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XII
SPRING ON THE ELK

Spring came early in that latitude, and Curtis was profoundly thankful that his first winter had proven unusually short and mild, for it enabled him to provide for his people far better than he had dared to hope. The rations were insufficient at best, and for several days of each alternate week the grown people were hungry as well as cold, though no one actually perished from lack of food. Beyond the wood contract and the hauling of hides each month there was very little work to be done during the winter, not enough to buy the tobacco the men longed for.

They believed in Swift Eagle, however, for he visited every cluster of huts each month, and became acquainted with nearly every family during the winter. No agent had ever taken the like pains to shake the old women by the hand, or to speak as kindly to the old men who sat beside the fire, feeble and bent with rheumatism. The little children all ran to him when he came near, as if he were a friend, and that was a good sign, too. Some of the old chiefs complained, of course – there was so little else for them to do; but they did not blame the Little Father. They were assured of his willingness to do whatever lay within his power to mitigate their poverty. Jennie, who was often at the beds of those who suffered, had won wide acceptance of her lotions by an amused tolerance of the medicine-men, whose mystic paraphernalia interested her exceedingly. The men of magic came at last to sing their curious songs and perform their feats of healing in her presence. "Together we will defeat the evil spirits," they said, and the health of the tribe continued to be very good, in spite of unsanitary housing and the evil influence of the medicine-men. When the missionaries came to have the native doctors suppressed Curtis said: "My policy is to supplant, not to suppress."

The bill which called for the removal of the Tetongs to another reservation was reported killed. The compromise measure for buying out the settlers was "hung up" in the committee-room, and this delay on the part of Congress exasperated the settlers beyond reason, and at a convention held early in April at Pinon City, Joseph Streeter brazenly shouted, "If the government does not remove these Injuns before the first of July we'll make it hot for all concerned," and his threat was wildly cheered and largely quoted thereafter as the utterance of a man not afraid of Congress or anybody else.

Seed-time came without any promise of change, and the white settlers on the reservation went sullenly to their planting, and the cattlemen drove their herds across the boundaries upon the Tetong range as they had been doing for many years. "We are in for another season of it," they said, with the air of being martyrs in the cause of civilization.

Curtis immediately sent warning commands to all the outside ranchers to keep clear of the reservation, and also notified Streeter, Johnson, and others of the settlers on the Elk and the Willow that their cattle must not be allowed to stray beyond certain lines, which he indicated. These orders, according to Calvin, made the settlers "red-headed as wood-peckers. They think you're drawin' the lines down pretty fine."

"I mean to," replied Curtis. "You original settlers are here by right and shall have full opportunity to graze your stock, but those on the outside must keep out. I will seize and impound all stock that does not belong on this land."

Calvin reported this statement to the outside men, and its audacity provoked the most violent threats against the agent, but he rode about unaccompanied and unarmed; but not without defence, for Calvin said to one of the loudest of the boasters, "The man who jerks a gun on Curtis runs a good chance of losing a lung or two," and the remark took effect, for Calvin had somehow acquired a reputation for being "plumb sassy when attack-ted."

Curtis had the army officer's contempt of personal injury, and, in pursuance of his campaign against the invading stockmen, did not hesitate to ride into their round-up camps alone, or accompanied only by Crow Wing, and no blusterer could sustain his reputation in the face of the agent's calm sense of command.

"I am not speaking personally," he said once, to an angry camp of a dozen armed men. "I am here as an officer of the United States army, detailed to special duty as an Indian agent, and I am in command of this reservation. It is of no use to bluster. Your cattle must be kept from the Tetong range."

"The grass is going to waste there," the boss argued.

"That does not concern you. It is not the fault of the Tetongs that they have not cattle enough to fill the range."

In the end he had his way, and though the settlers and ranchers hated him, they also respected him. No one thought of attempting to bribe or scare him, and political "pull" had no value in his eyes.

Jennie, meanwhile, had acquired almost mythic fame as a marvellously beautiful and haughty "queen." Calvin was singularly close-mouthed about her, but one or two of the cowboys who had chanced to meet her with the agent spread the most appreciative reports of her beauty and of the garments she wore. She was said to be a singer of opera tunes, and that she played the piano "to beat the Jews." One fellow who had business with the agent reported having met her at the door. "By mighty! she's purty enough to eat," he said to his chum. "Her cheeks are as pink as peaches, and her eyes are jest the brown I like. She's a 'glad rag,' all right."

"Made good use o' your time, didn't ye?" remarked his friend.

"You bet your life! I weren't lettin' nothin' git by me endurin' that minute or two."

"I bet you dursn't go there again."

"I take ye – I'll go to-morrow."

"Without any business, this time? No excuse but jest to see her? You 'ain't got the nerve."

"You'll see. I'm the boy. There ain't no 'rag' gay enough to scare me."

It became a common joke for some lank, brown chap to say carelessly, as he rose from supper, "Well, I guess I'll throw a saddle onto my bald-faced sorrel and ride over and see the agent's sister." In reality, not one of them ever dared to even knock at the door, and when they came to the yards with a consignment of cattle they were as self-conscious as school-boys in a parlor and uneasy as wolves in a trap, till they were once more riding down the trail; then they "broke loose," whooping shrilly and racing like mad, in order to show that they had never been afraid. Calvin continued to call, and his defence of the agent had led to several sharp altercations with his father.

The red people expanded and took on cheer under the coming of the summer, like some larger form of insect life. They were profoundly glad of the warmth. The old men, climbing to some rounded hill-top at dawn, sat reverently to smoke and offer incense to the Great Spirit, which the sun was, and the little children, seeing the sages thus in deep meditation, passed quietly by with a touch of awe.

As the soft winds began to blow, the dingy huts were deserted for the sweeter and wholesomer life of the tepee, which is always ventilated, and which has also a thousand memories of battle and the chase associated with its ribbed walls, its yellowed peak, and its smouldering fires. The sick grew well and the weak became strong as they passed once more from the foul air of their cabins to the inspiriting breath of the mountains, uncontaminated by any smoke of white man's fire. The little girls went forth on the hills to gather flowers for the teachers, and the medicine-men, taking great credit to themselves, said: "See! our incantations again prevailed. The sun is coming back, the grass is green, and the warm winds are breathing upon the hills."

"Ay, but you cannot bring back the buffalo," said those who doubted, for there are sceptics among the redmen as elsewhere. "When you do that, then we will believe that you are really men of magic."

But the people did not respond cheerfully to Curtis when he urged them to plant gardens. They said: "We will do it, Little Father, but it is of no use. For two years we tried it, and each year the hot sun dried our little plants. Our corn withered and our potatoes came to nothing. Do not ask us to again plough the hard earth. It is all a weariness to no result."

To Jennie, Curtis said: "I haven't the heart to push them into doing a useless thing. They are right. I must wait until we have the water of the streams for our own use."

The elder Streeter was very bitter, Calvin reported. "But he ain't no idyot. He won't make no move that the law don't back him up in; but some o' these other yaps are talkin' all kinds of gun-play. But don't you lose any flesh. They got to git by me before they reach you."

Curtis smiled. "Calvin, you're a loyal friend, but I am not a bit nervous."

"That's all right, Captain, but you can't tell what a mob o' these lahees will do. I've seen 'em make some crazy plays – I sure have; but I'll keep one ear lapped back for signs of war."

XIII
ELSIE PROMISES TO RETURN

One beautiful May day Curtis came into the house with shining face.

"Sis, our artists are coming back," he called to Jennie from the hall.

"Are they? Oh, isn't that glorious!" she answered, running to meet him. "When are they to reach here? Whom did you hear from?"

"Lawson. They can't come till some time in June, however."

Jennie's face fell. "In June! I thought you meant they were coming now – right away – this week."

"Lawson furthermore writes that he expects to bring a sculptor with him – a Mr. Parker. You remember those photographs he showed us of some statues of Indians? Well, this is the man who made the figures. His wife is coming as chaperon for Miss Brisbane."

"She still needs a chaperon, does she?"

"It would seem so. Besides, Mrs. Parker goes everywhere with her husband."

"I hope she'll be as nice as Mrs. Wilcox."

"I don't think Lawson would bring any crooked timber along – there must be something worth while in them."

"Well, I am delighted, George. I confess I'm hungry for a message from the outside world; and during the school vacation we can get away once in a while to enjoy ourselves."

The certainty of the return of the artistic colony changed Curtis's entire summer outlook. Work had dragged heavily upon him during February and March, and there were moments when his enthusiasm ebbed. It was a trying position. He began to understand how a man might start in his duties with the most commendable desire, even solemn resolution, to be ever kindly and patient and self-respecting, and end by cursing the redmen and himself most impartially. Misunderstandings are so easy where two races are forced into daily contact, without knowledge of each other's speech, and with only a partial comprehension of each other's outlook on the world. Some of the employés possessed a small vocabulary of common Tetong words, but they could neither explain nor reason about any act. They could only command. Curtis, by means of the sign language, which he had carried to marvellous clearness and swiftness, was able to make himself understood fairly well on most topics, but nevertheless found himself groping at times in the obscure caverns of their thinking.

"Even after a man gets their thought he must comprehend the origin of their motives," he said to Wilson, his clerk. "Everything they do has meaning and sequence. They have developed, like ourselves, through countless generations of life under relatively stable conditions. These material conditions are now giving way, are vanishing, but the mental traits they formed will persist. Think of this when you are impatient with them."

Wilson took a pessimistic view. "I defy the angel Gabriel to keep his temper if he should get himself appointed clerk. If I was a married man I could make a better mark; but there it is – they can't see me." He ended with a deep sigh.

Curtis took advantage of Lawson's letter to write again to Elsie, and though he considered it a very polite and entirely circumspect performance, his fervor of gladness burned through every line, and the girl as she read it fell to musing on the singularity of the situation. He was in her mind very often, now; the romance and the poetry of the work he was doing began at last to appeal to her, and the knowledge that she, in a sense, shared the possibilities with him, was distinctly pleasurable. She had perception enough to feel also the force of the contrast in their lives, he toiling thanklessly on a barren, sun-smit land, in effort to lead a subject race to self-supporting freedom, while she, dabbling in art for art's sake, sat in a secure place and watched him curiously.

"How well he writes," she thought, returning to his letter. His sentences clutched her like strong hands, and she could not escape them. As she read she drew again the splendid lines of his head in profile, and then, a sentence later, it seemed that he was looking straight into her eyes, grave of countenance, involved in some moral question whose solution he considered essential to his happiness and to the welfare of his people. Surely he was a most uncommon soldier. When she had finished reading she was sincerely moved to reply. She had nothing definitely in mind to say, and yet somehow she visualized him at his desk waiting an answer. "The worst of it is, we seem to have no topic in common except his distressing Indians," she said, as she returned to her work. "Even art to him means painting the redmen sympathetically."

But he could not be put aside. He was narrow and one-sided, but he was sincere and manly – and handsome. That was the very worst of it; he was too attractive to be forgotten. Therefore she took up her pen again, being careful to keep close to artistic motives. She spoke of the success of her spring exhibition, and said: "It has confirmed me in the desire to go on valiantly in the same line. That is the reason I am coming back to the Tetongs. I feel that I begin to know them – artistically, I mean; not as you know them – and I need your blazing sunlight to drink up the fogs that I brought from Holland and Belgium. The prismatic flare of color out there pleases me. It's just the white ray split into its primary colors, but I can get it. I'm going to do more of those canvases of the moving figure blended with the landscape; they make a stunning technical problem in vibration as well as in values; and then the critics shout over them, too. I sold the one you liked so well, and also five portraits, and feel vastly encouraged. Owen Field was over from New York and gave me a real hurrah. I am going to exhibit in New York next fall if all goes well with me among the Tetongs."

XIV
ELSIE REVISITS CURTIS

Jennie thought her brother the handsomest man in the State as they walked up and down the station platform waiting for the express train which was bringing Elsie and Lawson and a famous Parisian-American sculptor and his wife. Curtis was in undress uniform, and in the midst of the slouching crowd of weather-beaten loafers he seemed a man of velvet-green parade grounds and whitewashed palings, commanding lines of polished bayonets.

He was more profoundly stirred at the thought of Elsie's coming than he cared to admit, but Jennie's delight was outspoken. "I didn't know how hungry for a change I was," she said. "They will bring the air of the big city world with them."

The whistle of the far-off train punctuated her sentences. "Oh, George, doesn't it seem impossible that in a few moments the mistress of that great Washington home will descend the car-steps to meet us?"

"Yes, I can't believe it," he replied, and his hands trembled a little as he nervously buttoned his coat.

The train came rapidly to a stop, with singing rods, grinding brakes, and the whiz of escaping steam. Some ordinary mortals tumbled out, and then the wonderful one!

"There they are!" cried Jennie. "And, oh – aren't her clothes maddening!"

Lawson, descending first, helped Elsie to the platform with an accepted lover's firm touch. She wore a blue-cloth tailored suit which fitted marvellously, and her color was more exquisite than ever. Admiring Jennie fairly gasped as the simple elegance of Elsie's habit became manifest, and she had only a glance for the sculptor and his wife.

Elsie, with hands extended, seized upon them both with cordial intensity. A little flurry of hand-shakings followed, and at last Mr. and Mrs. Jerome Parker were introduced. He was a tall man with a bush of yellow beard, while she was dark and plain; but she had a pleasant smile, and her eyes were nice and quiet.

"Do you know, I'm overjoyed to get back!" said Elsie to Curtis. "I don't know why I should be, but I've been eagerly looking for the Cleft Butte all day. Jerome will tell you that I expressed a sort of proprietorship in every prairie-dog."

"We are very glad to have you here again," replied Curtis. "And now that you are here, we must get your belongings together and get away. We are to camp to-night at the Sandstone Spring."

"A real camp?"

"A real camp. We could drive through, of course, but it would be tiresome, and then I thought you'd enjoy the camp."

"Of course we shall. It's very thoughtful of you."

"Everything will be ready for us. I left Two Horns to look after it."

"Then it will be right," said Lawson, who was beaming with placid joy. "Isn't it good to breathe this air again? It was stifling hot in Alta City. I never knew it to be hotter in the month of June."

While they talked, Crane's Voice was collecting the trunks, and in a few minutes, with Elsie by his side, Curtis drove his three-seated buckboard out upon the floor of the valley, leaving the squalid town behind. Lawson and Mrs. Parker occupied the middle seat, and Jennie and the tall sculptor sat behind. They were all as merry as children. Elsie took off her hat and faced the sun with joyous greeting.

"Isn't this glorious? I've dreamed of this every night for a month."

"That's one thing the Tetong has – good, fresh air, and plenty of it," said Lawson.

"A thin diet, sometimes," Curtis replied. He turned to Elsie. "Your studio is all ready for you, and I have spoken to a number of the head men about you. You'll not lack sitters. They are eager to be immortalized at your convenience."

"You are most kind – I am going to work as never before."

"You mustn't work too hard. I have a plan for an outing. One of my districts lies up in the head-waters of the Willow. I propose that we all go camping up there for a couple of weeks."

"Do you hear that, Osborne?" she called, turning her head.

"I did not – what is it?"

Curtis repeated his suggestion, and Parker shouted with joy. "Just what I want to do," he said.

Curtis went on: "We'll find the redman living there under much more favorable conditions than down in the hot valley. We have a saw-mill up in the pines, and the ladies can stay in the superintendent's house – "

"Oh no!" interrupted Elsie. "We must camp. Don't think of putting us under a roof." A little later she said, in a low voice: "Father is in Chicago, and expects to be out here later. I mean, he's coming to make a tour of the State."

"How is his health?" Curtis asked, politely.

Her face clouded. "He's not at all well. He is older than he realizes. I can see he is failing, and he ought not to go into this senatorial fight." After a pause she said: "He was quite ill in March, and I nursed him; he seemed very grateful, and we've been very good friends since."

"I'm glad of that," he replied, and bent closely to his driving.

"You drive well, Captain."

"An Indian agent needs to be able to do anything."

"May I drive?"

"You will spoil your gloves."

"Please! I'll take them off. I'm a famous whip." She smiled at him with such understanding as they had never before reached, as she stripped her gloves from her hands and dropped them at her feet. "Now let me take the reins," she said. He surrendered them to her unhesitatingly.

"I believe you can drive," he said, exultantly.

Her hands were as beautiful as her face, strong and white, and exquisitely modelled; but he, looking upon them with keen admiration, caught the gleam of a diamond on the engagement finger. This should not have chilled him, but it did. Then he thought:

"It is an engagement ring. She is now fairly bound to Lawson," and a light that was within him went out. It was only a tiny, wavering flame of hope, but it had been burning in opposition to his will all the year.

As she drove, they talked about the grasses and flowers, the mountain range far beyond, the camping trip, and a dozen other impersonal topics which did not satisfy Curtis, though he had no claim to more intimate phrase. She, on her part, was perfectly happy, and retained her hold of the reins and the whip in spite of his protest.

"You must not spoil your beautiful hands," he protested; "they are for higher things. Please return the lines to me."

"Oh no! Please! Just another half-hour – till we reach that butte. I'm stronger than you think. I am accustomed to the whip."

She had her way in this, and drove nearly the entire afternoon. When he took the reins at last, her fingers were cramped and swollen, but her face was deeply flushed with pleasure.

"I've had a delicious drive," she gratefully remarked.

At the foot of a tall butte Curtis turned his team and struck into a road leading to the left. This road at once descended upon a crescent-shaped, natural meadow enclosed by a small stream, like a babe in a sheltering arm. All about were signs of its use as a camping-ground. Sweat lodges, broken tepee-poles, piles of blackened stones, and rings of bowlders told of the many fires that had been built. Willows fringed the creek, while to the south and west rose a tall, bare hill, on which a stone tower stood like a sentinel warrior.

Elsie cried out in delight of the place. "Isn't it romantic!" Already the sun, sinking behind the hill, threw across the meadow a mysterious purple gloom, out of which a couple of tents gleamed like gray bowlders.

"There is your house to-night," said Curtis. "See the tents?"

"How tiny they look!" Elsie exclaimed, in a hushed voice, as though fearing to alarm and put them to flight.

"They are small, but as night falls you will be amazed to discover how snug and homelike they can become."

Two Horns came to meet them, and Parker cried out, "Hello! see the big Indian!"

The chief greeted Lawson with a deep and hearty "Hah! Nawson – my friend. How! How!" And Lawson, with equal ceremony, replied, in Dakota:

"I am well, my brother; how is it with you?"

"My heart is warm towards you."

Elsie gave him her hand, and he took it without embarrassment or awkwardness. "I know you; you make pictures," he said, in his own tongue.

"Jerusalem, but he's a stunner!" said Parker. "Hello, old man! How you vass, ain't it?" and he clapped the old man on the shoulder.

Two Horns looked at him keenly, and the smile faded from his face. "Huh! Big fool," he said to Lawson.

"You mustn't talk to an Indian like that, Parker, if you expect to have his friendship," said Lawson. "Two Horns hates over-familiarity."

"Oh, he does, does he?" laughed Parker. "Kind of a Ward McAllister, hey?"

Lawson, a little later, said, privately: "That was a bad break, Parker; you really must treat these head men with decent respect or they'll hoodoo you so you can't get any models. Two Horns is a gentleman, and you must at least equal him in reserve and dignity or he will report you a buffoon."

Parker, who had done his figures from models procured in Paris from Buffalo Bill's show, opened his eyes wide.

"Lawson, you're joking!"

"You'll find every word I tell you true. I advise you to set to work now and remove your bad impression from Two Horns, who is one of the three principal chiefs. You can't come out here and clap these people on the back and call 'em 'old hoss.' That will do in some of the stories you read, but realities are different. You'll find money won't command these people, either."

"I thought they liked to be treated as equals?"

"They do, but they don't like to have a stranger too free and easy. You haven't been introduced yet."

While Crane's Voice attended to the teams, Jennie and Two Horns worked at getting supper. Their comradeship was charming to see, and the Parkers looked on with amazement. Two Horns, deft, attentive, careful, anticipated every want. Nothing could be finer than the perfectly cheerful assistance he rendered the pretty cook. His manner was like that of an elder brother rather than that of a servant.

"I didn't suppose Indians ever worked around a camp, and especially with a woman," remarked Parker.

"What you don't know about Indians is still a large volume, Parker," retorted Lawson. "If you stay around with this outfit for a few weeks you'll gather a great deal of information useful for a sculptor of redmen."

Elsie took Lawson mildly to task for his sharp reply.

Lawson admitted that it made him impatient when a man like Parker opened his mouth on things he knew nothing about. "You never can tell what your best friend will do, can you? Parker is decidedly fresh. If he keeps on he'll become tiresome."

Elsie presumed on her enormous experience of three months on the reservation, and gave Parker many valuable hints of how to wheedle the Tetongs in personal contact.

"It seems I'm being schooled," he complained.

"You need it," was Lawson's disconcerting reply.

As night fell, and the fire began to glow in the cool, sweet dark with increasing power, they all sat round the flame and planned the trip into the mountains.

"I have some Tetongs up there who are disposed to keep very clear of the agency. Red Wolf is their head man. You may all go with me and see my council with him if you like."

"Oh! that will be glorious fun!" cried Elsie.

But Parker asked, a little anxiously, "You think it safe?" which amused Curtis, and Parker hastened to explain: "You've no idea what a bad reputation these Tetongs have. Anyhow, I would not feel justified in taking Mrs. Parker into any danger."

"She is quite safe," replied Curtis. "I will answer for the action of my wards."

"Well, if you are quite sure!"

"How far away Washington seems now!" remarked Elsie, after a silence. "I feel as if I had gone back to the very beginning of things."

"It seems the end of things for the Tetongs," replied Lawson. "We forget that fact sometimes when we are anxious to have them change to our ways. Barring out a few rudenesses, their old life was a beautiful adaptation of organism to environment. Isn't that so, Curtis?"

"It certainly had its idyllic side."

"But they must have been worried to death for fear of getting scalped," said Parker.

"Oh, they didn't war much till the white man came to disturb them, by crowding one tribe into another tribe's territory. Their 'wars' were small affairs – hardly more than skirmishes. That they were infrequent is evident from the importance given small forays in their 'winter counts.'"

One by one the campers began to yawn, and Jennie and Mrs. Parker withdrew into the tent reserved for the women, but Lawson and Elsie and Curtis still remained about the fire. The girl's eyes were wide with excitement. "Isn't it delicious to be a little speck of life in this limitless world of darkness? Osborne, why didn't we camp last year?"

"I proposed it, but Mattie would not hear to it. I have a notion that you also put my suggestion aside with scorn."

She protested that he was mistaken. "It is the only way to get close to these wild people. I begin to understand them as I sit here beside this fire. What do you suppose Two Horns is thinking about as he sits over there smoking?"

As they talked, Lawson began to yawn also, and at last said: "Elsie Bee Bee, I am sleepy, and I know Curtis is."

"Not at all," protested Curtis. "I'm just coming to myself. As the camp-fire smoulders the night is at its best. Besides, I'm in the midst of a story."

"Well, I didn't sleep very well last night," began Lawson, apologetically. "I think – if you don't mind – "

"Go to bed, Sleepy Head," laughed Elsie. "We'll excuse you."

"I believe I will," and off he went, leaving the two young people alone.

"Go on!" cried Elsie. "Tell me all about it."

Curtis glowed with new fire at this proof of her interest. "Well, there we were, Sergeant Pierce, Standing Elk, and myself, camped in Avalanche Basin, which at that time of the year is as full of storms as a cave is of bats." A yelping cry on the hill back of them interrupted him. "There goes a coyote! Now the night is perfect," he ended, with a note of exultant poetry.

She drew a little nearer to him. "I don't enjoy that cry as well as you do," she said, with a touch of delicious timidity in her voice. "That's the woman of it, isn't it?"

"I know how harmless he is." After a pause, he slowly said: "This is the farthest reach of the imaginable – that you should sit here beside my fire in this wild land. It must seem as much of a dream to you as your splendid home was to me."

"I didn't suppose these things could shake me so. How mysterious the world is when night makes it lone and empty! I never realized it before. That hill behind us, and the wolf – and see those willows by the brook. They might be savages creeping upon us, or great birds resting, or any silent, threatening creature of the darkness. If I were alone my heart would stand still with awe and fear of them."

"They are not mysterious to me," he made answer. "Only in the sense that space and dusk are inexplicable. After all, the wonder of the universe is in our brains, like love, rather than in the object to which we attribute mystery or majesty. To the Tetong, the simplest thing belonging to the white race is mysterious – a button, a cartridge, a tin-plate. 'How are they made? What are they built for?' he asks. So, deeply considered, all nature is inexplicable to us also. We white children of the Great Ruler push the mystery a little further back, that is all. Once I tried to understand the universe; now I am content to enjoy it."