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IV
THE BEAUTIFUL ELSIE BEE BEE
As Jennie entered the mess-house she uttered a little cry of amazement. Outwardly, it was a rude barrack of whitewashed cottonwood logs, but its interior glowed with color and light. Bright rugs were on the floor, and a big divan in one corner displayed a monstrous black bear-skin. A capacious fireplace, which dated back to the first invasion of the army, filled one end of the hall, which had been enlarged by the removal of a partition. Oil-paintings, without frames, were tacked against the walls, and the odor of fresh pigments lingered in the air.
"This is our general meeting-place," explained Lawson.
"It smells like a studio," Jennie replied, after a glance around her.
A plain, quiet little woman, with a look of inquiry on her face, appeared at the dining-room door, and Lawson called out:
"Mrs. Wilcox, this is Miss Curtis, who will stay with us for a few days." As they greeted each other he added: "There is a story to tell, but we are late, and it can wait. Where is Elsie?"
"Still at work. She never would come to her meals if we didn't call her."
"I'm disposed to try it some day. Will you take charge of Miss Curtis while I go fetch the delinquent?"
Under Mrs. Wilcox's direction Jennie prepared for luncheon in an adjoining room, wondering still at the unexpected refinement of the furnishings, and curious to see the artist.
As she re-entered the sitting-room a tall girl rose languidly to meet her, and Lawson said: "Miss Curtis, this is Miss Brisbane, the painter of the pictures you see about."
Miss Brisbane bowed in silence, while Jennie cried out: "Oh! did you do them? I think they are beautiful!"
The sincerity of her voice touched the young artist, and she said: "I'm glad you like them – sometimes I think they're pretty 'bum.'"
A slang word on the red lips of the handsome girl seemed wofully out of place to Jennie, who stared at her with the eager curiosity of a child. She was slender and dark, with an exquisite chin, and her hands, though slim and white, were strong and capable. Her eyes were very dark, of a velvety brown-black, and her hair was abundant and negligently piled upon her small head. Altogether she had a stately and rather foreign presence, which made Jennie feel very dowdy and very commonplace.
Mrs. Wilcox hurried them all out into the dining-room, where a pretty table was spread for six people. Jennie's attention was absorbed by the walls, which were also lightened with sketches of small, red babies in gay cradles, and of glowing bits of tawny plain and purple butte.
"Did you do all of these beautiful things?" she asked.
Lawson interposed. "She did, Miss Curtis. Be not deceived. Miss Brisbane's languid manner springs from her theory of rest. When work is finished she 'devitalizes' – I think that is the word – and becomes a rag. But she's a horrible example of industry, spineless as she now appears."
Miss Brisbane remained quite unmoved by Lawson's words; smiling dreamily, her red lips, as serene as those of a child, softly shaped themselves to say: "The strung bow needs relaxation."
"I think you are right," said Jennie, with sudden conviction.
Elsie opened her eyes wide and murmured, "Thank you."
Jennie went on: "Now my trouble is just that. I'm always nerved up. I can't relax. Won't you teach me how?"
"With pleasure. Are you going to live here?" asked Elsie, with faint accession of interest.
"As long as my brother does."
"I suppose you've come to teach these ragamuffins?"
Lawson here answered for Jennie. "Miss Curtis is a sister to Captain Curtis, who has come to displace your uncle."
Miss Brisbane looked up blankly. "I don't understand."
Lawson became explicit, and as she listened the girl's hands clinched.
"How abominable!" she cried, with eyes aflame.
"Not at all. If Mr. Sennett is an honest employé of the government, he should be willing to be searched – if he isn't, then no measure is too harsh. He'll get a thorough raking over, if my impression of the new agent is correct."
"My father would not put a dishonest man in this place," insisted Elsie, "and I don't believe Uncle Sennett has done wrong."
"Well, now, we'll suspend judgment," retorted Lawson, who knew just when to change his tone. "Captain Curtis is an officer of known ability, and no one can accuse him of prejudice. His living doesn't depend upon pleasing either Mr. Sennett or your father. Undoubtedly the government has good reasons for sending him here, and I for one am willing to accept his judgment."
Elsie rose in swift resolution. "I say it is an outrage! I am going to see that Uncle Sennett is not persecuted."
Lawson laid his hand on her arm and his voice was sternly quiet. "I think you would better finish your tea. Whatever protest you feel called upon to make can be made later. If you like," he added, in a gentler voice, "I will represent you in the matter and go with you to see Captain Curtis during the afternoon. I don't think we should trouble him now."
Elsie resumed her seat without either accepting or rejecting his offer, and the meal continued in some constraint, although Lawson summoned his best humor to cover Elsie's passionate outburst.
A few minutes later Elsie sullenly retired to her studio, and Lawson said: "I am going out to see what is going on, Miss Curtis; please make yourself at home here."
When the door closed behind him Jennie turned to Mrs. Wilcox. "Why does Mr. Lawson use that tone with Miss Brisbane – are they engaged?"
Mrs. Wilcox laughed. "That's just what none of us knows. Sometimes I think they are husband and wife – he lectures her so."
When Curtis joined the mess in the evening he was weary and a little sombre. Vastly preoccupied with his difficult task at the office, he had given but little attention to Jennie's announcement of having been taken into the bosom of an artistic family messing at the barracks, and when Elsie met him in a regal gown, glittering and changeful, he pulled himself up in surprise and admiration.
Elsie, on her part, was eager to see him and ready to do battle, but as he faced her, abrupt, vigorous of movement, keen-eyed and composed – almost stern of countenance – she was a little daunted. He was handsomer than she had expected, and older. His head was impressive, his frame muscular, and his movements graceful. Plainly he was a man of power, one it would be politic to treat with respect.
As they took up their napkins at the table Lawson opened out: "Well, Captain, we don't want to seem inquisitive, but we are dying to know what you've been doing this afternoon. We feel on the outside of it all."
"Yes," Elsie quickly added, "we want to know whether there is to be a revolution, or only a riot."
Curtis turned to her smilingly and replied: "You'll all be disappointed. I've been looking over accounts and holding humdrum audience with my clerks – a very busy but very quiet afternoon – nothing doing, as the phrase goes."
"Where is Uncle Sennett?" inquired Elsie. "I tried to find him, but your men would not let me into the office."
"You shouldn't have tried," interjected Lawson.
"Is he your uncle?" asked Curtis.
"He's my father's sister's husband – but that doesn't matter; I'd defend him if he were a stranger. I think he has been shamefully treated. The idea of searching his private desk!"
Curtis looked at her keenly. "I am under orders," he said. "Mr. Sennett is nothing to me, one way or the other. The question for answer is – has he abused his office?"
"He has not!" exclaimed Elsie. "I know he has not. He is not a man to cheat and steal; he is not a strong man, but he is kind and generous."
"Too kind and too generous," muttered Lawson.
"I'm sorry to say that the records are against him," replied Curtis, "and his action is against him. He and his son have gone to Pinon City – riding very like fugitives. I had no orders to hold them; indeed, I was glad to let them go."
Elsie bit her lips. "He has gone to get aid," she said at last, "and when he comes back you will take a different tone with him."
Curtis laughed. "I believe he did say he'd have my hide, or something like that."
Lawson put in a word. "He'll do it, too, if the cattle interest can influence the Secretary. Don't tell us any more than is proper, Captain, but – how do you find his accounts?"
"In very bad shape. The chiefs say he has been holding back rations and turning in bad beef for some time."
"You'd take the word of a nasty Indian against my uncle, or any white man, I can see that," said Elsie, in withering scorn.
Curtis turned upon her a most searching glance. "Miss Brisbane, I don't understand your attitude towards me. As a soldier on special duty, detailed almost against my will, I have no prejudice in this affair. It is my duty to see that the treaties of the government are carried out. You seem to think I am started on a line of persecution of your uncle – " he checked himself. "I beg you will not pursue the subject any further." He turned to Lawson with an effort to put aside unpleasant conversation. "Please don't ask me disagreeable questions when I am curious to know the meaning of this artistic invasion of my territory. Who is responsible for these pictures?"
Lawson hastened to explain. "This plague of artists is due to me entirely, Captain Curtis. I am doing some studies of the Tetongs, and Miss Brisbane came out to make some illustrations for me. In fact, she suggested coming here rather than to the upper agencies, because of her uncle's presence. Our coming brought others."
"I am very glad you came," said Curtis, heartily, "and I will do all in my power to further your work. Please do not allow my coming to change your plans in the slightest degree."
Lawson continued: "Intending to stay some months, we concluded to set up a mess and be comfortable – and permit me to say, we hope you'll eat with us until your own goods arrive."
"Thank you; I accept with pleasure, for I don't enjoy camping in the tent of my angry predecessor – this company is more to my mind."
Elsie's red lips were tremulous with indignation. "You can't blame Mr. Sennett for being angry. You would be if treated in the same way. There is no justice in it. I would never have surrendered those keys to you."
Curtis patiently repeated, "My orders were peremptory."
"You can't take shelter behind that plea. Your acts are atrocious, and I shall write to my father in Washington and have you investigated." She was beautiful as flame in the glow of her wrath.
Curtis seemed struck with a new idea. "Are you the daughter of ex-Senator Brisbane?"
She braced herself. "Well, suppose I am?"
"Oh, nothing at all – only it explains."
"What does it explain?"
"Your attitude. It is quite natural for a daughter of Andrew Brisbane to take sides against these people." He was not in a mood to be gallant, and his glance quelled the angry girl.
With flushed face and quivering lips she sprang to her feet. "I will not stay to be insulted," she said.
Curtis rose as she swept from the room, but checked his instinctive words of apology and returned to his seat in silence.
Mrs. Wilcox relieved the painful pause by saying, "Captain Curtis, you must not misjudge Elsie. She is a much better girl than she seems."
Lawson was troubled as he said, "She has lashed herself into a great rage over this affair, but as a matter of fact she don't care a hang for Sennett."
"I can't apologize for doing my duty," said Curtis, "even to Miss Brisbane."
"Certainly not," replied Lawson, though he was deeply hurt by Elsie's display of unreason.
As soon as he decently could, he followed her to her studio, where he found her lying in sullen dejection on the big divan. "Bee Bee, you are missing a good dinner," he began, gently.
She was instantly ready to fight. "I suppose you blame me for this scene."
"I think you are hasty, and a little unreasonable. I know Curtis by reputation, and he is above any petty malice."
"You are taking his side against me!"
"Not at all, Bee Bee, I am merely trying to show you – "
"He looked at me as no man ever dared to look before, and I hate him. He thinks because he has a little authority he can lord it over us all here. I shall write to father at once, telling him just how this little prig of a lieutenant – "
"Captain," interrupted Lawson – "for distinguished service."
His smile made her furious. She flung herself back on the divan. "Go away. I hate you, too."
Lawson, at the end of his patience, went out and closed the door behind him. "What is the matter with the girl?" he said to Mrs. Wilcox. "I've seen her in temper, but never like this. She has taken the most violent antagonism to Curtis."
"She'd better let that young man alone," replied Mrs. Wilcox, sagely. "He has a very firm mouth."
V
CAGED EAGLES
The word had gone out among all the red people that the old agent was entirely "cut off," and that a soldier and a sign-talker had come to take his place, and so each little camp loaded its tepees on wagons or lashed them to the ponies and came flocking in to sit down before the Little Father and be inspired of him.
The young men came first, whirling in on swift ponies, looking at a distance like bands of cowboys – for, though they hated the cattlemen, they formed themselves on Calvin Streeter as a model. Each wore a wide, white hat and dark trousers, and carried a gay kerchief slung round his neck. All still wore moccasins of buckskin, beautifully beaded and fringed, and their braided hair hung low on their breasts.
The old men, who jogged in later in the day, still carried blankets, though they, too, had adopted the trousers and calico shirts of the white man. Several of the chieftains preserved their precious peace-pipes, and their fans and tobacco pouches, as of old, and a few of those who had been in Washington came in wrinkled suits of army-blue. The women dressed in calico robes cut in their own distinctive style, with wide sleeves, the loose flow of the garment being confined at the waist with a girdle. As this was a time of great formality, several of the young girls returned to their buckskin dresses trimmed with elk teeth, which they highly prized.
As a race they were tall and strong, but the men, from much riding, were thin in the shanks and bowed out at the knee. They had lost the fine proportions for which they were famed in the days when they were trailers a-foot. "Straight as an Indian" no longer applied to them, but they were all skilled and picturesque horsemen. Lacking in beauty and strength, they possessed other compensating qualities which still made them most interesting to an artist. Their gestures were unstudiedly graceful, and their roughhewn faces were pleasant in expression. Ill words or dark looks were rare among them.
In all external things they were quite obviously half-way from the tepee to the cabin. Their homes consisted of small hovels of cottonwood logs, set round with tall tepees and low lodges of canvas, used for dormitories and kitchens in summer. A rack for drying meat rations was a part of each family's possessions. They owned many minute ponies, and their camps abounded in dogs of wolfish breed which they handled not at all, for they were, as of old, merely the camp-guard.
Such were the salient characteristics of the Tetongs, westernmost representatives of a once powerful race of hunters, whose home had been far to the east, in a land of lakes, rivers, and forests. They were not strangers to the young soldier; he knew their history and their habits of thought. He now studied them to detect change and found deterioration. "I am your friend," he said to them each and all. "I come to do you good, to lead you in the new road. It is a strange road to me also, for I, too, am a soldier and a hunter; but together we will learn to make the earth produce meat for our eating. Put your hand in mine."
He was plunged at once into a wilderness of work, but in his moments of leisure the face of Elsie Brisbane came into his thought and her resentment troubled him more than he cared to acknowledge. He well knew that her birth and her training put her in hopeless opposition to all he was planning to do for the Tetongs, and yet he determined to demonstrate to her both the justice and the humanity of his position.
He knew her father's career very well. He had once travelled for two days on the same railway train with him, and remembered him as a boastful but powerful man, whose antagonism no one held in light esteem. Andrew Brisbane had entered the State at a time when its mineral wealth lay undeveloped and free to the taker, and having leagued himself with men less masterly than himself but quite as unscrupulous, had set to work to grasp and hold the natural resources of the great Territory – he laid strong fists upon the mines and forests and grass of the wild land. Once grasped, nothing was ever surrendered.
It mattered nothing to him and his kind that a race of men already lived upon this land and were prepared to die in defence of it. By adroit juggling, he and his corporation put the unsuspecting settler forward to receive the first shock of the battle, and, when trouble came, loudly called upon the government to send its troops "in support of the pioneers." In this way, without danger to himself, the shrewd old Yankee had acquired mineral belts, cattle-ranges, railway rights, and many other good things, and at last, when the Territory was made a State, he became one of its senators.
Naturally, he hated the red people. They were pestilential because, first of all, they paid no railway charges, and also for the reason that they held the land away from those who would add to his unearned increment and increase the sum total of his tariff receipts. His original plan was broadly simple. "Sweep them from the earth," he snarled, when asked "What will we do with the Indians?" But his policy, modified by men with hearts and a sense of justice, had settled into a process of remorseless removal from point to point, from tillable land to grazing land, from grazing land to barren waste, and from barren waste to arid desert. He had no doubts in these matters. It was good business, and to say a thing was not good business was conclusive. The Tetong did not pay – remove him!
Elsie in her home-life, therefore, had been well schooled in race hatred. Tender-hearted where suffering in a dog or even a wolf was concerned, she remained indifferent when a tribe was reported to be starving. Nothing modified her view till, as an art student in Paris, she came into contact with men who placed high value on the redman as "material." She found herself envied because she had casually looked upon a few of these "wonderful chaps," as Newt Penrose called them, and was often asked to give her impressions of them. When she returned to New York she was deeply impressed by Maurice Stewart's enormous success in sculpturing certain types of this despised race. A little later Wilfred J. Buttes, who had been struggling along as a painter of bad portraits, suddenly purchased a house in a choice suburb on the strength of two summers' work among the mountain Utes.
Thereupon Elsie opened her eyes. Not that money was a lure to her, for it was not, but she was eager for notice – for the fame that comes quickly, and with loud trumpets and gay banners. In conversation with Lawson one day she learned that he was about to do some pen-portraits of noted Tetong chieftains, and at once sprang to her opportunity. She admired and trusted Lawson. His keen judgment, his definiteness of speech awed her a little, and with him she was noticeably less assertive than with the others of her artist acquaintances. So here now she sat, painting with rigor and immense satisfaction the picturesque rags and tinsel ornaments of the Tetongs. To her they were beggars and tramps, on a scale with the lazzaroni of Rome or Naples. That they were anything more than troublesome models had not been borne in on her mind.
She had never professed special regard for her uncle the agent – in fact, she covertly despised him for his lack of power – but, now that the issue was drawn, she naturally flew to the side of those who would destroy the small peoples of the earth. She wrote to her father a passionate letter.
"Can't you stop this?" she asked. "No doubt Uncle Henry will go direct to Washington and make complaint. This Captain Curtis is insufferable. I would leave here instantly only I am bound to do some work for Mr. Lawson. We must all go soon, for winter is coming on, but I would like to see this upstart humbled. He treats me as if I were a school-girl – 'declines to argue the matter.' Oh! he is provoking. His sister is a nice little thing, but she sides with him, of course – and so does Lawson, in a sense; so you see I am all alone. The settlers are infuriated at Uncle Sennett's dismissal, and will support you and Uncle Henry."
In the days that followed she met Curtis's attempts at modifying her resentment with scornful silence, and took great credit to herself that she did not literally fly at his head when he spoke of his work or his wards. Her avoidance of him became so painful that at the end of the third day he said to his sister: "Jennie, I think I will go to the school mess after this. Miss Brisbane's hostility shows no signs of relenting, and the situation is becoming decidedly unpleasant."
"George!" said Jennie, sternly. "Don't you let that snip drive you away. Why, the thing is ridiculous! She is here on sufferance – your sufferance. You could order them all off the reservation at once."
"I know I could, but I won't. You know what I mean – I can't even let Miss Brisbane know that she has made me uncomfortable. She's a very instructive example of the power of environment. She has all the prejudices and a good part of the will of her father, and represents her class just as a little wild-cat represents its species. She's a beautiful girl, and yet she is to me one of the most unattractive women I ever knew."
Jennie looked puzzled. "You are a little hard on her, George. She is unsympathetic, but I think she says a lot of those shocking things just to hurt you."
"That isn't very nice, either," he said, quietly. "Well, our goods are on the way, and by Thursday we'll be independent of any one. But maybe you are right – it would excite comment if I left the mess. I will join you all at meals until we are ready to light our own kitchen fire."
Thereafter he saw very little of the artists. By borrowing a few necessaries of his head farmer he was able to camp down in the house which Sennett had so precipitately vacated. He was busy, very busy, during the day; but when his work was over and he sat beside his fire, pipe in hand, Elsie's haughty face troubled him. His life had not taken him much among women, and his love fancies had been few. His duties as an officer and his researches as a forester and map-builder had also aided to keep him a bachelor. Once or twice he had been disturbed by a fair face at the post, only to have it whisked away again into the mysterious world of happy girlhood whence it came.
And now, at thirty-four, he was obliged to confess that he was as far from marriage as ever – farther, in fact, for an Indian reservation offers but slender opportunity in way of courtship for a man of his exacting tastes.
He was not quite honest with himself, or he would have acknowledged the pleasure he took in watching Elsie's erect and graceful figure as she rode past his office window of a morning. It was pleasant to pause at the open door of her studio for a moment and say "Good-morning," though he received but a cold and formal bow in return. She was more alluring at her easel than in any other place, for she had several curious and very pretty tricks in working, and seemed like a very intent child, with her brown hair loosening over her temples, her eyes glowing with excitement, while she dabbed at the canvas with a piece of cheese-cloth or a crumb of bread. She dragged her stool into position with a quick, amusing jerk, holding her brush in her teeth meanwhile. Her blouses were marvels of odd grace and rich color.
The soldier once or twice lingered in silence at the door after she had forgotten his presence, and each time the glow of her disturbing beauty burned deeper into his heart, and he went away with drooping head.
Mrs. Wilcox took occasion one day to remonstrate with her niece. "Elsie, you were very rude to Captain Curtis again to-day. He was deeply hurt."
"Now, aunt, don't you try to convert me to a belief in that tin soldier. He gets on my nerves."
"It would serve you right if he ordered us off the reservation. Your remarks to-day before that young Mr. Streeter were very wrong and very injudicious, and will be used in a bad cause. Captain Curtis is trying to keep the peace here, and you are doing a great deal of harm by your hints of his removal."
"I don't care. I intend to have him removed. I have taken a frightful dislike to him. He is a prig and a hypocrite, and has no business to come in here in this way, setting his low-down Indians up against the settlers."
"That's just what he is trying not to do, and if you weren't so obstinate you'd see it and honor him for his good sense."
"Aunt, don't you lecture me," cried the imperious girl. "I will not allow it!"
In truth, Mrs. Wilcox's well-meant efforts at peace-making worked out wrongly. Elsie became insufferably rude to Curtis, and her letters were filled with the bitterest references to him and his work.
Lawson continued most friendly, and Curtis gladly availed himself of the wide knowledge of primitive psychology which the ethnologist had acquired. The subject of Indian education came up very naturally at a little dinner which Jennie gave to the teachers and missionaries soon after she opened house, and Lawson's remarks were very valuable to Curtis. Lawson was talking to the principal of the central school. "We should apply to the Indian problem the law of inherited aptitudes," he said, slowly. "We should follow lines of least resistance. Fifty thousand years of life proceeding in a certain way results in a certain arrangement of brain-cells which can't be changed in a day, or even in a generation. The red hunter, for example, was trained to endure hunger, cold, and prolonged exertion. When he struck a game-trail he never left it. His pertinacity was like that of a wolf. These qualities do not make a market-gardener; they might not be out of place as a herder. We must be patient while the redman makes the change from the hunter to the herdsman. It is like mulching a young crab-apple and expecting it to bear pippins."
"Patience is an unknown virtue in an Indian agent," remarked the principal of the central school – "present company excepted."
"Do you believe in the allotment?" asked Miss Colson, one of the missionaries for kindergarten work, an eager little woman, aflame with religious zeal.
"Not in its present form," replied Lawson, shortly. "Any attempt to make the Tetong conform to the isolated, dreary, lonesome life of the Western farmer will fail. The redman is a social being – he is pathetically dependent on his tribe. He has always lived a communal life, with the voices of his fellows always in his ears. He loves to sit at evening and hear the chatter of his neighbors. His games, his hunting, his toil, all went on with what our early settlers called a 'bee.' He seldom worked or played alone. His worst punishment was to be banished from the camping circle. Now the Dawes theorists think they can take this man, who has no newspaper, no books, no letters, and set him apart from his fellows in a wretched hovel on the bare plain, miles from a neighbor, there to improve his farm and become a citizen. This mechanical theory has failed in every case; nominally, the Sioux, the Piegans, are living this abhorrent life; actually, they are always visiting. The loneliness is unendurable, and so they will not cultivate gardens or keep live-stock, which would force them to keep at home. If they were allowed to settle in groups of four or five they would do better."
Miss Colson's deep seriousness of purpose was evident in the tremulous intensity of her voice. "If they had the transforming love of Christ in their hearts they would feel no loneliness."
A silence followed this speech; both men mentally shrugged their shoulders, but Jennie came to the rescue.
"Miss Colson, did you ever live on a ranch, miles from any other stove-pipe?"
"No, but I am sure that with God as my helper I could live in a dungeon."
"You should have been a nun," said Lawson. "I don't mind your living alone with Christ, but I think it cruel and unchristian to force your solitary way of life on a sociable redman. Would Christ do that? Would He insist on shutting the door on their mythology, their nature lore, their dances and ceremonies? Would He not go freely among them, glad of their joy, and condemning only what was hurtful? Is there any record that He ever condemned an innocent pleasure? How do you know but they are as near the Creator's design as the people of Ohio?"
The teacher's pretty face was strained and white, and her wide-set eyes were painful to see. She set her slim hands together. "Oh, I can't answer you now, but I know you are wrong – wickedly wrong!"
Jennie again broke the intensity of the silence by saying: "Two big men against one little woman isn't fair. I object to having the Indian problem settled over cold coffee. Mr. Lawson, stop preaching!"
"Miss Colson is abundantly able to take care of herself," said Slicer, and the other teachers, who had handed over their cause to their ablest advocate, chorused approval.
Curtis, who sat with deeply meditative eyes fixed on Miss Colson, now said: "It all depends on what we are trying to do for these people. Personally, I am not concerned about the future life of my wards. I want to make them healthy and happy, here and now."
"Time's up!" cried Jennie, and led the woman out into the safe harbor of the sitting-room.
