me whim
sically. Then we both laughed.
"What next?" asked I.
He shook his head. "A long vacation for Herman, I
guess. I think I'm at the end of my resources."
It was three days later that wishing to send a tele
gram I drove to the school to use their phone, which
connected directly with the telegraph office in the sta-
Teepee Neighbors 93
tion at Rawdon. Our phone at the ranch was only
a local one. There was a sound of talking in the office.
I went in tentatively.
The superintendent sat behind his desk. In front
of him on a straight-backed chair was an Indian wom
an. She was thin to emaciation. Her lean, lined face
wore an harassed expression. Her bony hands held
together the folds of her blanket which supported the
weight of a sleeping child. Her moccasins, made
obviously of the denim of old overalls, were ragged;
her hair straggled untidily. Backed against the wall,
hat in hand, head drooped, stood the listless figure of
a boy. The superintendent was speaking. I paused,
listening. With a ruler he tapped his desk, emphasizing
his words.
"No more lickings, no more lock-up, no more ball
and chain. But, understand, the police of this res
ervation have something better to do than to hunt up
the same runaway all the time. Herman, I shall keep
you in school and just as free as the other boys. But
this I say to you, the next time you go, I shall send
directly down to your camp, and your mother," he
made a little gesture toward her, "shall go straight to
the lock-up. Your mother, you understand, not you . . "
The boy jerked suddenly, lifted a startled face.
"Interpret," commanded the superintendent inex
orably. "Tell her just what I said."
94 Teepee Neighbors
Without looking at her the boy spoke ; his voice, pro
nouncing the guttural Indian words, was low and halt
ing.
The woman made a faint inarticulate cry, looked
quickly from the boy to the superintendent, and then
back to the boy. She spoke to him suddenly in art
eager voice. He shook his head.
"Does she understand?"
"Yes, sir !"
"Well, you may go. That's all."
The boy made a sign to his mother and turning sidled
out of the office. The woman gathered her shawl more
securely about the baby and followed him.
When I finished my telephoning and went out, I saw
them sitting side by side and close together on the edge
of the board walk. As I passed them she got up.
Stooping, she lifted the sleeping baby to her back and
balanced it there, its little face against her neck, while,
with hands extended behind her back, she drew her
shawl up over it and gathered the folds tight across
her breast. She bent down still further and kissed the
bowed face of the boy. Then, rising, she walked away
from him, striding a little with her long, flat-footed
steps. He sat where she had left him upon the edge
of the walk, a huddled bunch of misfitting clothes.
"And did he ever run away again?" It was the next
Teepee Neighbors 95
year at the school Christmas tree that I asked the ques
tion.
The superintendent beamed upon me. "Never!" he
said.
Santa Claus, of orthodox shape and costume, stand
ing on a chair, reached down from the tree a big bundle
and handed it to the superintendent, who turned it over
to read the name on it. Holding it high, and with a
smile on his not unkindly face, he called out over the
hubbub of murmuring children and crackling peanut
shells : "Come up and get your stuff, Herman Island."
THE DEAD BIRD
I STOPPED the horses before the Government school,
for I always found it hard when the children were out
in front playing, to drive callously by. The girls — for
I was on their side — in their blue "hickory" aprons
sprawled or sauntered over the short alfalfa lawn, or
from the edge of the terrace or the board walk dangled
feet shod with clumsy "Government" boots. Although
there were many of them — over a hundred I should
say — they made but little noise. Like fawns slipping
amongst tree trunks, they frolicked, something a trifle
furtive always in the eyes of the boldest of them, a
shred of silence forever enfolding them. They walked,
even the very youngest ones, with shoulders and heads
a little bent, as though constantly they supported in
visible shawls. Their steps were long and a little
shambling, as are the steps of those who go habitually
without heels, and who are never forced to hurry.
Their aspect implied a sense of endurance, of reserve,
of patience invulnerable. They walked — even the big
girls who spoke fluent English and had put in their ten
or twelve years at the school — but most of all they
played, as do children in a familiar house made sudden
ly strange by mourning. They frolicked indeed, but
with just a touch of inadvertence, as do those who take
what amusement they can find rather than what they
would have chosen. In fine, they seemed to be what
Teepee Neighbors 97
they were, the children of an ancient, enduring over
powered people. One lifted one's eyes from them to
the chain of mountains walling the western sky and felt
that some way those mountains and these children,
despite the Government blue, were of kindred stock;
that the roots of the one reached down, groping, to
ward the roots of the other; and that only one's self
in the store-bought buggy and the clothes that sug
gested remote civilization was an alien. One was
overpowered suddenly and strangely by the sense of
being an outsider in one's own land.
Then there came from some place out of sight around
the corner of a building, a drawling sound of singing.
An old familiar hymn — though one had to force one's
self to recognize it — rose and fell in sing-song, toneless
voices ; garbled words, uncertain rhythm.
To the ring of shy and smiling faces vaguely en
circling me I turned.
"Why, what's that?"
The smiles deepened, the eyes were upon me atten
tively. But — it is difficult to speak out before many
listeners. No one seemed able to overcome her diffi
dence.
Then a little one — Bridget, she was inappropriately
called — ceased suddenly from scrutinizing the worn
boot on her twisting foot. She slipped down from off
the terrace wall. Like a leaf impelled by a gentle
98 Teepee Neighbors
current she drifted to my side. She lifted one foot
up on the step of the buggy, raised herself till her eyes
were almost on a level with mine, found a hold for her
other foot, slipped a small chapped hand into mine.
"Well, Bridget," said I, encouragingly.
The little brown face was tilted downward, away
from too close scrutiny. The sound of her voice, deep
for a child's, and very soft, crept to me as might have
come, trembling yet allured, some half -wild thing that
one had fondled.
"It's a funeral. Them girls"— her child's lips,
pouted, indicated in the Indian way the direction
whence came the singing — "they bury a bird. They
find little bird out here, dead, all draw up ; his hands,
this way." The small chapped brown hands twisted
and distended themselves to imitate the piti fulness of
the dead claws. "Bessie, she take her doll rags, she
wrap him all up. Then Miss Jones, she give them box.
They put box in that hole. Now they have funeral."
All the furtive smiling eyes of the circle were upon
me, and from me strayed to the side of the building
where the group of little, blue-clad figures enjoyed the
expression of their mock grief.
In a corner of the steps, her back against the railing,
her eyes upon her lap, so little that she was more than
half obscured by the smiling, "hickory" dressed circle,
Teepee Neighbors 99
sat a small thin girl; a limp bit of self-absorbed child
hood.
"Who's that little thing?"
A big girl shambled over to her and gathered her
up in her arms.
"This is a new little girl. Come and shake hands,
Nancy, will you? This is High Eagle's wife's little
girl. I guess you know her mother.
"But what ails her?"
The big girl looked down at the bent black head
with its tight, ribbon-tied braid, at the little figure
pressing against her side.
"She's homesick, I guess," she said.
She brought the child to me. Lifting one apathetic
hand in hers she extended it to me. I shook it gently.
The child's big brooding eyes, strangely sombre in
their depths, were for just an instant of awakened
interest raised to me. Then they drooped back to a
wan scrutiny of the ground.
"Did you ever see such big eyes ! And she's gettin'
so thin — " The little bird claw of a hand still rested
inertly in mine — "I guess maybe they'll let her stay
home after Christmas. She's not six yet and she
wouldn't be here only her mother's so poor. The agent
thought it was best to put her in the school. All the
people say her folks don't never have enough to eat."
ioo Teepee Neighbors
"But you said she was fat when she came and she's
thin enough now."
"Yes," said the big girl, and she sighed a little, feel
ing suddenly, I suppose, though vaguely, the burden
that life had laid upon her race. Or was it only, that
she was remembering the two or three little flames that
each year in September came brightly to the school,
but before the year's close were snuffed out? Yet
none of us who cared for them was ever able to re
mark the blowing of any wind.
The big girl set the child down. The little drooping
figure walked slowly back to her place by the railing
of the steps.
"Does she cough?"
"No, ma'am; but they give her cod liver oil. She
don't like it. I seen her cry last night when she had to
swallow it — The cook she fixes eggs for her."
After that I acquired the habit of seeking her out
with my eyes at least, every time I came to the school ;
she was much too shy to allow of more direct ap
proach. She was almost always to be found in some
sunny, sheltered corner, her little head bent, her eyes
upon her lap. I think I never once saw her playing.
Then I missed her; even before Christmas it was,
when she was to have gone home to her mother.
I stopped the buggy by the terrace wall. The blue-
clad figures were stirring about at their quiet play.
Teepee Neighbors 101
Bridget came and climbing up to the step of the buggy
thrust her little chapped hand into mine.
"Where's the little homesick one?" I asked.
She looked up at me for an instant with her deprecat
ing smile. Then her face went suddenly grave.
"Nancy?"
"Yes."
"She's— dead."
"Oh!" I cried, "but she never coughed—"
"No, she never cough. She just die. Two days
ago her mother come for her. She die in the wagon,
they say. I guess you hear them cryin' when they drive
down past your place."
And the little chapped hand still in mine, I looked
out across the irrigated, parti-colored valley to the
mountains walling the western sky.
A VENTURE IN HARD HEARTS
ALWAYS FROM the time I left the reservation with him
except once — which time is the occasion of the telling
of this present anecdote, — he moved in a sort of bliss
ful exaltation. In his timid, repressed way he was as
much beside himself as is a new lover or an artist in
the throes of creation. A train even he had never
seen until the one which was to take us to Denver
thundered dustily up to our little Sub-Agency station,
and he, crowding behind me, clung with frantic hands
to my skirts. But when I had hoisted him up the high
step and we had got fairly seated and were off, his
delight knew no bounds; his dark eyes twinkled and
gleamed, his young mouth was quite awry with the
effort to repress the joy that was proving itself ir
repressible. He snuggled beside me in the seat, peer
ing out of the smoke-grimed window, bracing himself
involuntarily when there seemed to be sudden dips and
rises in the road ahead of us, and then laughing softly
at himself as the train sped level and serene across
them.
"Who's that?" he would whisper as some new
person whose appearance caught his eye, came in at the
door. And he was astonished, even incredulous, when
I failed to be able to answer so simple a question. At
home on the reservation we of course knew everyone,
at least by name and appearance.
102
Teepee Neighbors 103
Before he had left the Government boarding school
the little boys' matron who supplied him from her
store with a new tam-o'-shanter for his travels, had
carefully directed him as to the wearing of it. "This
bow," she had explained, "must always go on the left
side." At home his old and much-punctured sombrero
with its beaded hat band went on any way. But now,
no matter what our hurry at twenty-minute eating
stations, nor with what breathless haste we followed
the rush of passengers toward a panting train, we must
needs pause till we had found the bow and were quite
sure which side was the left one and then got the two
in conventional conjunction.
To reach Denver the exigencies of train connections
required us to stay over night in Cheyenne. We took
a room in a nearby hotel. Going to the station in the
morning my little boy looked back over his shoulder
with glowing eyes.
"My!" he cried. "Wasn't that strange man good to
let us sleep in his house?"
Once in the train he fingered our tickets, eyeing them
carefully.
"How much did you have to pay for them?" he
asked.
I told him; the amount as I remember it was well
over ten dollars.
He looked at me with eyes of startled unbelief.
IO4 Teepee Neighbors
"Why, you shouldn't have given all that money for
them! They are only pieces of paper/'
He was indeed very much impressed by the fact that
everything we did required money; our food, trolleys,
busses, everything. At home we seldom handled cash.
The trader and the butcher sent in monthly bills and
we paid by cheque, if we were able, or didn't pay, in
the reverse case, and went on buying "on jaw bone,"
as the saying goes in Wyoming. Actual money was
seldom visible.
But the arrival in Denver was I think the happiest
moment of all. Night had already fallen. The streets
were garish with lights, grouped, single or in designs,
marvellous set-pieces that moved by magic power.
There was a great clattering and crying of voices about
the station, a pleasant welcoming turmoil. Different,
indeed, all this to the arrival of trains at our little frame
stations set solitary in the midst of the prairie night,
their silence scarcely broken by the slipping away of
the train, or their darkness cloven by the station-
master's single lantern.
The child almost forgot his timidity, so great was his
elation.
"Is it fairyland?" he whispered against my elbow.
And the bus that bore us jolting to the hotel he felt
sure must be a second Cinderella's coach. He even
spoke in quite a brave, loud voice so that our fellow-
Teepee Neighbors 105
passengers, the usual blase travelling men, became
suddenly aware of him and eyed him from the height
of their lofty indifference, taking note of his ill-fitting
Government clothes as well as of his eager eyes set in
the smooth childish face.
One of them even asked : "This the little Injun's
first trip?"
And while I assented the boy, becoming suddenly
self-conscious again, shrank back under the shadow
of my arm.
At the hotel he was a little disturbed by the elevator ;
the alligator, he called it. And, suddenly recollecting :
"Shall we have to pay to ride in that too?" he
demanded.
On his account — I had brought him to a doctor for
special treatment — our stay bade fair to become rather
unexpectedly extended, too much so at any rate to
allow of our remaining in the hotel. So the child and
I went forth to seek lodgings. Our search proved to
be a weary one. We progressed languidly from door
to door, from address to address.
At last a certain house opened to us, disclosing in
its doorway a kindly- faced woman.
"You have a sign out advertising rooms to rent."
"Yes, ma'am. But the lady of the house ain't in
just now."
io6 Teepee Neighbors
"Do you happen to know anything about the
rooms ?"
"Yes ma'am but, — excuse me, is that your little
boy?"
I said "yes," and as I spoke my eyes went out to
meet those of the little boy who was not mine.
"Well, it ain't no use for you to ask about the rooms
then. I'm real sorry about it but she won't take no
children in here."
So we turned and went together down the steps. I
confess that I felt dashed. I had lived so long
amongst a people to whom a child represented the
chief blessing of life that I had forgotten the "white,"
more civilized, attitude toward them.
Beside me the lad walked, his head lowered, shrunk
into himself, even withdrawn somewhat from my pro
tecting shadow. It was as though the better to bear
this new-found burden he walked alone.
We gave up our search for that day and boarded a
car for home. As for myself other thoughts soon
drove that of our rebuff from my mind. This seemed
to be true also of the child. Beside us in the car sat
a party of Swedes talking volubly in their own tongue.
The boy listened to them, all attention. He eyed them
up and down carefully and appraisingly, his dark gaze
especially on their blonde heads, their pale eyes. Then
he turned his eager little face up to mine.
Teepee Neighbors 107
"They don't look like Indians but — what kind of
Indian are they talking?"
It never, I suppose, had occurred to him that the
whites could have more than the one language. And
even as I explained, laughing at him the while, I re
membered that I had met many of the dominant race
who firmly believed that all tribes of Indians use a
common speech.
That night some friends came in to see us and we
recounted to them our adventures of the day. I did
the talking, for when several persons were present he
became far too timid to undertake such an act of
temerity. He joined in the conversation only with shy,
acquiescing smiles or a "Yes, ma'am," whispered
tremulously and under great pressure.
I spoke finally of our last enquiry and the subsequent
rebuff. Then I felt him straighten himself beside me ;
his eyes grew hard, his mouth stiffened.
"What do you think she said to us?" he cried out,
his timidity lost at last in the greater indignation.
"She told us they didn't like children! They didn't
want them ! They didn't want me !"
My friends, who of course did not realize the Indian
point of view, could not feel all the enormity of the
statement. They murmured polite sympathy.
The child searching them with those eyes grown
io8 Teepee Neighbors
suddenly hard, sighed at length, drooped a little, nestled
against my arm.
Subsequently, from his cot drawn close to mine, and
several times repeated during the night, I heard a long
trembling sigh. Even in his dreams, it seemed, the
disturbing discovery was pursuing him that life was
turning out to be not just what he had always thought
it. He was indeed beginning the toil of the long in
evitable years of unlearning.
THE THROWN-AWAY BABY
SAY that he is getting better, and some that
he is worse, and one old woman even told me that he
was dead. She talked with signs, but I am sure that is
what she meant."
"Who is dead?" asked the girl. She hesitated before
she spoke, dropped her eyes, holding them resolutely
down. She was obviously evading my implied question.
"You know very well, my dear; the Gros Ventre
boy who was shot in that drinking scrape somewhere
around Lost Wells. The Agency doctor saw him
and reported that the bullet was still in him. But the
medicine woman claims that she had really got it out."
"She did take it out." The black eyes challenged
me steadily. "My father he seen her do it."
"But really the doctor ought to know."
"It was all nasty from the wound."
"She played a trick on you. Don't talk to me!
Anybody who claims to be able to change rocks into
potatoes . . . And didn't she tell the Indians plainly at
the Fourth of July celebration that she was in league
with the devil and that it was his power — his 'medicine'
— that helped her?"
"But she probe for it. There were a lot of 'em there.
They seen it, all of 'em."
"Probed with what?"
109
no Teepee Neighbors
"A willow stick."
"Oh! Oh!"
"At first he get better, but after a while, worse."
"After the probing. Naturally!"
The girl relaxed her vigilant expression ; she laughed,
even. "I guess so."
"And is he really dead?"
She nodded. "That's what they say. The whole
camp's moved."
"The way they move when any one dies?"
"Yes."
"That old devil! She has just as good as killed
him."
"Oh, my!"
"With a willow stick. Ah! the poor young man!"
The girl put up her hands and smoothed her sleek
hair from its straight, red-painted parting to the tips
of her buckskin-tied braids.
"If her medicine is so strong why didn't she cure
him?"
She peered up at me from under her hands. "The
Indians say everybody she takes care of dies."
"And yet they always have her !"
She dropped her eyes, then shot me a look from
under her lids. "I guess they're afraid of her," she
said.
"And well they may be if those are her methods."
Teepee Neighbors in
She gave a quick little sigh. "You know her girl?"
"Yes."
"She just got married."
"I know."
"That's a white girl."
"So they say. She always paints so much you can't
tell it though."
"And she always say she 'Rapahoe. She gets
awful mad if you call her white."
"She is white though, isn't she?"
"Oh yes! But even that old woman won't let on.
She always tellin' that girl, 'A box, that's your
mother/ "
"And that old woman brought her up from a little
brand-new baby?"
"Just born."
"Do tell me the story."
"That happened eighteen years ago, I guess. She
little bit younger than me. The Indians they all camp
'round the Agency that time. It's winter, and the creek
is froze so they have to go for water up above that
bend where there's a hole in the ice. Every little while
they passin' up and down that lane behind the Agency
houses. Then one day there's a big new box out there
close to the fence. Just after they first see it there
my mother-in-law she walkin' up along the road to get
water."
112 Teepee Neighbors
"Which woman is that?"
"Don't you know? She's the one with them yellow
eyes. That's what they calls her in the camps, 'Yellow
Eyes.' She's got a real name beside that though. 'Many
Horses/ I guess you'd call it."
"I know her, I think."
"Well, when she got to that box she stop and look
down — then she pretty near drop her bucket. First
she jump back, then she bend down again. She lean
'way over and she look, and look. Then she turn
'round quick — she don't go on for the water — she just
run back to camp. My grandmother and some of
them women they see how funny she actin' and they
kind o' go out to meet her. 'What's the matter? What's
the matter, Yellow Eyes?' they say. Then she begin
to cry, and she point to that box, and she say, 'It's in
that box. It's in that box.' And all them women cry
out, 'What, Yellow Eyes? What?' 'Somethin' pale,'
she say, 'Way down in a corner.' Then she look up
at them all. 'It's a white baby, that's what it is. And
it ain't even got rags 'round it.' She have to stop to
wipe her tears. 'But is it 'live?' 'Yes. I seen it movin'
and I hear it making a little noise?' And the women
all cry, 'Ah-ee ! Ah-ee ! What shall we do ? A new
born baby and — thrown away ! A white baby !' Then
they all begin rememberin'. 'Must belong to that girl
livin' in the second house. We all see she going to
Teepee Neighbors . 113
born a baby — and she always wrappin' herself up and
hidin' — We never noticed no man 'round. — Her old
mother she looked mean. Guess it was the mother
throw that baby away.' Then they all say, 'Ah-ee!
Ah-ee!' some more, and them that's cryin' they wipe
their eyes with their hands.
"Then that old medicine woman come — only then
she wasn't old nor a medicine woman — and she say,
'Why, what's the matter?' Everybody begin talkin' at
once, and pointin' to that box. She laugh, and she put
her hands over her ears 'cause she can't hear them, all
talkin' so loud and fast. But she see the box, and she
think if she go over and look in it then maybe she
understand. She walk that way takin' long steps, and
all the women followin' long after her. She stoop
down too — then she jump back and she cry out. Next
she dive down again and she pick up that little naked,
thrown-away baby in her hands, and she hold it right
up in the sunlight, and she turn it all 'round and look
at it every way. Then she raise her eyes to them
Agency houses, and her face get mighty mean; she
turn toward them other women, and last she look back
at the baby. 'A little girl/ she say. Then she speak to
her. 'Well, baby/ she say, 'this box I guess must be
your mother, only she don't seem to take care of you.
And these women/ she say, and she look them all up
and down, hard-like, 'they let you lie shiverin' and
ii4 Teepee Neighbors
freezin' here while they cryin' like a pack o* coyotes.
I guess I be a better mother to you than that fool box
or them fool coyotes/ She put that baby inside her
shawl, against her breast, and real slow and smilin' she
walk past them women, never turnin' her eyes, and
right back to the camp."
"And what did she do?" I cried. "Where did she
get milk for it? She had no cow, I suppose, and no
money with which to buy canned milk at the store."
Out of the corners of her eyes the girl smiled at me
cannily. "Oh ! She just go where there bese mothers
with babies," she said.
"And it lived !"
"It's nearly as old as me."
"I heard that long afterwards the real mother tried
to get it back."
"Yes, she come to that old woman's tent, she even
bring an interpreter with her. When that medicine
woman see that white mother comin' she lift up the
back of the tent, and she push that little girl under it.
'Go down to the willows/ she say, 'and hide. There's
some bad folks comin'. Maybe they wantin' to steal
you. Don't you come back till I call you/
"Well, that white woman come in and the first thing
she do she look all 'round that tent, quick. The med
icine woman she pull her shawl up over her head so
Teepee Neighbors 115
her face way back in the shadow and she never take
her eyes off that mother.
"Then that woman she make herself a little bit stiff,
and she say right out, 'They tell me you got my daugh
ter.' That old woman she like the straight way that
woman speak, but you see she love that thrown-away
baby so much she awful 'fraid; she just shakin' inside.
'I got a daughter myself. But I not know you got one/
The mother she look at her hard, hard. 'No/ that med
icine woman say. 'Seven years ago I find my daughter,
a little thrown-away baby, in a box. She only new
born, but I don't see no other mother for her but just
that box. Somebody got a bad heart/ she say, 'can
throw away little live babies, just like blind puppies, or
trash/ That mother she put her hands up and she
cover her face. 'That's a white baby/ the foster-mother
say, 'but Indian hands washed her, Indian womans sew
for her, Indian mothers' milk make her fat, Indian love
keep her 'live. That little girl got white skin, but her
heart — that's Indian heart/ Then she stop 'cause that
mother kind o' groan, then take her hands down from
her face and stare and stare at that Indian woman.
That woman stare at her. Afterwhile that mother she
turn 'round and she put out her hand and begin feelin'
for that door-flap, same as if she be blind. Once like
she going to speak she look back over her shoulder;
then that old woman see that she cryinV
THE CAPTURE OF EDMUND
GOES-IN-LODGE
THEY RANGED themselves in an awkward, bashful row,
three half -grown boys, their hats in their fumbling
fingers. Being Indian boys they stood in silence, words
struggling with their shyness for utterance. The dis
ciplinarian, his pen still in his hand, half turned in his
chair and looked at them over his glasses. "Well?" he
said.
The middle boy, the one who showed in his skin and
his hair an admixture of "white" blood, spoke : "We
'Rapahoe boys are 'shamed of Edmund Goes-in-
Lodge." His voice was low and deep, the intonation
peculiar.
"And well you may be!" cried the disciplinarian
cordially. "I'm ashamed of h'im myself."
He waited for them to speak again, but they stood
mute. "Well?" he interrogated again.
"Mr. Knight, us boys, we wanted to ask you if you'd
let us be absent from Sunday School and dinner today.
We goin' down there to his father's and we goin' cap
ture him and bring him back. We got a fine plan, Mr.
Knight."
The disciplinarian laughed; he leaned back in his
chair and enjoyed the joke to the full. Then he laid
down his pen — and laughed again.
116
Teepee Neighbors 117
"Capture Edmund, — the worst boy in the school —
you three kids ! With all the Indian police after him
and his old warchief of a father doing all he can to get
him back, or claiming to, anyway. Heap crazy, every
one of you!" and he laughed again.
The boys grinned and in laughing forgot something
of their shyness.
"Honest, Mr. Knight, we can do it. We've got a
fine plan, sure we have."
"Well, let's have the fine plan."
"We goin' down to Goes-in-Lodge's this mornin' on
our ponies. Me and Roy's goin' to ride together, and
Chester's got his big black horse. We goin' tell
Edmund's mother we runnin' away too, then she tell
us where's Edmund. Then we'll tell him, 'Come on,
let's go up in them Bad Lands across the river and play
awhile/ We'll say, 'Don't bring no horse; you just
jump on that black one behind Chester.' We'll have
a good, new raw-hide rope with us; Chester he's got
one. Well, out there we'll play awhile, have lots of
fun; all the time we'll be workin' up the creek to the
next ford above Goes-in-Lodge's, the one at Black
Man's place, I guess you know it. Then when we get
near to that ford with the hills between us and his
father's place we'll begin to say 'We're gettin' hungry/
and 'Let's go back and get some dinner/ Then Chester,
he'll say to Edmund, 'You jump on my horse first.
n8 Teepee Neighbors
You sit in the saddle and I'll ride behind you.' Edmund,
he'll like ridin' that way, he'll jump up quick. Then
Chester'll get up behind him. Me and Roy we'll have
our horse right close, but we won't get on him. We'll
be kind o' foolin' with the cinch. We'll have the rope
tied on our saddle, not on Chester's, and while I'm
pullin' up the cinch, Roy'll be untying the rope. Then
when Chester has got up behind Edmund he'll give a
kind of yell and he'll grab Edmund right around his
arms and he'll hold him tight. Chester, he ain't so tall
but he's awful strong, he can sure hold Edmund for a
while anyhow. Then me and Roy'll come quick with
the rope and we'll tie Edmund's feet together under
the horse and we'll wind the rope around him to hold
his arms down. Then Chester, he'll reach around him
and he'll take the lines. We'll get on our horse, Roy
and me, — and we'll be up here by five o'clock."
"By all the powers!" gasped the astonished dis
ciplinarian. "W^ho on earth ever thought all that up?
Why, it's wonderful!"
"All of us, I guess," said Jack, but he grinned with
suspicious glee.
"Boys," the man began, seriously now, "you never
could put it through. Edmund would see through you,
and he's mighty mean when he gets mad. I sure want
to give him the licking that's coming to him, but I don't
want him to get the chance to try the licking on you
Teepee Neighbors 119
first. I know Chester is strong, but I doubt if he could
hold him. Besides that, if that old Sioux mother of
his ever got her hands on any of you, there wouldn't
be enough left to bring you home, and 'that's no sheep-
herder's dream!' I remember the time, and so do you,
that she came here and pulled a knife on the agent
because her girl was sick in the school here and he
wouldn't let her take her home. You're three of my
best boys and I sure couldn't afford to lose you."
They all grinned this time. Again the spokesman
took up his plea.
"Mr. Knight, if we don't get that boy there can't no
police man never get him. His father and brothers
has got the best horses among the 'Rapahoes. His
mother watches for him and tells him when she sees
anybody comin' down the road. Then he just goes out
into the Bad Lands and hides out. He's got a cache up
there. He could stay for weeks. Everybody's 'fraid
o' him, he's so mean, and 'fraid o' his mother, too. His
father he tells him to come back to school but his
mother, she helps him so he don't have to. Mr. Knight,
you know in the beginnin' of the year the Agent told us
if we'd stop the runnin' away in this school we could all
keep our ponies in the school pasture and be free to go
home Saturday and Sunday afternoons. We sure
don't want him to take that privilege away from us on
account o' Edmund. He said he would if the boys
I2O Teepee Neighbors
began runnin' away again, and Edmund he's the first
boy to go. We're 'shamed of him. You let us try to
bring him back. You'll see ; we can."
"By Jove," said the disciplinarian, "You're a lot of
good sports, every one of you. Go ahead and get him.
You're excused from everything till you show up
again. But mind," he said, and his eyes twinkled at
them, "don't you three run away on me !"
They were gone on the instant, down through the
basement to pick up saddle blankets, bridles and rope ;
their saddles were lying out in the pasture. Boys of
all sizes to eighteen years of age, were scattered about
shining their Sunday shoes, giving their hair an extra
wet dab, assisting little ones, new from the camps, in
the difficulties of donning Sunday clothes, urging the
wearing of the shirt inside the trousers, so contrary to
the preconceived Indian idea of the fitness of things.
Envious eyes, nudges, jokes, followed the exit of the
three conspirators.
They caught their horses and started in the manner
planned, riding at a good lope down the valley road.
The prairies were gay with flowers, growing between
the grey sage bushes ; gentian, lark-spur, Indian paint
brush ; a dozen different parti-colored varieties. Down
the dusty road the boys passed, free in the dazzling
sunshine. Their manner, their talk were quiet enough,
most of their energy, however, was centered in their
Teepee Neighbors 121
eyes and ears, in that power of observation so marked
in their race. They swung lightly to the horses' pace
with strong easy muscles. The feeling of loyalty to
the school, to their tribe's best welfare, was strong in
them as was also a boy's love of mischief.
A couple of miles below the school at Squaw Greek,
a little tributary of the river, where they pulled up to
let their horses drink, a contretemps befell them.
An old gnarled man on a pinto pony rode up to them
from the opposite direction and accosted them. He
spoke quietly enough in the deep Indian voice with its
almost monotonous intonation.
"Are you three running away?"
It was Jack sitting in front on the smaller pony, who
answered. By common consent the others waited for
him to take the lead. He humped himself a little as
he sat on the pony, his head low, so that the brim of
his sombrero shielded his face from the old man's eyes ;
he grumbled out a sort of acquiescence.
Rock knew his duty. A big metal star inscribed in
plain letters "Indian Police" did not rest for nothing
on his breast, neither was it for nothing that he
received from a munificent Government the sum of
ten dollars a month for the keep of himself and the
horse he must furnish, the time he must give, the cour
age he must not fail in, the risk, even to life itself, he
122 Teepee Neighbors
must frequently assume. An old but useful six-shooter
sagged in its holster on his hip.
"You must go back," he said quietly.
"We're going down to Edmund Goes-in-Lodge's,"
said the shameless Jack.
The man sized up the three with his old keen
eyes. "Edmund's no good," he said. "Better go
quietly back to school. Turn around now. Go on."
No one moved. There was silence. The horses
splashed in the shallow ford. Chester's big black
pulled at the lush grass along the edge, the sound of his
crunching teeth and jingling bit filled the pause. The
leather of the old Indian's saddle creaked with his
horse's breathing.
"Singing Rock" — Jack, who of course spoke in his
Indian tongue, used the full name — "we can't go back ;
we won't go without Edmund. If you take us back,
Mr. Knight will beat us. Besides that you know that no
one will ever will be able to catch Edmund. But you
come with us down to Goes-in-Lodge's ; we'll go in
ahead of you and we'll talk to Edmund and get him
to ride with us a ways up the road. You can hide
yourself some where and when you hear us, you can
just come out and pull your gun on him. Then we'll
all go back with you. We say we'll do this and we'll
surely do it, but we can't go back to the school without
Edmund."
Teepee Neighbors 123
Whence the boy evolved this plan, why indeed he
evolved it at all, he would have been the last one able
to explain it to you. It was as natural for him to meet
strategy foiled with new strategy, as for the beaver to
build his symmetrical dam, the bird his balanced nest.
The old man surveyed the three critically. Here
was a chance, as it seemed to him, to do double duty
and with assistance at that. The boys, as he knew, did
not exaggerate when they said that the police were
quite unable to cope with the problem of Edmund's
capture. Well, they were good boys, as had been their
fathers before them, his friends ; he would trust them.
"Come on/' he said, and wheeled his pony about.
They splashed out of the ford behind him.
Before they reached Goes-in-Lodge's — a good ten
miles down the valley — they left the old police man
safely sheltered from sight by the bulk of a point of
land that at a certain place crowded the road to one
side against a wire fence.
As they approached the little huddled cabins, tents
and corrals, that made up Goes-in-Lodge's camp, the
conspirators saw a figure cross, from the inside, the
little window of the principal cabin; Edmund's
mother reconnoitering, no doubt. The boys jumped
from their horses and went into the house. Only
Goes-in-Lodge's immediate family was there. The
old man smoking his Indian pipe and eyeing them
124 Teepee Neighbors
gravely sat on the side of his home-made bunk. The
run-away and his mother began laughing and joking at
sight of them. Edmund said to them in English,
"Guess you boys made a mistake, this ain't your
Sunday School class," followed by much giggling.
Somebody cocked an eye out of the window at the sun.
"It's 'way past Sunday school time ; I feel more like it
was dinner time."
The old woman laughed, taking the hint, got up
and began bustling around the stove. She was indeed
in an excellent humor, being mightily pleased with her
son, her youngest born, and his cleverness in out-wit
ting the nagging Agency. "It's all right to have him
go to school and learn something. I don't want him to
grow up to be just a 'buck.' I want him to read and
write and know farming like his brothers ; but I won't
have him kept in that school as though it was a jail."
They all sat about on the floor enjoying the little
feast; fried bread, and meat served with that great
Indian delicacy "cherry gravy"; there was also weak
sweetened coffee. At the end Jack got to his feet and
remembering his manners, "We all ate good," he said
with sincerity, "Let's go out now and have some fun.
Get your horse, Edmund, and come along." They sad
dled up; Edmund's mother, throwing scraps to the
dogs, smiled at them from the doorway.
That they lacked in loyalty to their hosts in thus
Teepee Neighbors 125
decoying the boy into a trap never could have occurred
to their minds. They were playing a game as was
Edmund. The only question was, who would win?
They lured their victim up the road; it was easy
enough to do so. In time, they rounded the point of
land — there stood Rock. He had not deemed it even
necessary to take the six-shooter from its holster. The
star of authority gleamed upon his breast. The run
away took in the situation at a glance. They all drew
rein.
"Go on," said the old man, "I've got you all now.
If you keep loping you'll be at school in time to report
at five o'clock." He fell in behind them and rode
squarely in their dust all the ten miles to the school.
The boys preserved a neutral silence. The three who
really understood the situation felt it not incumbent on
them to explain ; the true captive was upbraiding him
self furiously, if silently, for the stupid ease with which
he had let himself be taken. Truth to tell the three
conspirators were feeling a little uncomfortable. For
many years Edmund had been the acknowledged leader
and "bad boy" of the school; it was only natural to
suppose that he would have his innings yet. The quick
lope of the little bare- footed ponies counted off the
miles.
The arrival at the school was without dramatic effect.
Mr. Knight was on the watch. Rock gave him his ver-
126 Teepee Neighbors
sion of the affair. Mr. Knight, looking into the anxious
eyes of the three, gleefully understood. The victors
themselves said never a word, not even to him: were
they white men that they need make explanation with
words ?
"All right," said the disciplinarian. "Rock, go into
the office. You three put up your horses. Edmund,
come with me."
The boy took his thrashing stoically though he
winced under it, for of its kind it was a good one.
When it was over Mr. Knight left him in the dingy
lock-up of the school and went to fetch him his supper.
On his return as he opened the door the boy lifted his
head and searched with eager eyes the space behind the
man.
"Where's the others?"
"The others?"
"Yes, when are you going to lick them three?"
"Why, Edmund, don't you understand?"
It was clear that he did not. Mr. Knight set down
the supper tray and, as gently as might be, explained.
The boy stared at him. Incredulity was in his eyes and
a new expression, could it be it fear? He spoke no
word. He turned away from his jailor, the haunted
look deepened. Then as though suddenly suffocated
by its lack of space he strode across the little room.
Teepee Neighbors 127
He wheeled about. For an instant the man half
thought that he was going to strike him.
"They made a plan?" He spoke between shut teeth.
"You let them go ?" Although he was plainly impatient
of the fact there was no doubt but what his voice was
trembling. He shook his head over the intolerable
realization. He frowned above his sharpened features.
"And Rock ? He was in that plan too ?"
"Oh no. They met him by chance and they fooled
him also. That was part of their fun, I guess."
"Their— fun/'
The boy's face went grey, he put out a hand, groping
for the one chair in the room. Finding it he sank into
it, a huddled heap.
"Here's your supper, Edmund."
But he did not answer. Mr. Knight, a little uncer
tainly, went toward the door. "He didn't look like that
when I licked him."
The huddled figure hunched his shoulders, twisted a
little as he sat. Then not even waiting for the sound
of retreating steps, a great sob, that was half a cry,
wrenched him.
After all he was only a boy.
"Edmund..."
"Go 'way. Oh ! Go 'way."
And for very shame's sake the man went, tiptoeing
128 Teepee Neighbors
out of the door. But the reign of Edmund was over.
The school's "bad boy" was in the dust.
"IN THE KINGDOM OF THE BLIND"
HER "FOLKS," as she called them, looked at her pa
tiently, smiling a little. They said they had always
thought that her eyes looked queer.
The little half-breed girl smiled too, twisting a cor
ner of her blue spreading "hickory" apron, a dimple
in each smooth cheek, her mouth soft and warm as
though from her mother's recent kisses. But it was
only a memory that kept it so, for the mother was dead ;
and the eyes, with their oddly heavy lids, certainly did
look "queer."
"We are going to Denver soon," we said. "Might
we not take her there with us ? There are doctors there
who care only for eyes. Do you think she would be
too homesick?"
They lifted incredulous eyes to us. "Oh ! she
wouldn't be homesick." They stared at the object of
such strange fortune.
And the child stood, twisting her apron, the little
smile still awakening the dimples in her cheeks.
"You goin' on the railroad?"
The railroad had but lately been built up into our
part of the country.
"Why, yes."
Then they arose to the occasion. "Sure ! Take her,"
they said. "They don't look right, them eyes. Take
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130 Teepee Neighbors
her. She won't be no trouble. She's a good little thing.
Now, Ethel, mind you're good. Mind you don't make
no fuss. You'll yet a lickin' when you get back if I
hear you do."
The little dimpled face and pretty eyes were lifted
sweetly.
"She'll be good."
"Yes," whispered the little girl.
The doctor in Denver agreed that her eyes were
"queer," even as queer as they looked. "Trachoma,"
he threw at us over his glasses. "Better be careful
how your own child handles the things this one touches.
It's very contagious."
"But, is it curable?"
"Yes. She may need an operation, and anyway, a
year's treatment. The operation — if I decide on 'it — I
can manage here easily enough. But the treatment — is
there anyone up there on the reservation who will
follow it up faithfully? That's her only salvation,
conscientious regularity in giving the treatment."
"There's a matron at the Government school where
this child is," we said. "And there's a doctor."
"A doctor? What kind of a one?"
His question embarrassed us a little. "Oh, an
Agency doctor; the usual kind."
"Well you can tell him what I say. I'll give you the
directions."
Teepee Neighbors 131
But we knew better than this. "You'd better write a
letter to him," we ventured. "Agency doctors don't
always like suggestions from the laity."
He laughed a little. "I'll write the letter," he said.
"Anyhow he probably knows enough to realize that
the case is a serious one."
But we felt that we must understand more fully than
this. "What if they should somehow neglect her and
she should not be cured?"
He shrugged his shoulders. "In that case," he said,
"she'd go blind, that's all."
"So many do," we murmured.
"Didn't your doctor up there look at her eyes, ever
think they needed looking at, even?"
"No."
He glanced at us a trifle incredulously.
"There are lots of blind people on the reservation,
children even."
He stared long at the child. "I can easily believe it."
At the end of our visit, and fortified with our letter
to the Agency physician, we bore our little girl back to
the reservation. To the matron we unbosomed our
selves at length.
"He said that absolutely she must never use the
same towel as any body else, nor be allowed to sleep
in the same bed with another child. The trouble is
very contagious."
I32 Teepee Neighbors
She listened to us politely but with unmistakable in
difference, perhaps incredulity.
"It's the same disease that makes those white eyes
so many of them have."
"Oh."
"And this stuff is to be used night and morning
according to the directions, and at least during the rest
of this school year."
"The doctor told me. What did you say they call
it?"
"Trachoma."
She spelled it after us. It was evidently a new word
to her.
"Trachoma?"
"Yes. And that's one of the diseases they shut
immigrants out for, you know. It's so contagious."
"But it's curable?"
"Yes, with the right treatment, and care."
"I see."
We felt that we had said enough.
"Well, Ethel dear, good-bye."
The child edged up close to me.
"Can't you thank her?" said the matron.
"Thank you," whispered the little girl.
"It sure was good of you to take her," vouchsafed
the matron.
Teepee Neighbors 133
"Oh! She was no trouble. A dear little thing! If
it'll only cure her."
From that moment of course the child ceased being
under our control. But I made frequent enquiries of
her.
"Night and morning?" I asked.
" 'Most always."
"Not really always?"
"Sometimes she forgets, I guess."
"And you use only your own towel?"
"Yes, ma'am."
"And you sleep by yourself?"
She hung her little head. "I sleeps with Mamie."
"But you know you shouldn't, dear."
"She bese cold at night."
"Who told you to sleep with her?"
"Miss Raney."
I went to the matron.
"But they want to sleep together," she said. "They
asked to. Beside that we're short of beds. And then
also it saves bedding. The laundry girls are awfully
over-worked."
I went to the doctor.
"I leave all that to the matron," he said. "I really
cannot interfere with matters pertaining entirely to her
own department."
134 Teepee Neighbors
I even went to the agent, tentatively, and very hum
bly.
"You should see the doctor." He was both cordial
and solicitous. "He's the one to control those things."
"Then you don't think it best to speak to Miss Raney
yourself?"
"Frankly, no," he answered. "You see I should be
interfering in the doctor's province."
I thanked him rather vaguely.
But he checked me hastily. "Rather I thank you,"
he cried. "It is more than good of you to take so much
interest in my little charges."
Long before the end of the year they were not giving
her the treatment at all.
"But why, Ethel?"
"I guess the bottle's empty," she said.
LITTLE THINGS
i
HE WAS a very small boy, and in September they had
brought him, reluctant, to the boarding school. There
the authorities had scrubbed and dressed him. He had
rather enjoyed the first of these novelties, though the
big boy who worked over him, incited by the matron,
had been none too gentle with him. And he had been
actually fascinated by his new and unfamiliar clothes ;
shirt and shoes he comprehended, though the mystery
of stockings and garters and trousers was deep.
That first day all went well enough with him. It was
the second, his first morning of awaking in the long
dormitory, that put his powers to the test. To begin
with, he felt as though his bed were out of doors ; no
brooding teepee walls hung just beyond the reach of
his short arms, muting so little the soft call of the
prairie wind. Here in th'is strange place of space and
beds a great bell clanged ; then someone gruffly stirred
him to action. Slowly, puzzling, he applied his gar
ments. It helped a little that so many of them went in
pairs. His shirt he put on last, leaving it dangling
decently over his trousers, as in the camps his calico
home-made shirt-substitute had covered that part of
him left bare where his leggings ceased. When he
took his place in the line formed to go to the dining
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136 Teepee Neighbors
room he felt himself so successfully apparelled that
he really could not understand why the matron,
speaking very low and quick, pointed a finger at him,
just as a big boy seized him by the collar and yanked
him back into the dormitory.
Subsequently, during breakfast, he felt none too
comfortable with his shirt wadded thus tightly into the
top of his nether garment.
It is so hard to remember what you learned yester
day, and that even when they also spank you and send
you back a dozen times to the dormitory to readjust
your various, and apparently superfluous, ill-put parts !
It always would seem illogical to him, he thought, to
have that shirt of his curtailed so waste fully.
After the lapse of a few weeks came a certain Satur
day when the matron, in rusty skirt and dressing jack
et, standing gingerly upon the lowest step of the stair
case directed the efforts of two big boys, armed with
buckets and mops.
In the nearby doorway appeared the little untidy
figure of a boy, one corner of the bottom of his shirt
protruded saucily above his trousers, his unlaced boots
flapped, his recently cut hair bristled. But his eyes
were fixed in fascinated incredulity upon the matron;
from rusty skirt they ranged to hanging dressing jack
et, fixed themselves, glared. Then in joyous, conscious
imitation he raised a stubby forefinger and levelled it
Teepee Neighbors 137
at the matron's middle. His English came to him as
an inspiration.
"What's the matter you?" he cried. "Shirt-tail all
time hangin' out !"
ii
The big girl wrapped a corner of her blue "hickory"
apron about her chilly hands and edged a little so that
her back would be more to the wind that forced itself
in at the door of the girls' building, by which we were
standing.
"And when I was beading* them moccasins
for my little sister last summer," she continued, "that
little girl used to be beggin' me to let her try them. on.
'Just try them on/ she'd say, ' 'cause nobody don't
never bead moccasins for me/ And then when we all
got our money last payment time, she was beggin' her
grandma to buy her a little shawl, 'even one o' them
sheets,' she said. But you know her grandma, she
can't. Them folks, they so poor. My! she's awful
thin."
In the dormitory to the right a child's voice screamed
out suddenly. There followed the sound of a scuffle, of
two vigorous spanks; anl then the child's voice again
wailing angrily.
138 Teepee Neighbors
Another big, blue-clad girl came, laughing, from the
dormitory. In her hand she held a pair of new, small,
clumsy government boots. These she lifted to my
view.
"Four times now I've taken these away from that
kid." She laughed again, holding her hands over her
ears. "My! but can't she yell. Four times she be
takin' these new boots to bed with her. You see when
she first come the matron she didn't have no new ones
to fit her so she have to have a worn pair left over from
last year. So she only just gettin' her new ones this
week. Now every night she hide 'em in her bed. This
time she have 'em right on her feet laced up tight. The
girl that sleep with her she tole on her. My ! them little
kids. They do be such a bother."
in
By the headgate of the lateral of the great new irri
gating system of the reservation sat an old man wrap
ped in a sheet, his summer blanket. He was watching
with contemplative eye the water sluicing under the
raised gate.
A young mixed-blood, mounted on a pony, stood
beside him, watching also, but professionally, the in
flowing water.
Teepee Neighbors 139
Said the mixed-blood, with signs, "This is a fine
ditch!"
The old man assented.
The horseman gazed across the valley, his eyes
following the straight course of the laterals which
carried the water at an apparently slightly rising grade
across the sage brush to the canal on the other side.
Straight and luminous as the flight of an arrow the
water gleamed in the ditches. Far up the stream which
fed this whole irrigating system, and out of sight, were
built the high masonry walls of the main intake.
The Indian followed the gaze of the younger man.
His old eyes rested on the emerald of alfalfa patches
across the valley, first season's fruit of this new ditch.
"Some day we'll have lots of hayfields down here/'
proclaimed the horseman.
Again the old man assented. Then he eyed the ditch-
rider curiously. "That ditch over there looks as though
it was higher than this creek." His old hands formed
the descriptive signs.
"Well, maybe it is," agreed the rider, condescend
ingly.
"A long time ago, when I was a young man," mused
the old hands, "water used always to run down hill."
A little malicious gleam crept into has eyes. "But the
white man, he's so smart he's changed all that. Now
he makes it run the other way."
A MAN
HALF OF the tribe was starving that winter. I am
afraid there was no doubt of it. We heard it on every
hand. It was just at the time when the blind step
daughter of Goes-up-Hill died. They said that for
three days before her end she and her people had
nothing to eat but dog meat — no flour, no coffee even.
The snow was deep and drifted. The family lived
far out in the reservation on a little tributary of the
river. They could not come to the Agency for help
nor could any of us have got down to them. In fact
we knew nothing of the case until everything was over.
Mercifully the girl was ill for only a few days. It was
Goes-up-Hill himself, his hair falling unkept over his
shoulders, his ragged blanket pinched about his lean
form — covered, that is, with the Indian sack cloth and
ashes — who told us about it. He spoke — being one of
the old timers who knew no English — in signs, meager,
but definite, even poetical. After he was done with
his story there was nothing for it at so late a day but
to shake his old hand, to look the sympathy we felt.
Then came a sudden thaw. With the sound of an
explosion the ice dam on another tributary went out.
It happened early in the night. There were some sheep
camps on the low meadows bordering the creek. The
sheep had been rounded up and brought in off the
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Teepee Neighbors 141
frozen range to wait the near coming of the lambs.
That gave a few of the Indians work in the lambing
pens, a very, very few. None of them as yet, however,
had received any pay. Ah ! the sheep that went down
that night. Right over the fences of their own corrals
the water carried them. And as sheep are poor-spir
ited creatures who make but little fight for life, for
only a few minutes did they struggle in the icy water,
then huddled and still, with boards and sacks and other
extraneous things, the tide flooded them down towari
the main river.
All the "upper" Indians — those living close about
the Agency — were laughing, though their laughing was
often wan, as the reports came to us.
"They say them people down there just stand on the
bank with long poles and fish in the drowned sheep. It's
all right with the sheep men. They don't mind how
many of them they take if they'll bring back the pelts."
Those above the forks on the main river did not of
course benefit by this freak of prodigality of awak
ening spring.
That was the time — if you lived here you'd remem
ber it as we do — that the stage, on a piece of river
road, was overturned by the rush of the water. The
driver saw the danger coming and tried to get up into
the little hills above the road, but he was too late. His
horses, held down by the weight of the wrecked stage,
142 Teepee Neighbors
were drowned. But he, upborne by some shred of
grim grit, extricated himself from ice and debris and
dragged himself somehow to the shelter of the shore.
But the mail sacks went down with the rush of the
water. Then the ice of the half-frozen river concealed
them, though many Indians there were who stood on
the banks, watching the flow of the oily water, hoping
for a glimpse of just one of them. You see immed
iately after the thing happened the Post-office Depart
ment offered a reward of five dollars for each sack that
should be recovered. The very day after the disaster,
a young man called Charley Good Woman found one
of them, half buried in the mud. With great difficulty
he secured it and bore it in dubious triumph to the
local post-office where he was immediately, and to his
own bewilderment, handed his five dollars. It was like
finding the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.
That event brought one man at least out of every
teepee in the neighborhood of the river, to sit long
hours on his horse, his lariat, its noose assuredly free,
grasped in a ready hand, his eyes fixed to the point of
hypnotism, upon the sweep of the current.
Among these equestrian statues, half clad, cold,
daring not quite to hope and yet capable of suffering
all the pangs of disappointment, there sat one oldish
man called Howling Wolf. Of all of that lean throng
there was perhaps none as poor as he. Ah ! do not pity
Teepee Neighbors 143
him. His condition was brought about mainly through
his own fault. For he was a man who drank some
times, feeling as he did within his old body a craving,
which never, in all the days covered by the reach of his
memory, had been satisfied. And also he gambled.
You see that no apology can be offered for him. No
one could claim, even his most friendly excusers, that
any unsatisfied longing set him gambling. In fact by
every canon of morality his action must be condemn
ed. For was he not thereby taking food from the
very mouth of his wife, the clothes from her back? Of
children they had mercifully none. Those that had
been born to them had died little and long, long ago.
Even the memory of them had become confused, had
emerged itself into a sort of dull ache, which in turn
mingled itself with the pangs of his unsatisfied body.
Often in his teepee he would sit on the ground-made
bed, smoking — tobacco, when he had it, chopped willow
bark, choking and bitter, when he had not the other —
staring at the hard-packed dirt of the floor, at the
embers of the fire; going over eternally the past, the
days of youth, of austere young manhood, the courting
days when down in the bushes by the river he had
played on his flute to her, notes liquid and alluring. . .
At this point he would lift his old dreamy eyes to his
wife who sat, fat and huddled, on her side of the tent,
smoking too her short Indian pipe, staring also at the
144 Teepee Neighbors
hard-packed floor. And during the long, long days
he would think of the vanished game; of the days of
achievement, gone also; and of the time when he as
well, would have slipped away, when to the hillside,
amid the wailing of the women they would carry his
body — as he had followed many, many bodies, — wrap
ped in new quilts, stark, insensate at last. He would
picture them lifting him from the old farm wagon — the
borrowed wagon — in which he was making this his last
trip, and laying him in his shallow bed. And then he
knew that they would cover him up tenderly away from
the sunlight that allured, away from his accustomed
aching. And he was aware that thence- forth his wife
would be homeless and poorer than ever, living out her
days on the carelessly given charity of her neighbors,
trying with less and less hope, but always patiently, to
pay the bills she had incurred at the store, even the bills
for the new quilts in which she had swathed him for his
burial. At this point he would get up suddenly and
striding out of his tent would go to where his last pony
was picking about amongst the brush, and he would
mount it bareback as it was and with an end of his
lariat about its neck for a bridle he would lope steadily
across the snow, across the ice of the river to that little
town where distraction and temporary oblivion might
be obtained.
At last of course he would be forced to come back ;
Teepee Neighbors 145
at night, probably; his lariat gone perhaps, or his
blanket, or the handkerchief from about his neck, or
even his hat. For luck seemed never to come his way,
though his little bag of "medicine," suspended by its
dirty twisted string he always kept hidden securely
away inside his shirt. But the "medicine" was old, and
the white men of the little town — those of them who
would play with him — knew a trick or two of twice its
worth. The younger men of the tribe had indeed
learned from the whites defensive cheating at cards,
but not so he ; he was too unp regressive, too "Indian."
Thus just before the thaw he had come back to the
old teepee and the old wife, utterly depleted. Then
unexpectedly hope, that will-o'-the-wisp, had lit for
him in his blindness a little trembling, enticing flame;
and so he too sat motionless by the river, watching for
the water to give up a lost mail sack, in his hands a
borrowed lariat.
And as he sat — it was the fourth day now, yet only
the one sack had been found — he saw a man on the
other shore, a white man mounted on a solid cow pony,
come slipping and sliding down the opposite bank, and
gingerly make his way out upon the rotten ice. But
after a moment his eyes old and smoke-dimmed grew
tired facing the ice-glare and he dropped them to the
open water close at his feet. He gasped, — his old
heart swelled big within him. For there almost within
146 Teepee Neighbors
reach of his hand he saw at last the object of his long
vigil. One corner of it projected above the tide. He
lifted his heels to force his horse down into the flood —
then suddenly his ears were assailed by a great sound.
There came to him the crash of an explosion, and
mingled with it a terrible wild cry. Staring out across
the river he saw black water yawning where had been
the ice. Cowboy and horse had disappeared. But even
as he looked the man came to the surface. He floun
dered, groped, caught precariously a side of jagged ice.
The mail sack, ever at his side, sailed slowly by, the ice
crust below waiting to secrete it again.
With the swiftness of Nature herself Howling Wolf
had his lariat uncoiled and like a meteor flash sent its
sinuous length out over the oily water. It caught the
half -sub merged man fairly about the shoulders.
Fortunately the teepee was near. His thin old arm
supported and guided the staggering man. Arrived
there it was with the greatest difficulty that he and his
wife got off the man's already freezing clothes. They
put him in their bed, for they had no change of raiment
to offer him while his own things thawed and dried.
They covered him with all they had. They wiped his
streaming face and hair. Then they boiled coffee and
brought him some of it in a bowl. The smell of the
sage brush fire, of the coffee, and the steam from the
drying clothes, filled the tent. The white man, sick and
Teepee Neighbors 147
faint, lay chattering between the quilts. Dinner time
came but brought with it no dinner; it went as it had
come. A little later they all partook of coffee. With
signs the old man made his apology, his face twisted
with distress for his inhospitality.
"There's only this," he seemed to say. "We have no
food."
He had gone twice to the river to look for signs of
the stranger's horse only to return and report that there
were none.
At last the white man, restored, dressed himself
again and got up to take his leave. He spoke to the old
couple in English, which neither could understand,
making what awkward explanatory signs he could re
collect.
"I remember you, all right. You're the old feller we
cleaned out the other day over at Slim's place. Gee!
They've cleaned me out since. I haven't got enough in
my pockets to jingle and now my horse and saddle are
gone. I'm afoot, I am, walkin' for my livin', these
days! Say, bad luck's a rotten thing, ain't it? Well,
here's four bits, every cent I got on the earth. I want
your wife to take it. It'll buy you a little grub anyhow.
I'll walk over to the store at the Forks, I know the
feller that runs it. I guess he'll give me a hand-out
to eat and maybe a job — " Then each in turn he shook
solemnly by the hand. "I'm right grateful to you for
148 Teepee Neighbors
what you done for me. I'm expecting to go out of this
country, but if I should ever come back — well, anyhow,
so long."
Standing outside the door of the teepee, the fifty
cent piece tied for safe keeping in a fold of the wife's
sleeve, the old couple stood, shading their eyes, watch
ing the man trudge cheerfully across the snowy waste.
From inside the tent came the smell of boiling coffee.
LAZARUS
THEY STOPPED their wagon at our hitching post, tying
their narrow-built, bare-footed ponies to the rack.
Their skeleton dogs, curling themselves up into furry
cocoons, crouched down upon the frozen gravel away
from the wind. Then they came in, the young man
trailing in the wake of his father. It was one of those
bitter cold days that so often visit us in Wyoming, but
cold days that do not look cold; like smiles disguising
bitter words; like Death itself, visibly serene, yet the
very state of dissolution. The whole world, or at least
the wide stretch of it to be seen from our ranch win
dows, was gala with sunlight ; yet under cover of that
sunlight, intangible, the teeth of the cold, like manacles,
bit into the flesh of the unwary.
In Wyoming when we enter house or tent in winter
we go straight to the stove. So deep-rooted is this
habit that to do so has become almost a matter of
etiquette. Even in summer we congregate about our
empty stoves, smiling and talking to each other across
their idle blackness.
I drew up chairs for my guests. It was morning.
There was house-work still pending, so I moved about
near them, busying myself as I might, not wishing to
seem inattentive. They pulled their chairs close to the
stove. Stooping, the young man opened the drafts.
149
150 Teepee Neighbors
They drew off their gloves and held toward the fire
their hands, cramped with the cold — old gnarled hands
and young thin ones. Removing their hats they laid
them down upon the floor beside them. Their heads
were tied up, hood-fashion, in faded bandannas. They
were dressed in the heterogeneous vestments of border
civilization. A single pair of overalls formed the lower
garment of the son. A knitted muffler enveloped the
father's neck. Flimsy canvas moccasins shod them.
They wore no overcoats.
For our Indian guests we always kept on hand a
sack of tobacco. This with the book of papers I now
passed to them. They gave me smiles of acknow
ledgement. Then with hands still awkward from the
cold, they helped themselves sparingly, rolling their
economical cigarettes.
The young man, his shoulders bent heavily, his claw-
like hands extended, hollow of chest, spoke in a husky
voice.
"My Father he come here ask you find him a story
in the Bible."
"A story in the Bible?"
"Yes."
And watching us, in his native tongue the old man
spoke suddenly. His words sounded emphatically.
With his hands, one of which held the cigarette, he
enforced their meaning by accompanying them with
Teepee Neighbors 151
the conventional gestures of the Indian language of
signs. His deep eyes were upon his son.
The soft odor of tobacco filled the room. The heat
from the open stove made the air heavy. The young
man, bending forward, his eyes upon the floor, slowly
inhaling and exhaling the smoke of his cigarette, lis
tened attentively. He coughed.
"My Father he say one time he go to the Indian
church and the minister he tell that story. Since then
he always thinkin' 'bout it. He want to hear that story
'gain. It's in the Bible, he says. You got lots o' books,
he guess you know it."
"Can he tell me what it was about?"
The young man coughed again. He threw the
stump of his cigarette into the stove.
"It 'bout a man, a white man, a chief, a king, I guess
you call him. This man big man ; he have lots to eat,
lots o' good clothes, plenty money. All time he just
sit in his house and everybody workin' for him. He
smoke, he have good time."
From this beginning I felt dubious about eventually
recognizing the story.
"But one day a man come, sit down on the ground
by his door. He stay there all the time. This man he
awful poor. He just got rags on him for clothes; he
don't comb his hair and it hang down all wild ; he got
sores on his legs, on his body. The dogs they come
152 Teepee Neighbors
close to him, they bother him good deal. He awful
hungry." He lifted his face to me. With one thin
yellow hand he formed the expressive sign which,
turned against the breast of the maker, says : Hunger
is killing me, Hunger has conquered me.
"I understand," I said.
The young man coughed, smiled apologetically.
"My Father, he say that sick man so hungry he for
get that chief got hard heart, one day he call out and
beg him for some scraps of food. But that big man
always laughin', talking havin* good time. He don't
hear him. He always lookin' the other way. That
man wait long time but nobody give him nothin*. Then
that poor man he try steal the bones away from the
dogs. But he too weak. Them dogs they all time fight
him off. Then he sit down by the door again, and
he feel bad in his heart and his sores hurt him and he
awful hungry. At last by the door he see a swill bucket
and he reach out his hand and he pull things out of it
and he eat them; peelings, anything." He stopped,
coughing.
I got up suddenly and went over to the book shelves.
The old man straightened himself up. He looked
at his boy, he looked at me; he spoke vehemently.
Then he leaned back in his chair. The son lifted his
haggard face, his eyes glowed above hollow cheeks.
"My Father, he say, long ago when he young man,
Teepee Neighbors 153
it's different, but today the Indians been like that sick
man, they so hungry all time they learn now to be glad
when white people let them eat just them thrown-
away things."
And, hollow of chest, he too sank back in his seat.
AT THE END OF HIS ROPE
IT is not often that a man has to undergo two identical
and very hard experiences. Such however, was the
fate of Jerome Rising Elk. It seemed almost incredible
that twice the same bitter thing should happen to him.
But let me tell you this story. Soon after he left school,
as quite a young man he had married, in the Indian
way, and he had set up house keeping for himself and
his bride in a little white tent pitched close to her
father's home. In time there had come a baby, and
at its coming she had left him.
Who shall conceive the horror of her last day? The
young moaning mother lying on the floor amongst dingy
quilts, the gloom of the teepee, the helpless sympathe
tic, women- faces about her, the old weeping grand
mother, her mother, a baby at her breast, her own last
anguish fresh in her mind: the flies, the heat, the
sneaking dogs, the day-long agony; and then the
spent flesh breaking at last, the thread of life snapping,
even as the infant's cry proclaimed the birth.
The girl's mother had taken the child. For a few
months she nursed it with her own; then — for who
shall starve one's own for the sake of an outsider? —
then its wailing cry had ceased and they had laid its
little lean body in a grave hollowed out of the dry earth
near its mother's.
154
Teepee Neighbors 155
Jerome and his wife did not live at our end of the
reservation. I scarcely knew either of them by sight,
but their story, the sad story of the manner of her
death, was told everywhere about the camps; the
women listened, wonderingly, holding close their own,
thinking in their hearts: "If it had been I!"
Two or three years passed. Like a homeless bird
the young man, a boy of some education for a reserva
tion Indian, drifted from camp to camp, made long
journeys and visits to neighboring tribes, in Oklahoma,
in the Dakotas. He had no one to do for him, to care
for his clothes, bead his moccasins. At her death all
her possessions and most of bis had gone in the Indian
way to her people. He lodged where he might, stretch
ed his welcome, the wide Indian welcome, to the
breaking point, flitted from home to home. At last,
as was inevitable, he married again.
The second wife was a girl from our school. I knew
her well. A lovely girl she was, a slender, strong,
lightfooted thing; eyes clear and starry. To see her
walk you were reminded of the figure in the Old
Testament "Light of foot as a wild roe."
Her name was Ada. They came down to our little
church to be married. I remember the day, my kitchen
apron on, my sleeves rolled up, right from my washing,
I ran over to the church to make the necessary second
156 Teepee Neighbors
witness. Jerome was neatly dressed in store-bought
clothes and boots, a bright handkerchief tied cow-boy-
wise about his neck. She stood by him in her trim
"squaw dress." Its graceful lines, as those of the
shawl drooping from her shoulders, gave a lovely
almost classic look to her figure. Her pretty head was
bowed humbly. Frankly and without hesitation togeth
er they went through the binding service. Of all their
friends and relatives only her father had come with
them. He and I were their witnesses. I wrote my
name, he made his "thumb mark" on their certificate.
Then I hurried back to my washing.
It was next winter or early spring that we sat one
night in the living room of our ranch house, my hus
band and I, on either side of the lamp, reading. Sud
denly I heard a faint rattling noise as of a wagon
driven fast down the frozen road, distant from our
house nearly half a mile. Very distinctly there reached
us also another sound. The book dropped from my
fingers and I was on my feet in an instant.
'That's crying," I said. "Somebody's dead. They're
wailing. Maybe it's May — or Lottie's little boy."
I ran to the door and opened it on the frosty night.
The unseen wagon was clattering on down the road.
Several voices were crying, women's voices, raising
their weird despairing lament into the night. Then a
man's voice joined the strange chorus. We stood
Teepee Neighbors 157
i '1
together listening to that sound, which, though • * o>; i a
hundred times, can never lose its power to sha*eV to
pierce. t'f
"Poor Indians ! Poor people ! Death everywhere —
suffering without help and always death — I suppose
we'll hear tomorrow who it is." ies*
We heard. Soon after breakfast some one came
riding fast toward the house from the lower gate.
When I hear anyone approaching at that rate of speed,
I have no need to look out of the window to know who
it is. There's a blind boy who always rides like that.
Seth, they call him in English. But his Indian name
is at once tragic and poetic: "He-sits-in-the-night."
The sand flew from beneath his little buck-skin's scam
pering feet. He stopped near the house door. I went
out. At the sound of the door he called to me.
"Where's that ole' hitchin' post?"
I laughed as I put a hand on the buck-skin's bridle
to lead him to it.
"Come on in," I said. He got down lightly and
followed the sound of my steps into the house.
"It's cold."
I pushed a chair for him close to the stove. "There,"
I said. "Sit down and tell me all the news."
The boy, welcome everywhere for his kindly nature
and witty mind, his helpfulness, his pluck, acted as a
158 Teepee Neighbors
*sr
-or; "'''walking newspaper for the tribe. From Seth
you ^ ^re always sure of getting the last bit of gossip.
"La. j night we hear bad news," he began.
''"'Who died?" I asked. "I heard them driving by
here and crying. I hope it wasn't May."
"\VV ' he said. "It's Jerome's wife. She die down
below at tfie Forks of the river. That's her mother
and father you hear cryin'. They was campin' at the
school and my father he go up to tell them 'bout it.
They drive way down to the Forks in the dark last
night."
"Oh! Seth—" I cried. "Not Ada!" Pretty light-
footed Ada with her starry sweet eyes.
"She borned a baby," explained Sits-in-the-night.
"A girl, I think. It didn't die."
So it was all to begin over again ; the miserable busi
ness of trying to raise in the camps a motherless baby.
I had seen it attempted so many times, almost always
to end in failure.
"Who'll take the baby?"
"I never hear ; I guess the mother."
Poor Ada. Poor pretty young wife ! Poor mother
less, hungry little child!
It was almost summer time when I heard of the
baby again; they lived so far from us, forty or fifty
miles, and quite off in a direction by itself. Mollie, one
of Ada's school mates, told me about it.
Teepee Neighbors 159
"No, it ain't doin' well at all. They say it just cries
and cries. You know the grandmother, she don't want
to do nothin' but play cards. She leaves it all alone in
her teepee and she goes off gamblin'. The women
they hears it cryin' when they passes her tent. Ada
used to be just crazy 'bout babies. My! I guess she'd
feel bad if she knew how her little baby cries."
"Oh! Mollie!" I said, "OhlMollie!" The thought
of that miserable little one haunted me for days.
The end of the story came before long. Heaven
knows the facts were bald and bitter enough.
It seems that in the end the young father had not
been able to endure longer the child's neglect. If you
with your superior white man's way of settling every
one's difficulties for him out of hand, think he should
have interfered sooner you probably do not know that
with the Indians the child belongs exclusively to the
mother and her people, the father, indeed, having no
voice in its disposition. It was only because Jerome
was an old school boy, versed a little in the white
man's ways, that he undertook at all to manage the
affairs of his motherless little one. In doing so he had
to face public opinion and the opposition of both his
relatives and those of his wife. But at last he took
it away from the card-playing old grandmother; went
to her tent and got it bodily, its rags, its bottle, a can or
two of condensed milk. Horseback as he was he
160 Teepee Neighbors
carried it down the valley a number of miles to the
cabin of a friend of his, Lee Hunting Wolf, an old
school boy like himself.
Lee and his wife made their guests welcome to the
little they possessed. The Indian way is always open-
handed even to impoverishment. The woman took
the baby in hand, washed a bit cleaner the murky, en
crusted bottle, changed its clothes, warmed the little
feet. For a while it was quiet, drowsy after the long
unwonted ride. Then it began to fret, to wail ; its cry
ing became incessant. From the can the woman put
milk into the bottle, added water, a little sugar, warmed
it, tried to make the child take hold of it, suck — but
in vain. It wailed and cried ceaselessly, distressingly.
From a spoon they endeavored to feed it their weak
sweetened coffee, then even some of the soup in which
the meat of their supper had been boiled. Its distress
only increased. Bed time came and still it fretted, twist
ing its body, its arms writhing, its legs drawn up. The
woman as she lay in bed held it on her arm, changing
it about from one side to the other. Not one of them
was able to sleep.
At last her husband got up and taking a quilt with
him went outside and lay down on the ground under
the wagon, seeking a little rest. The woman continued
to hush the baby, patting it, talking patiently to it.
Its father, in the other bunk, lay rigid, motionless,
Teepee Neighbors 161
covered even to the head with his striped blanket; a
long, sinister, despairing form. He made even no sign
of being aware of his little one's distress.
The long night wore on. At last the early dawn
of midsummer began to show faintly in the night sky,
over the distorted shapes of the Bad Lands to the east,
amongst the stars. The light wind of the morning
sprang up. Outside the house meadow-larks sang
loudly their sweet insistent tune. The baby had at
last fallen into an exhausted doze. The woman slipped
it cautiously from her arm, and getting up from the
bed stepped noiselessly out of the door into the sweet
morning sunlight. The man in the other bed still slept,
apparently. The woman went to the wagon and, stoop
ing down, woke her husband. Heavily and stupidly
after the weary night, they set about their morning
tasks. He gathered together his little band of horses,
and mounting bare-back on one, drove them before
him, down to the stream half a mile or more away.
The woman gathered chips of wood and made a fire in
the old cook-stove that stood on the ground, just out
side her door. She brought meat from the house and
set it on in a black kettle to boil. She put coffee, sugar
and water into an old smoky coffee pot and placed that
over another hole. Then she sat down on the ground
by the stove and began mixing a kind of dough, shaping
it with her hands, rounding it on a plate, slashing it in
162 Teepee Neighbors
the centre four times with a knife, that it might fry,
doughnut-wise. While she worked the man in the
house came to the door and shut it. She heard the
key turn in the lock. If this seemed strange to her, she
in her stupid, sleepy condition, scarcely gave it a
thought.
The house was built on high, dry ground, well back
from the river where the pest of mosquitoes made sum
mer camping almost unendurable. Unconsciously, she
kept looking down the trail for the return of her hus
band. She felt shaken by the night. Her own last
baby had died two years ago, or it would be that long
come Sun Dance time, and the feeling of this little
ailing creature on her arm had moved her pitifully. A
band of loose horses, mares with their foals, fed near
the house, switching savagely with their tails at the
encroaching flies. The little colts scampered about,
whinnying shrilly. She wondered in her tired, hurt
mind at the ways of God. Here were babies at their
mothers' sides, fat with their mothers' milk, while that
human baby was deprived so utterly. Dexterously she
she turned the cake of fried-bread in the boiling grease.
Through the shimmering heat waves about the stove,
she saw her husband riding up the trail, the coiled end
of the lariat which served him for a bridle, in his hand.
The other horses trotted ahead of him. The animals
were switching their tails, her husband slashing about
Teepee Neighbors 163
his head and hands with a willow branch. He slipped
off his horse near to her, throwing the coiled end of
the lariat on the ground.
"Wheel" he cried. "Mosquitoes!" He still beat
about with his branch. The sides of the horses were
black with the little pests, dancing in clouds in the sun
light above and around them. The woman smiled.
"The food's nearly ready," she said.
Then suddenly was shattered the peace of the morn
ing. A horrible sound of sinister import burst upon
their ears, the thunder of a gun fired at close range. . . .
The report could have come from nowhere but within
the house. The woman was on her feet in an instant.
They both ran to the door.
The woman seized the knob, rattled it ineffectually,
beat upon the boards with her bare hands; the man
thrust at it with his shoulder. It failed to yield. The
woman rushed around to the one window, but the man
inside had screened it with its calico curtain. Lee ran
for the axe, returned with it, in a couple of blows had
the door off its hinges, prone. After all the woman
cowered back to let her husband pass first into that
place of fear. She followed him however by a step or
two. Simultaneously they beheld Jerome Rising Elk.
He had got himself so propped in a corner that the shot
that had killed him had left him sitting upright as in
life. His hair was braided carefully, his face and head
164 Teepee Neighbors
anointed with the red "medicine" paint ; he was dress
ed in his best, dressed indeed by his own hand for his
burial. His striped blanket was wrapped around him,
drawn close about his shoulders; his hand that had
fired the shot was beneath its folds so that the bodily
destruction was not visible. Only at his feet, as he
sat, was a dreadful thing, — a red, red pool on the mud
of the floor, a pool that spread insidiously even as they
looked.
The man ran forward and pulled the blanket off one
shoulder but with a cry and eyes that in horror sought
those of his wife, he replaced it hastily. With the dis
arranging of his wrappings the man's limp hand, some
how entangled in the lock of the six-shooter, slipped
from his knee and fell toward the floor, dragged down
by its horrid burden. Above, the half-opened eyes, the
mysterious painted face, showed no change.
On the other bed, the nipple of the bottle still in her
little mouth, the baby lay sleeping.
THE LOVE WOMAN
THEY CAME to me tentatively, their shawls wrapped
about their calico-clad forms. At my bidding they
sat by the stove, thrusting out their muddy moccasins
to the heat. They talked a little, but shyly, their eyes
searching me. Assuredly there was something they
strove to say. I bided my time knowing that in all
probability they would get it out at last. They turned
their rugged faces toward me, their eyes keen, though
always slightly veiled.
One of them spoke softly. "Pauline, she goin' to
born a baby pretty soon."
"I know."
"Did you hear that?"
"Oh yes !"
"Her mother talk a lot about that baby. They don't
want it."
"I suppose not, poor little soul !"
I looked around the room which, as it sometimes
seemed to me, ached with its emptiness, the empty cor
ner, the empty pillow, the drawer full of empty little
clothes, and my hands in my lap, emptiest of all.
"She can't be much more than sixteen."
"She is sixteen."
"And of course he can't marry her because he has a
wife already."
165
166 Teepee Neighbors
"The old folks always say when they was young,
girls didn't have babies that way."
"So I've heard."
"Her mother talks awful bad to her about this one."
"It's too late now to talk."
"Yes, pretty soon she'll born it."
I sighed.
"Her mother she think may be they give it away. , .
She wonderin' if perhaps you'll take it."
"I !"
"There's no one else," they faltered.
I stared and stared at nothing, my empty hands lying
in my lap. "Does Pauline want me to?"
"She say so."
"Ah ! But when it's once born she'll feel differently."
The girls looked pensively at the fire.
I got up suddenly and walked across the empty
room Then I came back.
"When you see them, Pauline or her mother, tell
them— I'll take it. I'm willing. If they don't want to
keep it, why shouldn't I ? I've got clothes for it,— I've
got everything. Will it be soon?"
"Maybe next month."
"Oh!" There would be an infinity of weary days
stretching between this one and "next month."
We sat in silence listening, I suppose, each to the
beating of her own heart.
Teepee Neighbors 167
They got up at length. "Well, I guess we go." And
shuffling and rustling faintly they crossed the room
and slipped out, a little side- ways, through the half-
opened door.
It was a couple of weeks after this that looking one
day out of the window over the valley, I saw some one
crossing our fields. It was an Indian woman, and she
was alone. This latter fact was so unusual that it in
vested her at once with a touch of mystery; in some
way set her apart. She sped over the little bridge, pass
ed the hitching rack, stepped delicately upon the
gravel surrounding the house. She walked rapidly
and in her stride there was something eager, even res
olute. As she advanced her garments fluttered about
her, the fringes of her shawl, her ribbon-trimmed
skirts, her wide, beaded leggins. Her blanket was
drawn up over her head.
Then came the sound of fingers, fluttering also
against my door.
"Come in," I called out.
She entered, bending a trifle forward. With a back-
reaching hand she closed the door, her eyes searching
the room. Then she slipped her blanket down from
off her head. Her sleek, very black hair, was brushed
to glossiness, beads encircled her neck. Her dress was
new and bright in color, ribbons and a small bag of
Indian scent were pinned on her breast. Her snug-
i68 Teepee Neighbors
fitting moccasins were daintily beaded. Her cheeks
and the parting of her hair showed the faint tinting
of paint. It was Pauline. There was a child-like qual
ity about her, almost elfin. She was short, reaching
I should say barely to the shoulder of the gaunt women
of her tribe. In her smile, a little set in her soft, parted
lips, in her small piquant face and most of all in her
darting swift glances, there was something that recalled
the Japanese.
Holding her shawl carefully about her, she dropped
into a chair, laughing a little. One slim hand she drew
quickly from its hiding place beneath her shawl's folds.
Its delicate fingers, their nails a trifle long, were clasped
about a tiny btmch of violets. Then, her head cocked
a little to one side, she held them up to me.
"See, I find these. They're the very first ones."
Perforce I came near to admire them, but instead,
I looked at her. She suggested dimly a kitten, eyeing
a darting butterfly, I thought.
Perhaps because she was of a nature more direct
than that of most of the women, or because discretion
no longer tramelled her, or because she had formed a
habit of choosing and seizing suddenly, she did not
hesitate and secrete and essay, as do the Indians gen
erally, but turned to me at once with her errand.
"I wanted to ask if you could lend me some money."
Above the hand holding the violets she smiled at me.
Teepee Neighbors 169
"You know I goin' to need it soon and we've not got
any, really." She laughed something both shy and
daring in the sound. "The Indians goin' to have pay
ment in two months, that's what we hear, but that's
not soon enough for me. I can pay you back then.
Will you do it for me? I don't want to starve when
I'm sick." Again a low laugh escaped her. The sleek
head was tilted a little, the soft lips parted in anticipa
tion, the questing eyes astir.
"How much did you think you'd need?" I really
had no intention of lending the money to her.
"I suppose five dollars. Is that too much?" Her
smile was almost indulgent, as though from some plane
far removed from me she looked back upon me.
"Oh ! my dear, that's a good deal."
She made with her hands a deprecating gesture,
gazed at me, sighed.
"Yes, indeed it is." And all of a sudden something
plaintive came into her eyes, her mouth, pouting,
drooping at the corners. She stood up, the hand that
held the violets thrust suddenly out to steady her ; rib
bons, fringes, skirts fluttered about her. "Yes, I sup
pose I askin' too much."
The opinion I held of her clamored in me for ut
terance.
"You're only sixteen, Pauline, aren't you? Just
think!"
170 Teepee Neighbors
She looked at me sharply, in her face a quick ex
pression of unearthly wisdom. And then feeling
poignantly anew the emptiness of the room and made
a little reckless, a little tender by the consciousness
of it, I turned impulsively. "I'll let you have it," I said,
and wondered at hearing the words spoken by my own
voice.
A sudden dimple showed in the curve of her cheek
and seeing it you felt as though something which had
been lost was on the instant returned to its own place.
A sense of proportion came to you, a comfortable feel
ing of fitness.
She fluttered across the room to me holding out her
hand for the extended cheque. Then she stood by
me turning it in her fingers, her sleek head bowed, her
wandering eyes bent upon it, her face pensive, the
dimple fled. In a moment she raised her head quickly
and looked me straight in the eyes. She stiffened a
little, her lips parted as though she would have spoken.
But, although I waited, no word escaped her. Instead
a tremor passed over her face leaving it set and wan.
She drew her shawl carefully about her, stowing away
her cheque somewhere in the recesses of her clothes.
"I'm thankhV you very much," she said. Her voice
was soft as are the voices of Indian women, but unlike
the majority of theirs it was keyed a trifle high.
She opened the door. "Goodbye." She smiled back
Teepee Neighbors 171
to me over her shoulder, and, fluttering and eager, she
sped away across the field.
Then I heard that the baby was born.
"Have you seen it?" I asked one of the girls.
Her eyes were quickly averted. "No, ma'am."
"Have you seen it?"
Again the hastily veiled eyes, "Why, no."
Yet in the Indian camps the advent of a baby is such
an event! There are smiles, hand-shakings, proud
exhibitions at the coming of each little new-born. Why
in Pauline's case was it different? I did not wish to
understand and yet seeing and hearing what I did
must needs do so. I would have gone myself to see
the baby only that I was constrained by a sense of
delicacy amounting almost to shyness. If they should
think I had come to take the baby, that I wanted to
deprive them of it ! Except on that one occasion there
had been no word said to me about it. But well I knew
they were aware of my message to them. Was it of
that the litt'e evil mother had wanted to speak to me
over her drying cheque?
At last when she came out and began going about
with it, some of them looked at it.
"Such a fat baby!" they said. "Oh! a beautiful
baby. But so white." This last observation was always
172 Teepee Neighbors
repeated of it. That meant that it was not the child of
the one they had named to me as its father, the Indian
who, having a wife already, might not marry the little
mother.
The girl and her mother lived in a big, conspicuous
teepee standing tall and stately on the flat, sage-covered
floor of the valley. But it had been erected not too far
from the trees and brush growing along the river.
From them anyone might reach it with discretion . . .
In a little while they began telling about the camps
that the baby was dead. There seemed no good to be
had from questioning them. More than the simple
statement of the fact could be got from no one.
"But was it sick?"
"I don't know, I never see it."
"Did she have the doctor for it?"
"Oh no!"
"The medicine man, I suppose."
"I never hear." The pleasant, inpenetrable faces
were averted a little from me.
"Where did she bury it?"
A comprehensive gesture was made with the head
and lips. "Up there in the hills, I suppose."
Then one day I caught a glimpse of the young
mother. She was speeding on foot up toward the
Agency, her hair, worn loose now in conventional
mourning, floated about her. She seemed to be a
Teepee Neighbors 173
little less brightly dressed, her moccasins were plainer ;
but still she fluttered as she walked. Often after a
death when the hearts are still torn the Indians will
not look at you, fearing, I suppose, to meet the com
passion in your eyes, to show the pain in theirs. So I
was prepared to pass her unrecognizing. But coming
abreast of her, from under her hair, like the eyes of a
restless sprite, hers were lifted to mine. A smile parted
her soft lips, recalled the dimple. . .
I think I only stared at her. Once past her, over my
shoulder I looked back at her slight figure, eager, bend
ing forward, hurrying, furtive, noiseless, her hair and
shawl fluttering behind her, and on her face, I must
suppose, that little shining smile, that had gleamed
where, as it seemed to me, any light would have been
an intrusion.
Suddenly I carried a hand to my empty breast and
lifting my eyes to the hills that bordered the valley I
searched absently for that invisible place where lay the
little sleeping baby that had not been wanted.
THE AGRICULTURALIST
HE CAME into our house and sank down into the first
chair that offered itself, the very picture of despair.
All the lines of his rugged, homely face were drawn
downward, his eyes were blurred and sunken, his body
drooped as though sustained by his will alone. Of
speech he seemed utterly bereft.
I greeted him guardedly. I dared not question him.
What could it be? Had some one of his household
died? What other explanation could account for such
dejection? In vain I searched my brain to recollect a
moribund member of his family. Something sudden
must have occurred. I looked at him; I dared not
speak, not knowing what to say or to leave unsaid.
But, understanding the Indians as I did I was
convinced that in his own time he would unbosom him
self. If I could have given him some refreshment it
might have loosened his tongue but it was the middle
of the morning, an awkward time for house-keepers,
and really I had nothing to offer him.
So I stirred about at my work making my presence
as inconspicuous as I might.
Then at last the explanation came, almost epic in its
naked despair.
"I been to the store. They won't trust me. At home
we got nothing nothin'. And there's no work." His
174
Teepee Neighbors 175
eyes turned miserably in the direction of his home. "My
children are cryin'."
I stood before him, filled with sympathy, listening.
"I work summer before last. I raise potatoes, a good
crop. But that cold time round Thanksgivin' they all
freeze. We just throw them out in the road. Beside
that I raise oats. Then all through the winter I sell
oats, a sack at a time. That give us food. That last
till nearly summer. Then this summer I plow, I sow
oats again, I work hard. I irrigate. They grow fine,
them oats ; high, thick. Then I go up to the Agency
for the reaper. But it's broken. I ask the engineer fix
it for me. He's too busy. I go see the clerk. He
promise. I wait. Then I go see the agent. He promise
too. I wait some more. It's past time to harvest, my
crop it's spoilin'. I try to borrow a reaper from the
school. They won't lend theirs. The other two Agency
ones, they gone. The men that got 'em they can't give
'em to me, so many askin' for them before me. I try
fix that machine myself, but I can't do it good. I ask
the engineer again. He still busy, he say . . . Then there
come a hail storm and cut my crop for me." A long
breath escaped him. "After that there wasn't nothin'
to do but turn the stock in on it."
"Ah-ee!" I cried, Indian-way. Then I turned on
him suddenly. "It's nearly spring now. Has that
reaper ever been mended ?"
176 Teepee Neighbors
"No. I guess that past mendin'." But his mind
wandered back to his lost crop. "Them oats they were
fine. I buy my own seed-oats from the Agency store.
Some them Agency seed-oats what they issue to the
Indians they got wild oats mixed in with them. Wild
oats they hurt the stock. You can't sell good oats with
them mixed in. But my crop ain't got none o' that
kind." He ceased wearily, sunk back in his chair.
"I might lend you some money," I said.
He looked at me, but apathetically. "Then I could
buy my children somethin'."
I placed the money in his hand. "Cheer up," I said.
"You'll have better luck next year."
"I would hire a machine, pay for it from the crop,
but I can't find one nowhere. New they cost seventy-
five dollars. I can't buy one."
"No, no. The Government doesn't mean that you
shall have to. It intends to provide that for you."
"Yes," he said, "but that Government's in Washing
ton, a long way off. It can't make engineers work when
they busy way out here on the reservation."
"Where," I ventured, "are the two good reapers
now?"
"Layin' out in the sage brush. Them folks they
don't bring 'em back to the Agency and the agent he
don't make 'em."
"Next year those will be broken too."
Teepee Neighbors 177
He sighed. Then he looked at the money in his
hand. "I thank you," he said.
THE INFORMERS
"Cheyenne, Wyo.
Nov. 6.
Dear Friend : —
I want to ask you go see my wife. Indians they
write me she horned her baby and she don't get well.
I ask you go see. Give her money. I know them folks
they poor cause my oat crop fail. Nobody be there
to water it after I have to go way. When I come out
this place I work for you. I pay. Tell her me I be all
right. I ain't sorry here in prison. Three months I
guess it go quick.
Your friend
Henry Howling Crane.
I just like say to you I never did have no whiskey in
my tent. No more don't Arthur. He say so. That
Agency man must put in that coat pocket himself
make trouble for us. Arthur and me we thinking that.
Henry."
I turned the little, blue-lined sheet over and about.
I stared at its straggling, ill- formed words, at its fre
quent smudged thumb marks. Then I read its contents
again.
The Half-breed, through the blue of his cigarette
smoke, eyed me curiously.
"Do you know the whole story?" he asked.
178
Teepee Neighbors 179
"About the finding of the whiskey? Why, yes."
"I said the whole story ; the first part especially."
"I didn't know there was a first part."
"I thought not, but there was. You never heard of
the great Agency graft case that happened before you
came here, five — no, six — years ago?"
"Of course I've heard of it. You mean the time
that half the money appropriated by the Government
for the building of laterals from the main ditch was
said to have been stolen ? That time the Indians came
up to the Agency to be paid for their work on the
laterals and the cheques were passed to them backs up
ward, over the agent's counter? And the men were
directed how to endorse them and were made to do so
without turning them over? Then when the cheques
were signed they were at once withdrawn and the
Indians were handed out the amount in cash they
knew to be due them.. Each man receiving his full pay
was consequently satisfied. It was a simple enough
trick and it would have worked all right if some of
the younger men had not become curious. 'They never
gave us our pay that way before,' they said. Then two
or three of them snatched their cheques and turned
them- over . . . The sums written on the faces amounted
to double and more what the men were receiving."
"And were you told which men turned the cheques
over and what they did then?"
i8o Teepee Neighbors
"I heard there were three of them who signed that
letter to the commissioner in Washington, the letter
that exposed the whole graft and asked that an inves
tigation be made. And then an inspector came, and he
made it pretty hot for the whole Agency. And finally
after the findings had been sent to Washington and an
answer received, an employee and a trader were sum
marily ejected from the reservation. The agent and
the other trader, who were said to have been involved,
saved their official necks by no more than a hair's
breadth. And now the only reason — or so most people
seem to think — that the lot of them aren't putting in
a few well earned years in the Rawlins 'pen/ is be
cause the affair took place in a year of important
elections — just before them, in fact — and the votes and
influence of the gang were needed by the senator and
the others, who stood behind the grafters."
The cynical eyes narrowed. "Ah ! I see you've
got us here put up pretty pat... And the names of
the three informers, do you happen to know them?"
I shook my head.
The Half-breed got up and so suddenly that it might
almost have been said that he leapt to his feet; with
nervous, soundless steps he crossed over to the stove
and cast into it the butt of his cigarette.
"One was James Badger— he's dead." He wheeled
about, fixing me with his eye. "The other two were
Teepee Neighbors 181
Arthur Broken Horn and — " his hand waived airily
toward my letter, "your correspondent."
"How strange, — " I began, not knowing just how
much of the implication I was expected to understand.
"You think so?"
I folded the letter primly and inserted it in its
envelope.
"Do sit down. You make me fidgetty when you
prance."
He stopped, looked at me, laughed — and sat down.
"I will," he said.
Then ensued a half-minute's silence.
"May I smoke again?"
"Of course."
He selected a cigarette from his case, twisted it in
his lean, yellow fingers, lit it, carried it to his lips.
Then he flung himself about in his chair, settling the
length of him at some sort of ease. There was some
thing lithe and yet lazy in the pose of the man, alert
though somnolent.
"Well, what do you think of my theory ?"
"As a matter of fact you haven't got to the theory
yet."
"Oh! haven't I?" The mocking eyes searched the
depths of mine.
"Of course Arthur and Henry are the last ones
anyone would have suspected of caching whiskey, or of
182 Teepee Neighbors
giving it to the school boys. That last was the charge
they were sent up on, was it not?"
He nodded. "Do you remember how the whiskey
was found?"
"Yes. An Agency employee who had no ostensible
business in the Indian camp suddenly burst into their
tent — Arthur and Henry were camping together.
They are great friends, you know — "
"I do. And I know also that the stars were in felici
tous conjunction that day and that the Agency white
man is a great watcher of the Heavens — " He puffed
out a thick cloud of smoke.
" — the employee offered no word of explanation
but began to rummage furiously. Before the astonish
ed inmates of the tent could make a move to stop him
he had burst into their grub-box, even stripped their
beds of the covers. At last he unearthed an old
slicker and from its pockets produced two bottles partly
filled with whiskey. Then he cried out his accusation
to the two still bewildered men, and with his booty,
disappeared. In a little while the Indian police came
and arrested the fellows."
"Correct. And did you know that before the police
men came the wives, and some of the steadiest of the
old men, wanted those two to skip off and hide ; prom
ised, in fact, to see and keep them safely cached . . . ?"
"And they wouldn't go?"
Teepee Neighbors 183
"They wouldn't go."
"...I have always felt Henry was such a good
man. He takes care of that blind boy, you know, and
that old woman, neither of them any relation to him.
I understand — "
"Ah, 'goodV Ambiguous term! Kind, if you like,
but not necessarily. . . "
"I know. I know," I interrupted. "I know what
you are going to say, all of it, but must you condemn
too?"
He straightened himself in his chair, composed his
face as by an effort. He shook his head. "There's
been condemnation enough. I'll cast no stones — " he
dropped his eyes, "for your sake."
"Rather, for Henry's."
"Rather for Henry's. I'm sorry. He is good. You
see I make amends. Yes, good, as the patient ox be
fore the butcher's axe ; good, but maddening."
"But the odds against him! What could he have
done?"
"Nothing. No more than could the ox. But he
maddens me just the same."
I sighed.
"But he is good. Especially just now by compar
ison."
"He is." I spoke severely. "Of course the Indians
1 84 Teepee Neighbors
do smuggle lots of liquor into the reservation, but
Henry is not one of those who do it habitually at any
rate. Beside that he would hardly have been so foolish
as to have risked such facile discovery "
"Exactly," said the smooth, cynical voice. The
black eyes twinkled.
I picked up the letter from my lap. "He writes me
that his wife's sick now. It seems that there's a new
baby — Do you know anything about it?"
Again the Half-breed flung himself out of his chair
and up and down the room on nervous feet; for all
the world, I thought, like a caged thing.
"I do," he said. "The baby died. He'll never see it,
Henry won't — that is, not this side of Jordan." His
steely eyes almost leered at me, his mouth twisted
scornfully. Then he got himself together again. "But
I moist be going. I've stayed gossiping too long...
Goodbye."
Just perceptibly he hesitated, then he did, for him, a
most unusual thing. In striding past me he checked
his dash for the door, and stopped, almost wavering,
before me. Then he held out his hand. He did not
look at me.
I took the hand. "I'll go down to the camp to
morrow," I said.
He lifted his gaze to my face, and suddenly I saw
Teepee Neighbors 185
that his eyes had grown soft, even pleading, like a
dog's.
"Do." He no more than whispered the word, and
turning on his hurried, soundless feet he quit the room.
A MATTER OF CUSTOM
HE WAS a small man for an Indian, with a face that
bore a look at once baffled and yearning, like a child
who though repulsed, returns. His skin was very pale,
with that sallow, shadowless look that denotes with
Indians sickness or disturbance of soul. He sat in the
stale and dingy railroad car, crowded close to the win
dow ledge, slumped low in his seat, his eyes fixed
blindly upon the fugitive landscape. Beside him was
the sheriff, in heavy coat and wide hat, his elbows and
shoulders filling the major part of the seat. The young
Indian himself was in clothes as thin as they were
threadbare, though brushed to an irreproachable neat
ness, and adjusted with nicety. He sat at a sort of
numbed ease, except that the muscles about his jaw
twitched and trembled spasmodically.
As I entered the car and remarked him, I went
at once to him. When, Heaven knows with conscious
gentleness I called his name, a look so startled that it
was almost one of agony, convulsed his face. It was
instantly suppressed. He took my proffered hand,
lifted his eyes to mine — eyes large, and gentle for one
of his keen race. We did not speak. There was indeed
nothing to be said. The thing from every point of
view was past words of ours.
Then I let go his hand and quickly he withdrew it,
186
Teepee Neighbors 187
tucking it out of sight at his side, as though he were
thankful that he might conceal that much of himself.
A voice called me by name. I turned. An oldish
man, also in overcoat and wide hat, and seated a little
way behind the young Indian's place, was beckoning
to me. I did not recognize him but the look of his face
was so urgent that I went at once at his call. He
crowded over toward the window, making room for me
beside him.
"You know him?" he asked, and eagerly.
"Oh, yes! Well/'
"Then tell me about the case. Tell me everything
you can."
I looked at him helplessly. The charge on which the
young Indian was arrested was indeed to me an un-
namable one. It bore a strange, mediaeval appellation,
which I myself had never heard in use until I came
to live among Agency-governed Indians.
The man continued. "I'm called on the jury. It's
a United States case, you know, to be tried down in
Cheyenne; not locally. It's a serious charge, you
realize that. It'll mean five years for him, the way
things appear. Maybe more."
I looked at him. "There are two men now," I said,
"in Leavenworth serving five year sentences, on that
same charge."
"You see." There was no mistaking the earnestness
i88 Teepee Neighbors
of the man. His eyes looked as grave even as I felt
mine to be.
"It's a horrid charge and — I don't know much about
Indians. I've always understood though that they
were decent, — at least decent. Tell me, is he that other
kind of a man?"
"Oh, no! I know him well. His first wife, — she
lived only a little while — was one of the girls I was
fondest of. He was a good husband to her. I believe
him to be steady and self-respecting, even high-minded.
This affair has been going on a long time, you know,
though it is only just now that the agent is taking
action."
"Why?" his eyes as well as his voice demanded.
"I— don't just know."
"Do you think it's spite work?"
"No I don't. I'll give the devil his due. It's not all
that at any rate."
"How much?"
"You see this Indian and his wife are both rather
prominent young people, and they have had certain
advantages, in the matter of schooling; and I sup
pose what they did was more of a disappointment to
the agent than the same thing would have been in
others. She's not over school age yet, not past
eighteen."
Teepee Neighbors 189
"They're obliged to stay in school till they're
eighteen?"
"Yes. But as long ago as the summer before last
these two lived together, were married, you understand,
in the Indian way. And when it came time for her to
go back to school they went to the agent together and
asked him for a marriage license. This he refused
them on the ground of her being under age. She then
returned to school, and quietly enough. And she
stayed there faithfully throughout the entire year,
though in the Christmas holidays she went back to
this man, her husband. Her mother was living then;
they all occupied one tent together. He even gave her
family presents for her, I understand. Some of the
girls told me so. There was not the slightest secrecy
or effort at concealment in the whole affair. They
shared one tent. She cooked for him and waited on
him. He paid her bills and her mother's at the store.
They were seen everywhere together, she sitting on
the seat of the wagon beside him, with Indians the
wife's place. Then when school was over that year
they again asked for a license. She is all but eighteen.
Frequently, of course, when there is — a reason, the age
limit is waived, and the girls are allowed to marry.
But there was no reason, in this case. Once more the
license was refused and the girl was told that she must
again in the fall go back to school. But when she went
Teepee Neighbors
back and the agent understood at last how things werer
he was furious.
"And now they are trying him as though she were
a child and he a man who had taken base advantage
of her."
"Hell !" said the man— "I beg your pardon."
"You needn't."
"Well, if he hasn't done what they charge him with,
what has he done ? There seems to be at least a mod
icum of fault."
"He has disobeyed the agent."
"But that's no criminal offense."
"No, though I understand there exists a ruling of
not so very recent date that Indians must be married
legally."
"That, then, is wherein he has offended."
"Yes. He did what his father and grandfather and
all his people had done before him. He wooed and
won according to the custom of his own people, and
then at the demand of his dominant neighbors he would
have married in their way, had he been allowed. He
tried to, twice. Of course even in trying he was guilty
of forcing things. . ."
"I'll swear again if you're not careful."
"But oh! they shouldn't try him on that dreadful
charge ; that bitter, insulting accusation that hits him in
his manhood and her in her motherhood."
Teepee Neighbors 191
A sudden movement ahead of us drew our attention.
The young Indian was leaning forward, half rising to
his feet, peering across the aisle and through the oppo
site window. The train was just passing over the last
corner of the reservation. To one side, on a hill top,
silhouetted against the pale, remote sky of the plains,
stood a rapt and immobile figure; man or woman we
could not tell which. Then the train shot into a cut
and out again, taking thence a new direction. The
young man slumped back into his seat, again hastily
thrusting out of sight his hands. His chin dropped to
the level of his breast.
The Half-breed knocked, opening my door almost
simultaneously. From a pocket of his canvas jacket
protruded a newspaper which I recognized as being a
Cheyenne one.
"Nannie's back/' he said.
"Ah ! Nannie's back, and safely. And Jared?"
"Jared is to cool his heels for six months at Raw-
lins."
"They convicted him !"
"But, my dear lady," and the narrow, cynical eyes
opened suddenly wide, "you didn't expect they'd let him
off? He may be thankful it's six months instead of
as many years. He'll see his son before it can walk at
any rate."
192 Teepee Neighbors
"His son?"
"I understand there's a son/'
"But why must they always convict them? I never
heard of an Indian on trial being exonerated. Stop
being horrid and tell me the reason."
"The reason? Really you ought to know it. It's
because when we Indians aren't dead we're considered
next safest behind bars. So it's rather a matter of race
pride on the part of the whites to see us safely there,
I fancy."
I pushed a chair toward him. "Considering me,"
I said, "you're rude. Beside which cynicism is not
always an ornament."
He pulled the paper from his pocket and held it
out to me. "No, my friend," he said, "but it's a
refuge."
THE DAY DREAM
IT WAS before she left me that day that I told her of
my dream. For a long time I had wished, vaguely, that
she might know of it. And yet before the child had
died I never had had courage enough to relate it to her.
But today, almost before I realized what I was doing I
began telling her of it.
"There is something I have wanted to say to you/'
I said. "It is a very strange thing. I — I want to tell
you of a dream I had, oh! long ago, before indeed you
sent me that note asking me to get the doctor for your
little Millicent, you know."
"Yes, I wrote you that."
"I could scarcely believe my eyes when I read the
letter — Sits-in-the-Night brought it to me — and still
less when I found your name at the end of it. It was
the very night before, the morning before to be exact,
that I had had my dream, about you — about her."
She looked at me strangely. "You dreamt of her?"
"I thought I was there, in the kitchen, and I heard
wheels driving up to our hitching rack and stopping;
then voices, then steps. Finally people came — women
— crossing in front of the kitchen window. They
seemed to be passing around toward the back where
the door opens. I recognized Sadie, she had Hannah
193
194 Teepee Neighbors
on her back, high up on her shoulders. You know the
way she always packs her babies."
"Yevl'know."
"And Lottie was with them, and Amy. They wore
old shawls, their leggings were failing about their
ankles, they looked draggled and torn and their hair
was hanging wild and loose about them — "
"Ah-eef
"And they were crying. Sadie opened the door and
came in. Tears were running down her face. The
other women stood outside and wailed softly, but
bitterly, oh! bitterly. Then Sadie explained. She
said your baby was dead. 'Mollie's baby is dead.
Millicent is dead. We goin' to bury her. We want
you to come. She is out there in the wagon, all wrap
ped in the quilts — and Mollie is there too. We goin'
to dig the grave. Won't you come ?' And all the time
those two out there kept wailing, wailing. I had never
heard them so near before, crying that bitter way, nor
such young women. It is generally the old grand
mothers and far off to one side at the burial that you
hear."
"Yes."
"Then I began reaching out my hands every way;
putting things to rights in the kitchen, getting my
wraps on, preparing to go with them. I fumbled and
blundered. Everything was confused as so often it
Teepee Neighbors 195
is in dreams. This seemed to go on for a long while.
And all the time those two outside "
"Ah-ee!"
"And beside their crying a sort of chorus sounded ;
far off, very faint but very penetrating, a surge of
voices; as though all the crying of all the mothers
bereft throughout the ages was audible to me ... Then
I woke up and I was crying too. My face was all wet
with tears."
She still stared at me strangely, her eyes searching
the depths of mine. Once she shifted her glance but
quickly looked back at me again. A white woman
would have been upon her feet, torturing her fingers ;
but she was Indian, and upon her lay, to her almost
tangibly, the weight of the hopeless ages past and to
come. So she only looked at me, in her eyes the res
ignation of one to whom hope has been ever deferred.
"That was before I received the letter. I had not
heard the slightest whisper of Millicent being ill."
Then she leaned toward me, something acute and
desirous in the action, the pose. With who could say
what of poignancy, of anxiety, of mysticism, she put
me a question which to this day I have never under
stood.
Her eyes blazed into mine. "Did you dream that 'in
the day time?" she cried.
THE UNBORN
HER FEET were upon the flying treadle of my machine,
her fingers poised over the creeping material; above
her watching eyes her brows frowned a little, as in her
scant calico and close-wrapped shawl she bent above
her work. Her hair was parted sedately in the middle,
one long delicate line drawn from forehead to neck.
Its dark meshes hung unbraided, but gathered close and
pressed against her head, disclosing its gentle curves,
and although falling loose was restrained by her en
folding shawl. She worked swiftly, and with that
despatch which denotes skill; yet also with an air un
hurried, leisurely, after the manner of her people, who
work, but ever, at the call of friendliness or need, feel
free to lay down the burden and check the pace. So
ever and anon she paused, pressing her fingers upon
the flying upper wheel, restraining its progress; and
across the intervening machine lifting her eyes to mine.
With her she had brought her sewing ready cut and
folded together. On the floor at one side of her lay
the heap of fitted pieces, on the other the finished fruit
of her accomplishment. Now she was busy laying
together two squares of brightly flowered calico, turn
ing 'in their meeting edges, stitching them securely.
"You'll not make any little clothes for it?"
"No little first clothes, we don't never dress them in
the beginning, you know." Her eyes dropped to the
squares under her hands. "We just wrap them up."
196
Teepee Neighbors 197
"I feel glad that you are going to have another."
She sighed, still eyeing and fingering her sewing.
"I should like to have a lot of children, and my husband
would like it too."
"You are young. You will have them."
"But when they die "
"Ah you needn't tell me of that!"
She began turning the treadle slowly, guiding the
work with her slim, brown fingers.
"I always feel sorry that your sister does not have
any more."
She stayed the wheel, looking up at me strangely.
"She don't want no more."
"Doesn't want them? But I thought all Indians
loved children so much."
"You know she has buried her three."
"And now she is afraid."
"I guess that's it — she takes something. . ."
"What ! Do Indian women do that ? But then they
are as bad as the whites."
"Whites, they do that too? With us the old women
they know a root. They dig it up and pound it fine
and tie it up in little bags and the women that don't
want no babies, they take it."
She regarded me long with her mirthful, strange
gaze. "I think," she said, her eyes although still upon
198 Teepee Neighbors
me giving me the effect of not remarking me, "I think
it is better to want children. After all God made us
women — "
"And a woman who isn't a mother — •" I interrupted.
"Oh !" cried she. "That's the hardest of all. The
women cry and cut their hair and gash their legs and
go in rags when their babies die, but it's better to be a
mother of dead children than not to be a mother at all."
Again her eyes and fingers took cognizance of the
work waiting beneath her hands.
I got up suddenly and crossed over to my treasure
trunk. From it I brought forth a little yellowed gar
ment. I held it out to her. Our eyes rested upon it ;
not upon each other. Then I spoke.
"Do you mind," I said, "because he died?"
She reached out and took it, folded it slowly, and laid
it upon the heap of her finished work.
"Oh no!" she said. "I don't mind. Mine — mine
died too."
THE MAN'S PART
THE BIG, square, barren, rude room which in its exist
ence had progressed from store to school-room and on
to council hall, was filled to overflowing with a throng
of anachronous humanity, rank on rank, tier behind
tier. There was the sound of moccasins slipping grit-
tily over the knotty floor, of the dull, rhythmic thudding
of a mother's foot as she trotted her fretful baby, the
rustling of soft garments, the stirring of unhurried
bodies, the hissing of stealthy whispers. Here and
there two Indians might be seen conversing in the
sign language ; their hands, shielded from sight by en
circling backs, were lifted scarcely above the level of
their laps.
The people were massed one might say ethnolog-
ically. The main part of the crowd was Indian, squat
ting, seated on benches, or standing leaning against
the walls. The two tribes sat separately, as did also
the sexes of each. To right and left at the tapering
ends of the rows were the mixed-bloods, dressed
mainly like the whites except that their garments
looked more home-made, more patternless, more illy
put. Then quite at one end of the room and grouped
about the chairman's table sat the whites; school and
Agency employees, traders, soldiers, ranch neighbors;
an indifferent, self -seeking, heterogeneous group. In
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2OO Teepee Neighbors
the midst of these last, dapper, conspicuously well-
dressed, and well-groomed, presided the inspector from
Washington. His old, dignified face, slightly pompous,
was crowned with grey hair brushed back from his
brow. His hands rested squarely upon his knees. By
his side, taking notes, sat his stenographer, his glance
half curious and half supercilious playing constantly
over the faces of the throng. At either end of the little
table behind which sat the inspector, were stationed the
interpreters, one for each tribe. The eyes of these men
were searching, though their lips seemed to mock
slightly, and when they spoke, rising to interpret, even
though they passed on the phrases with a certain
guarded vehemence, they seemed consciously to pre
serve a detached attitude, as do those who speak but
will not be held accountable for what they say.
Perhaps the arrangement that caused the mixed-
bloods and the other younger Indians to be the first
to deliver their speeches was intentional on the part of
someone. At any rate one by one they arose, in over
alls, in spurs, in bright neckerchiefs, differing from
each other in type and temperament, as differed also
those two tribes, and indeed, the two races, represented
there within the council room.
Occasionally after some speech the inspector would
get up and pronounce 'in continuance a few elucidating
words. He gesticulated slightly and conventionally.
Teepee Neighbors 201
He bent a little toward the interpreters, each in turn.
His words came slowly and with unction.
The subject of the council was the desire of the
Indian Bureau to throw open to white settlement a
half of the reservation. The mixed-bloods and the
younger Indians were, though they spoke but briefly,
in accord in favoring the execution of the plan.
Their words, however, from some lack in themselves
of knowledge or of conviction, were not uttered in a
manner calculated to tip the scale greatly their way.
"It's a question of water rights," they said. "We
must have money to buy those rights and how else can
we obtain it ? It's an obligation to our children."
Again and again the same note was struck. One by
one the young men arose, and one by one sat down
again. The interpreters mopped their tired brows.
The inspector sipped frequently from a glass of water
upon his table.
The air was full of the odor of people, pungent with
the herb perfume worn by the Indians in little sacks
sewed to the clothing, acrid with the smell of sage
clinging to shawls and dresses, with the flavor of
smoke-tanned buckskin. A half -open window let in
a little fitful breeze that played wantonly with the dust
showing in the sunlight of the upper reaches of the
room, flirting and whisking about the heads of the
throng.
2O2 Teepee Neighbors
At last it came time for the weightier speeches, for
those of the councilmen, of the chiefs, of indeed the
older men of the two tribes, the patriarchs of this
patriarchal people.
"Sell our land?" they cried. "Retreat? Give up?
Be forced into contact with intermingling whites?
Take money in place of our land? What, money for
the good of these traders who will get it all from us
in the end?" Their old faces hardened; their eyes
flamed. "Give up? Retreat? Move on? Abrogate
the old promises, the old treaties? What, again?"
Their lips twisted bitterly. "Do you not know, does
not the Great Father at Washington know, that all we
ask now of life is a little land, a little peace, a little
place wherein to live quietly our quiet life, and in the
end a little ground for our narrow bed? Move on!
That we think was the first word the whites — " the
'outsiders/ the 'aliens/ was the name they in the Indian
tongue gave this other race — "said to us. It seems
they are saying it yet/' The soft bitter voices ceased ;
the old men sank into their seats, the interpreters too
relaxed, wiping their faces.
The inspector stood up cautiously, apologetically
even. "But these old men, the chiefs, do not seem to
have caught the point. The whole question of selling
or not selling turns on the matter of their water rights ;
on theirs and their childen's as has been said. Land
Teepee Neighbors 203
even in this beautiful Wyoming valley is a mockery
without water. They can I am sure understand that ;
water they must have."
An old chief rose solemnly, turned deep, scornful
eyes upon the inspector. "Let the white man from
Washington go but a mile yonder," his extended arm
pointed that way, "and he will see the river that flows
down our valley and waters our land. It is there. It
is ours. It is born in these mountains above us. God
made them, I suppose as he made it. It is ours."
Along the packed rows there was a slight stirring.
Patiently again the inspector arose. "I know that it
is hard for the old people to understand that having
water does not necessarily mean having rights to that
water. There exist hundreds of white men below you,
beyond the border of your reservation, who have taken
up claims along this same stream and who have filed
on its water prior to any Indian having done so. The
State must recognize this priority. The whites have
filed on the water and have paid the dues. Beside
that as the law stands now the Indians cannot individ
ually take out water rights. I know that you will say
that when this reservation was given to these two
tribes, a matter of a generation and a half ago, the
water was included with the land, 'to the center of the
streams bordering the reservation/ as your old treaty
reads. But times and conditions have changed since
2O4 Teepee Neighbors
then. At that period the Federal Government control
led the water of Wyoming, now its disposition has
been turned over to the State, Where the Indians
stand in this matter has never been decided by law."
The mixed-bloods who understood at least partially,
shifted uneasily.
"But now — although the question of priority has still
not been decided — • the Indian Bureau — which I repre
sent — says that you as a tribe may buy your water
rights. For this you must have money." He named a
sum reaching far into the thousands. "The sale of
your land will bring you this amount of money, at
least. This thing is intricate and impossible I believe
to elucidate to the older people, your leaders. They
must, I fear, just hear my statements and, if they can,
believe." With his hands he made a deprecating little
gesture. Then he sat down.
There was silence in the room, complete save for a
slight stirring, the sound of deep breathing, and the
fretting, here and there, of a hungry child.
Finally at the back of the room, by some shifting of
his pose, by thrusting himself forward beyond the
relief of his line, an Indian made his presence known.
He was a man of powerful build, of nobly moulded
head ; his hair instead of having been braided, had been
gathered forward into two loosely twisted strands ; his
Teepee Neighbors 205
eyes showed speculative yet keen, his mouth was
sharply chiseled though withal soft in its lines, and
there was a kindly look on his face which gave some
how the impression of the morning light seen upon the
rugged side of a great mountain. In age he seemed to
be between the young and the old.
As he made his presence known there was a slow
turning of the heads in his direction, a slight tensing
of the crowd. The old chiefs appeared suddenly eager
and filled with hope ; as for the younger men and the
mixed-bloods they glanced at him and looked away
again, as if, sighing they said : "Another on the wrong
side. Ah, the blind old men !"
Then he spoke. His voice was deep, very virile,
carefully subdued as something held in leash, and yet
through it there seemed to run a tremor, a quaver
almost, that gave an impression of strange intensity.
I repeat his words with elision.
"I am not one of the old men," he said, "and yet I
can easily remember the time when this valley, these
mountains, were ours ; not because someone had given
them to us, but because we had taken them for our
selves, because our arrows flew straightest, our spears
reached furthest, our horsemen rode fastest, our hearts
were bravest."
Here several of the old men grunted sympathet-
2o6 Teepee Neighbors
ically. More and more the faces of the throng were
turned toward the speaker.
"Then everything was changed. The strangers came
like a flood, like our rivers in the spring: they surged
over us and they left us — as we are. Perhaps this was
the will of the Stranger-on-High, we cannot tell...
But these strangers on earth were not altogether un
kind to us. For what they took they gave a sort of
compensation. It was as though they carried away
from us fat buffaloes and then handed to us in ex
change each a little slice of their meat. They deprived
us of our valley and our mountains but instead they
gave us each eighty acres of the land. Then they sent
more strangers with chains and three-legged toys to
measure these off correctly for us. They gave us wire
for our fences but only enough so that we must spend
much money for more. They gave us seed, but also
so little that we were driven to buy more. We worked
— some of us with the chains and three-legged toys —
some at the ditches, every way we could, for now we
needed a new thing — something of which we had
before known nothing, money. We received it —
and then we spent it."
Again faint grunts and groans encouraged him.
"For we cannot keep money long. We are children.
This the Great Father in Washington understands,
and also that our ears are dull, that our eyes cannot
Teepee Neighbors 207
read his written words. Therefore, in his kindness,
he sends to us this man to speak to us face to face."
He turned his slow gaze upon the inspector. In his
eyes was the look of mockery. "We have listened to
his words. But what has he said to us? 'Give up the
eighty acres, for your children to be born, give up the
money you earned and spent, give up your homes ; as
you gave up this valley and these mountains. The
white men need them. Your day is past. But I am
not unkind. Without compensation I will not deprive
you. See, I will give you even a little more money — ' '
He stopped abruptly. His eyes drooped, his shoulders,
his hands, the whole man.
A strained silence had fallen upon the room, smother
ed it. From it escaped the faint sighing of the younger
men. The chiefs stiffened as they sat.
By an effort the speaker seemed to rouse himself.
He stared strangely about the room. "There was a
little boy once," he said, and his voice had grown
dreamy, slightly high in pitch, "and this little boy held
his hand out toward the flames, nearer, — I saw it—
the fire was so pretty, so warm, it danced, purred,
sparkled. His hand crept nearer, nearer. His father
watched him. At the last moment he caught him and
pulled him away. The child cried then, he struggled
in his father's arms, he pushed away from him, he
fought. Again he reached out toward the flame. But
2o8 Teepee Neighbors
finally he looked up into the man's face and suddenly
it seemed to dawn on him that, although he could not
understand, this was indeed his father, old and wise
and loving; and that he, by comparison, was only a
little misguided child . . . " The strange, vibrant
voice dwindled, broke. The speaker made a wide ges
ture toward the attentive inspector, held it while the
interpreters got forth in English his last sentence.
Then he sank back into his old place against the wall ;
with one bent hand he wiped the sweat from his brow.
A faint sound of muttering passed over the room;
old fierce eyes were \eiled, young keen ones peered in
credulously. But the insector was on his feet on the
instant, his hand outstretched to grasp the golden
moment.
"There is no more to be said," he cried. "Our ears
are ringing with words. Our hearts are full. I have
here, prepared, a paper. Let those who for their own
good and the good of their children, are of a mind to
sell, now sign it."
Slowly, amidst moving and murmuring, the long
paper, in the hands of one of the interpreters, made its
deliberate rounds. Difficult signatures were inscribed
in slow succession. Ancient, unaccustomed hands,
deft enough with spear or bow, grasped awkwardly the
pen and with it made their wavering "mark."
Some there were of the old men, indeed the majority
Teepee Neighbors 209
of them, who wrapping their blankets about them
arose, and shambling, withdrew, aloof and soundless.
Like a shaken kaleidoscope the council broke up.
The inspector leaned back in his chair, a hand
shielding the working of his mouth. His eyes searched
the variegated, dissolving throng. The stenographer,
still seated and playing with his idle pencil, shot him
an understanding glance.
Later the Half-breed, standing on the board walk
outside the trading store, a box of crackers in one hand,
a paper containing pickles in the other, was lunching
heartily. Suddenly he shifted everything into his left
hand and strode down into the road. For in company
with his wife and a young son the last of the speakers
was passing.
The Half -breed's extended hand grasped the
Indian's.
"I thank you for what you said," he cried. "It was
a noble thing to have done. You faced them all; the
old timers, the chiefs, public opinion, prejudice. And
you won. It was a brave act."
The rugged, illuminated face was turned to him, the
deep eyes rested squarely upon his. "You have perhaps
forgotten," he said. "You are younger than I am and
too you have been for a long time with the whites — but
I remember well the time when we were boys and our
great head-chief Black Star used to sit and talk with
2io Teepee Neighbors
us. Yes, you have perhaps forgotten/* he repeated,
and his look, just touched with yearning, rested upon
the younger man. "But I remember — I have never
forgotten what he used to say to us. 'Be brave,' he
would tell us. 'That is the chief thing to learn ; to do
what each one believes is right, to speak for the right,
everywhere, always. To be fearless of tongues, of
persecution, to take counsel with our own minds and
being sure to speak out surely. That/ he always said
to us, 'and that only, is the man's part/ "
TIT FOR TAT
THIS WHOLE affair was one that seemed so un
speakable, that was whispered with such pale lips, such
starting eyes, from camp to camp, from man to man,
from woman to woman, that only its merest exterior
was ever known to us who were outsiders. But the
end of it was open enough, and told and hopeless and
final.
At what we call our Sub-agency there was the usual
trading store and in it worked as clerk and general
assistant an Indian. He was a man, I should judge, of
about forty, a little too old to have ever been a Govern
ment school boy ; a man of steady, almost stately bear
ing, of fine head held proudly upon powerful shoulders,
of keen level glance, and personal appearance most
fastidious.
At first he had been employed in the store as a sort
of janitor, a man to sweep floors, fill lamps, tend
stoves, open freight boxes. He had worked steadily,
silently, observantly; and then at the end of one un
interrupted year he had sought out the trader. He
spoke in Indian, which his employer understood.
"I can read," he said, "and I can write a little, and I
can figure. I have been learning." He picked up book
and pencil lying to hand and made good his claims.
The trader regarded him with astonishment. When
211
212 Teepee Neighbors
the man had first come to him to work he had been
able to speak but few and hesitating words in English.
"How in the world — ?"
The steady, imperturbable eyes smiled wisely. "My
little girl goes to school, and my wife's brother — "
"I see." The trader regarded the man measuringly.
Then he took a turn up and down the store. He stop
ped in front of the Indian. "George," he said. "I need
another clerk. Will you take the job?"
So in my day George Smoke was the chief clerk in
the Sub-agency store, often in entire charge of it and
of its little postoffice. He was the trusted right hand
of the trader. There was no Indian on the reservation
more respected than he.
He was a married man, living in a little two-room
cabin which the trader provided and which was close
to the store. His wife was a youngish, rather light-
minded woman; the mother of several children; a little
addicted to gambling. We thought that her ways were
not always approved of by her husband.
Then the crash came, unforeseen, unattended. Of
course, as the girls said, Jasper Blue Bird was fre
quently seen hanging about Smoke's wife's house, but
then, he did not seem to be secret about it — he bore
some distant relationship to Smoke — and the husband
was just a stone's throw away, often on his duties pass-
Teepee Neighbors 213
ing in and out of the store and in full view of his
home.
At length a day came when Smoke, his head as high
as ever, his eyes level and imperturbable, went to the
trader.
"Long Neck," he said— it was the Indian name for
the man — "I want to quit."
The trader stared. "To quit? To quit the store?"
"Yes. I want my pay."
"But youVe been with me three years, over three
years. I can't run the store without you, George. And
there's that fall shipment of freight just coming in — I
was thinking you could begin tomorrow unpacking and
listing it. I thought "
"I got to quit."
The trader might as well have appealed for leniency
to the smiling sky as to the serene, implacable face
confronting him.
"You'll— you'll be coming back?"
"1 don't know."
For a long time the trader fumbled over his accounts
and the contents of the cash drawer before he found
the right pay for his clerk. He was confounded.
Silent, pleasant, impenetrable before him, stood Smoke.
At last the money was counted out, the receipt signed.
The Indian took his pay without a word, turned on his
214 Teepee Neighbors
moccasin-shod feet, and strode out of the store, his
sleek head a little lowered.
Then for two months Smoke did nothing. He
moved his family out of the cabin which belonged to
the trader and 'into a tent also in the vicinity of the
store. There he might frequently be seen — as might
also his wife. Their four children were in the board
ing school.
The very observant said that Jasper Blue Bird had
ceased going to Smoke's wife's tent.
Jasper himself was also a married man, with a mild
timid little Mission girl for his wife. Although three
years had gone by since the day of their marriage there
had as yet been no children born to them, only she
plaintive of face, was in the teepee to welcome him, or
to speed him. But often there were also with her her
women relations, her mother, her aunts, her grand
mother. Their presence, frequent, chattering, irked her
husband. She knew this, vaguely, and yet seemed
never able to find the courage to send them away but
stood plaintive and wistful between the antipathetic
factions of her house.
Then suddenly at night with a terrible sound of
sobbing this little wife had flung herself upon the door
step of the Mission, clutching and scratching at the
locked door. The sisters within, wild-eyed and
scared, had opened to the sound of her distress. She
Teepee Neighbors 215
lay torn, bruised, and disheveled in a frenzy of fright,
incoherent, almost speechless.
Her mother was sent for. Then her husband.
The woman came wide-eyed, loud-voiced, fearful,
aghast. They waited for the husband, but it was two
days before he arrived, slinking in after dark, abashed
and furtive.
The doctor also came and there followed with him
a fearful scene of humiliation. Then his evidence was
reported to the agent.
Her own story ran like this : She had been coming
home from her mother's tent to her own, just a little
way. It was dark. Yes, and cold. She had her blan
ket up over her head and had been walking fast. She
had not heard so much as a step until — here she always
stopped, choking, and sobbed spasmodically.
"Yes, it was George Smoke."
They regarded her gravely. "You are quite sure it
was George Smoke?"
Beside little Mrs. Blue Bird there was one other
person who was "quite sure," and that was George
Smoke's wife. Her attitude was singular. For she
went to the agent's office, alone, and there standing
before him, her shawl drooping and trailing about her,
she denounced her own husband. She was very
specific. "It was revenge," she said. They stared at
her, not understanding.
216 Teepee Neighbors
"Explain!"
This of course she could not do.
Then came out the stories of the frequent visits of
Jasper Blue Bird to Smoke's wife's tent. Finally a
charge was brought against Jasper.
Both men were tried at the next term of court.
Jasper appeared cowed, cringing; he stepped lightly,
veiled his eyes, even bowed himself a little.
George Smoke however was his constant, haughty,
imperturbable self. Even the sight of the plaintive
little wife, his pitiful victim, did not visibly shake
him. When asked for his explanation, excuse, if
excuse there was, he only laughed, staring insolently
at the judge.
Considering the delicate nature of the case had the
trial been a "white" one, it would have been carried on
behind closed doors. But as it was, the populace, ugly,
scandalous, foul, of the little county seat was admitted,
and freely. The two women were stared at, appraised ;
the men eyed sullenly, with indeed an occasional gleam
of sinister mirth. That the wife of Smoke would soon
bear another child was only too apparent.
The sentences of the two men were similar, five years
at hard labor in the "pen" at Rawlins. And in a
few days, hand-cuffed and side by side, the two were
led away.
But all the time in the eyes of George Smoke, wheth-
Teepee Neighbors 217
er he looked at his own hard-eyed wife or at the
stooping, cringing man toward whom her eyes so
frequently turned, or at the little weeping childless
wife of Jasper Blue Bird, was visible a gleam of
triumphant satisfaction, of hunger glutted.
So we saw him at the last, the steady, exultant look
in his eyes, his bearing calm, relentless, assured, un
shaken.
THE OTHER MAD MAN
THEY CALLED him Crooked Hand. He had another
name, two, in fact ; an English one and a proper Indian
one. But because his hand and arm were crooked —
withered, twisted — they called him Crooked Hand,
making a descriptive sign for him in their language
of signs. His leg was also crooked, also withered and
twisted, and beside that he was an epileptic. A strange
disheveled looking creature he was; a rough shock of
stiff, short hair crowned him, ill assorted ragged clothes
covered him, he wore any odd shoes that came his way ;
in short he was neither prepossessing nor clean. His
great eyes that seemed startled, even hurt, in their ex
pression, were soft, unlike the steely sharpness of most
Indian eyes, but withal shallow, as are the eyes of
animals; eyes that indeed seemed hardly the windows
of a soul.
His conversation, in English at least, was decidedly
limited, was in fact restricted almost to one single
sentence.
"How do you do, George?"
"Hello ! hello !"
"Well, what's the news in the camps?"
Then he would look at you with his strange, pathetic,
almost animal eyes and smiling his wistful bewildered
smile he would gently reply, "Dam-fi-no." Often I
had heard him thus innocently answer many innocent
218
Teepee Neighbors 219
questions, and yet each time that the incongruous
phrase was hurled at me I would have to hold my face
steadily to keep it seemly.
"And your step-mother, what is she doing today?""
Again the wistful, bewildered smile would light the
sombre eyes, again in the soft, hoarse voice: "Dam
n-no."
Sometimes he would arrive looking more directly
gloomy than usual.
"What is it?" I would cry.
And he, struggling with the elusive English would
manage : "Hungry, heap hungry. No bread. No
meat. Children cry." And he would saw his hand
across his middle in the "hungry" sign.
As we all know it is good when we are a little stirred
to be able to do something immediate and definite. So
I would spring up, fly to my refrigerator for scraps;
meat, bread, cold potatoes, cold pancakes, seasoned or
unseasoned, any way, any thing; and I would heap a
great plateful and set it on his uneven knees. He
would stare at it with famished eyes ; and he would eat
of it, but only a little, a taste of this, a taste of that.
And then he would ask me for a bit of paper — all the
time with his starving eyes upon the food — and, with
a certain dexterity despite his crooked hand he would
empty the scraps into the spread paper, and wrapping
22O Teepee Neighbors
all together he would rise to his uncertain feet, a smile
upon his face, hunger in his eyes.
"You're not going to eat any more?"
"No. Them children, heap hungry. I take."
"Oh! all right." Not for worlds would I have
tarnished with so much as a finger-touch, his altruism.
"But you'll have a cigarette before you go, won't you?"
At that he would lay down his bundle and, seating
himself securely, he would smile up at me from his
crazy, shallow eyes, and, as he smiled, help himself to
my proffered tobacco and paper.
"I savvy roll 'em. You ever see me?"
"No," I always said as I stood before him to admire.
Upon his knee he would flatten out the little oblong of
paper, pour into it the requisite amount of tobacco,
manage, not unskilfully with his one hand, to roll his
cigarette.
"That's fine," said I. "How did you learn to do it?"
And "Dam-fi-no," would answer George, pleasantly.
Then resuming his bundle he would arise and lurch
painfully away.
"Of course you might send him away," I suggested.
"There's a place — an asylum — you know for Indians
who are not — are not — well, you understand. But
he's alright except when he has those 'spells/ as you
call them, isn't he?"
"He has 'em often now."
Teepee Neighbors 221
"It's pretty hard on all of you."
"The children they bese 'fraid o' him."
"Then why not send him away?"
"You see — he's awful kind, and good. When we
short o' grub he just don't eat nothin', 'most. Gives it
all to them kids.
"Then why are they afraid of him?"
"He — he took the axe once — "
"The axe!"
"Yes. You mind the time that blind boy, Sits-in-
the-Night, come here to see you? His head was
bleedin' you remember? And you drove him up to
the Agency to the doctor."
"Certainly I do. He told me his horse had thrown
him."
"I know he told you that. He didn't want to make
no trouble for — for George." Involuntarily the fin
gers of his right hand tapped upon the wrist of his
bent left. "But, really it was Crooked Hand done it,
he took the axe — "
"Oh, my goodness !"
"Afterward when the spell was over he feelin' so
bad he cryin' about it."
Another day soon after this, Crooked Hand came,
stumbling and lurching, to my door. His face worked ;
tears streamed from his shallow eyes.
"Why, George! What's the matter? What is it?"
222 Teepee Neighbors
He found a chair. "They take my gun/' he mtmv
bled. I want it. I want shoot. Poom\" His good
hand made a suggestive sign against his own breast.
"I die."
"Oh, George, no, no !"
He glowered at me. "I take my gun. I shoot/'
He repeated the words doggedly.
"What's happened now. What's so much the mat
ter?"
He stared at me vacantly. "Dam-n-no," he said.
All day he sat in that same chair, glowering, mum
bling, eating when I gave him food, talking in his un
intelligible English, whenever I would listen. It was
to me a distressing and a very long day. About sun
down his step-mother with one of her children came
for him. He left me much as he had come, muttering,
crying a little, half reluctant and altogether bewildered.
Then I heard that he had gone ; that they had taken
him to that place of mysterious location and tenantry,
that vestibule of the realms of death; that bourne
whence, in common with death, no traveler, or almost
none, returns. It seemed that what had brought the
thing to an issue had happened at the Sun Dance.
When every one was inside the lodge, absorbed by its
thrilling spectacle, Crooked Hand, outside, had been
attacked by one of his "spells." His evil spirit rode
and goaded him. An old inoffensive Indian lay asleep
Teepee Neighbors 223
in the shade of some nearby bushes. The possessed
man came upon him. A broken bottle which presented
itself to him opportunely served for his weapon. He fell
upon the old man viciously. The commotion was
heard even in the dance lodge. Men rushed out. The
victim was quickly rescued, the mad-man bound. But
the affair, having happened in that crowded public
place, got noised about, came at last even to the agent's
ears.
"He must go. There is an asylum in South Dakota
to which he must be sent."
So an employee of the government was delegated
to take him to that unknown place. To reach it they
must make a journey of nearly twenty- four hours, and
by train.
Of his parting with his people I know nothing. No
one ever spoke of it to me and I never asked of it.
Some things are better left mercifully covered. But of
the journey I heard later from the employee who had
accompanied him.
"No, he didn't give me any trouble. He slept all
right, and he ate all right. But he seemed uneasy. At
every little noise he would start and glance quickly over
his shoulder. And he insisted on sitting faced the
wrong way and staring and staring back in the direction
from which we had come. He would not talk. I
could not get even his famous phrase out of him. And
224 Teepee Neighbors
once he cried a little. I could see the tears running
unheeded down his cheeks. And after all, in a way, he
is a man . . . When we had nearly reached Canton we
were obliged to pass from one car to another quite at
the other end of the train. He walked ahead of me; I
followed at his heels guiding and encouraging him. In
the lurching of the train it seemed an endless journey.
At last we passed into a sleeping car to be confronted
by a full-length mirror. Crooked Hand saw it, or
rather what it reflected. He stopped dead; then he
strode up close to it, halted again, stared. I laid my
hand on his arm. 'Go on! Go on!' I said. But he
heeded me not at all. In the mirror, over his shoulder,
I saw his face. It was transfigured, beatific. His lips
moved; he was speaking brokenly in Indian. He
stretched out a shaking hand. The man in the glass
of course did likewise. I have never seen on a human
face such an expression of trembling yearning, of in
credible joy.
"Every one was staring at us ; as you can imagine
every face in that car was turned toward us. I shook
him a little. 'Come, George, come ! You must, really/
But he was still oblivious, standing staring, staring —
Then he lurched and made as though he would sink
down upon the floor. I caught him by his arm to
check him. 'George, come on, come on! what is it?
What's the matter?'
Teepee Neighbors 225
"For an instant he rested his vacant eyes on mine,
then eagerly sought again the reflection in the mirror.
Suddenly a terrible sob broke from him and he seemed
to collapse and shrink together against my arm.
" 'Come on, boy, come on !'
"He lifted a trembling, grimy hand and pointed it
toward the creature confronting him. He seemed to
be struggling for speech. Did he imagine, I wondered,
that the man before him was another Indian, come to
him in his loneliness? Or had he, rather, an inkling
that that wild-eyed, disheveled creature was indeed
the ghost of his poor self ? At any rate all this emotion
was proving too much for his shallow wits. His head
sank limp upon his breast.
"I shook his arm. The scene, with everybody staring
at us, was growing unbearable.
" 'George, what is it?'
"Then, his chin upon his breast, his vacant eyes on
the floor, he mumbled a reply. 'Dam-fi-no/ he said."
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