Part 8

"It _is_ beautiful," replied Elsie, and at the moment a spark of some mysterious flame sprang from each to the other. They were young, and the air was soft and sweet. Thereafter everything gave the young soldier pleasure. The whistling of the darkies, the gay garments of the shoppers, the glitter of passing carriages, the spread of trees against the bright sky--everything assumed a singular grace. His courage rose, and he felt equal to any task.

As they entered the big house Elsie said: "You're to come right up to the studio. I want to show you a canvas I finished yesterday. I had an inspiration--I think you brought it to me."

As she led the way up the wide and splendidly carved stair-way the soldier's elation sank away, for each step emphasized the girl's pride and power, and by contrast threw the poor Indian agent into hopeless shadow. He hardly heard what she said, till she led him before her easel and said:

"There is yesterday's work. I've been trying for days to get a certain effect of color, and, behold! I caught it flying this morning. What puzzles me in your country is the enormously high value of your earth in reference to the sky. The sky is so solid."

As he took in the significance of the canvas Curtis exclaimed:

"It is very beautiful. It is miraculous. How do you do it?"

"I'm glad you like it. My problem there was to represent the difference in value between Chief Elk, who is riding in the vivid sunlight, and his wife and Little Peta, who are just in the edge of that purple cloud-shadow. The difference between white in sunlight and white in shadow is something terrific in your dry air. Contrasts are enough to knock you down. This gray, Eastern studio light makes all my sketches seem false, but I know they are not."

"They are very true, it seems to me."

"When I close my eyes and hark back to the flooding light of the valley of the Elk, then I can do these things; I can't if I don't. I have to forget all my other pictures. This is nearer my impression than anything else I've done."

"It has great charm," he said, after a pause, "and it also reminds me of my duty. I must return at once to the West."

"When do you go--actually?"

"Actually, I leave to-morrow at three o'clock; unless I receive word to the contrary, to-morrow morning."

"So soon? You are making a very short stay. Can't you remain over the holidays? Some friends of mine are coming on from New York. I'd like you to meet them."

"I think I must return. Jennie is preparing to give her little 'Ingines' a Christmas-tree, and I am told that my 'Sandy Claws' would add greatly to their joy, so I am making special effort to reach there on the 23d."

She looked at him musingly. "You really are interested in those ugly creatures? I don't understand it."

"To be really frank, I don't understand your lack of sympathy," he replied, smiling a little. "It isn't at all feminine."

She took a seat on the divan before she spoke again. "Oh, women are such posers. You think I am quite heartless, don't you?"

"No, I don't think that, but I do think you are a little unjust to these people, whose thought you have made very little effort to comprehend."

"Why should I? They are not worth while."

"Do you speak now as an artist?" he asked, gravely.

"But they are so gross and so cruel!"

"I don't deny but they are, sometimes, both gross and cruel, but so are civilized men. The scalp-dance no more represents them than a bayonet charge represents us. It isn't just to condemn all for the faults of a few. You wouldn't destroy servant-girls because some of them are ugly and untidy, would you?"

"The cases are not precisely similar."

"I'll admit that, but the point is here: as an artist you can't afford to dispose of a race on the testimony of their hereditary enemies. You wouldn't expect a sympathetic study of the Greek by the Saracen, would you?"

"It isn't that so much, but they are so perfectly unimportant. They have no use in the world. What does it matter if they die, or don't?"

"Perhaps not so much to them; but to me, if I can help them and fail to do it, it matters a great deal. We can't afford to be unjust, for our own sake. The bearer of the torch should not burn, he should illumine."

"I don't understand that," she said, genuinely searching for his meaning.

"There is where you disappoint me," he retorted. "Most women quiver with altruistic passion the moment they see helpless misery. If you saw a kitten fall into a well what would you do?"

"I should certainly try to save it."

"Your heart would bleed to see it drown?"

She shivered at the thought. "Why, of course!"

"And yet you can share in your father's exterminating vengeance as he sweeps ten thousand redmen into their graves?"

"The case is different--the kitten never did any harm."

"The wrong is by no means all on the redman's side. But even if it were, Christ said, 'Love them that hate you,' and as a Christian nation we should not go out in vindictive warfare against even those who despitefully use us. I haven't a very high seat in the synagogue. I have a soldier's training for warfare, but I acknowledge the splendor of Christ's precepts and try to live up to them. I always liked Grant's position as regards the soldier. But more than that--I like these red people. They are a good deal more than rude men. It is a great pleasure to feel their trust and confidence in me. It touches me deeply to have them come and put their palms on me reverently, as though I were superhuman in wisdom, and say: 'Little Father, we are blind. We cannot see the way. Lead us and we will go.' At such times I feel that no other work in the world is so important. If human souls are valuable anywhere on earth they are valuable here; no selfish land-lust should blind us to see that."

As he spoke, the girl again felt something large and sweet and powerful, like a current of electrical air which came out of wide spaces of human emotion and covered her like a flood. She was humbled by the high purpose and inexplicable enthusiasm of the man before her.

"I suppose you consider me cruel and heartless!" she cried out. "But I am not to blame for being what I am."

"If you are not free, who is? You have it all--youth, wealth, beauty. Nothing enslaves you but indifference."

She was thinking that Lawson had never moved her so, and wishing Curtis were less inexorable in his logic, when he checked himself by saying: "I beg your pardon again. I came to see your pictures, not to preach forgiveness of sins. I here pull myself up short."

"I think you could make me feel personal interest in brickbats or--or spiders," she said, with a quaint, relaxing smile. "You were born to be a preacher, not a soldier."

"Do you think so? I've had a notion all along that I was a fairly good commander and a mighty poor persuader; what I don't intend to be is a bore." He rose and began to walk slowly round the walls, studying the paintings under her direction. He was struggling with obscure impulses to other and more important speech, but after making the circuit of the room he said, as though rendering a final verdict:

"You have great talent; that is evident. What do you intend to do with it? It should help some one."

"You are old-fashioned," she replied. "In our modern day, art is content to add beauty to the world; it does not trouble itself to do good. It is _un_moral."

"Perhaps I _am_ a preacher, after all, for I like the book or picture that has a motive, that stands for something. Your conception of art's uses is French, is it not?"

"I suppose it is; clearly, it isn't Germanic. What would you have me do--paint Indians to convince the world of their sufferings?"

"Wouldn't that be something like the work Millet did? Seems to me I remember something of that sort in some book I have read."

She laughed. "Unfortunately, I am not Millet; besides, he isn't the god of our present idolatry. He's a dead duck. We paint skirt-dancers and the singers in the cafes now. Toiling peasants are 'out.'"

"You are a woman, and a woman ought--"

"Please don't hand me any of that stupid rot about what a woman _ought_ to be, and isn't. What I am I am, and I don't like dirty, ragged people, no matter whether they are Roman beggars or Chinese. I like clean, well-dressed, well-mannered people and no one can make me believe they are less than a lot of ill-smelling Indians."

"Miss Brisbane, you must not do me an injustice," he earnestly entreated. "It was not my intention to instruct you to-day. I am honestly interested in your pictures, and had no thought of renewing an appeal. I was tempted and fell. If you will forgive me this time, I'll never preach again."

"I don't say I object to your preachment. I think I rather like it. I don't think I ever met a man who was so ready to sacrifice his own interest for an idea. It's rather amusing to meet a soldier who is ready to knock one down with a moral war-club." She ended with a mocking inflection of voice.

His face lost its eager, boyish expression. "I'm delighted to think I have amused you," he said, slowly. "It makes amends."

"Please don't be angry," she pleaded. "I didn't mean to be flippant."

"Your words were explicit," he replied, feeling at the moment that she was making a mock of him, and this duplicity hurt him.

She put forth her sweetest voice. "Please forgive me! I think your work very noble, only I can't understand how you can exile yourself to do it. Let us go down; it is time for lunch, and papa is waiting for you, I know."

It was unaccountable that a mocking tone, a derisive smile from this chance acquaintance, should so shake the soldier and so weaken him, but he descended the stair-way with a humiliating consciousness of having betrayed his heart to a fleering, luring daughter of wealth.

At the door of the library the girl paused. "Papa, are you asleep?"

The abrupt rustle of a newspaper preceded Brisbane's deep utterance. "Not at all--just reading the _Star_. Come in, Captain. Is lunch nearly ready?" he asked of Elsie.

"I think so. They are a little late. I'll go see."

As she left the room Brisbane cordially rumbled on. "Sit down, Captain. I'm sorry I missed your talk to-day. I am curious to know what your notion is about the Tetongs. Of course, I understood you couldn't go into the case the other night, but, now that your testimony is all in, I hope you feel free to give me your reasons for opposing our plan for a removal of the tribe."

Curtis took a seat, while Brisbane stretched himself out in a big chair and fixed his cold, gray-blue eyes on the soldier, who hesitated a moment before replying, "I don't think it wise to go into that matter, Senator."

"Why not?"

"Well, we differ so radically on the bill, and your interests make it exceedingly difficult for you to be just in the case. Nothing would be gained by argument."

"You think you know what my interests are?" There was a veiled sarcasm in the great man's smile.

"I think I do. As a candidate for re-election to the Senate you can't afford to antagonize the cattle and mining interests of your State, and, as I am now officially the representative of the Tetongs, I sincerely hope you will not insist on a discussion of the motives involved." The young officer spoke firmly, but with impressive dignity and candor.

Brisbane's ambiguous manner took a sudden shift to cordiality, and, leaning forward, he said:

"Curtis, I like you. I admire your frankness. Let me be equally plain. You're too able a man to be shelved out there on a bleak reservation. What was your idea of going into the Indian service, anyway?"

The young officer remained on guard despite this genial glow. "I considered it my duty," he replied. "Besides, I was rusting out in garrison, and--but there is no need to go into my motives. I am agent, and shall stand firmly for the right of my wards so long as I am in position to do so."

"But you're wasting your life. Suppose you were offered a chance to go to--well, say West Point, as an instructor on a good salary?"

"I would decline the appointment."

"Why?"

"Because at this time I am needed where I am, and I have started on a plan of action which I have a pride in finishing."

Brisbane grew distinctively less urbane. "You are bent on fighting me, are you?"

"What do you mean?" asked Curtis, though he knew.

"You are dead set against the removal of the Tetongs?"

"Most certainly I am!"

Elsie re-entered the room during this rapid interchange of phrase, but neither of the men heard her, so intent were they upon each other.

"Young man, do you know who you are fighting?" asked Brisbane, bristling like a bear and showing his teeth a little. Curtis being silent, he went on: "You're lined up against the whole State! Not only the cattlemen round about the reservation, but a majority of the citizens are determined to be rid of those vagabonds. Anybody that knows anything about 'em knows they're a public nuisance. Why should they be allowed to camp on land which they can't use--graze their mangy ponies on lands rich in minerals--"

"Because they are human beings."

"Human beings!" sneered Brisbane. "They are nothing but a greasy lot of vermin--worthless from every point of view. Their rights can't stand in the way of civilization."

"It is not a question of whether they are clean or dirty, it is a question of justice," Curtis replied, hotly. "They came into the world like the rest of us, without any choice in the matter, and so far as I can see have the same rights to the earth--at least, so much of it as they need to sustain life. The fact that they make a different use of the soil than you would do isn't a sufficient reason for starving and robbing them."

"The quicker they die the better," replied Brisbane, flushing with sudden anger. "The only good Injun is a dead Injun."

At this familiar phrase Curtis took fire. "Yes, I expected that accursed sentence. Let me tell you, Mr. Brisbane, I never knew a redman savage enough to utter such a sentiment as that. The most ferocious utterance of Geronimo never touched the tigerish malignity of that saying. Sitting Bull was willing to live and let live. If your view represents civilization, I want none of it. The world of the savage is less cruel, less selfish."

Brisbane's face writhed white, and a snarling curse choked his utterance for a moment. "If you weren't my guest," he said, reaching a clutching hand towards Curtis, "I'd cut your throat."

Elsie, waiting in strained expectancy, cried out: "Father! What are you saying? Are you crazy?"

Curtis hastily rose, very white and very quiet. "I will take care not to put myself in your way as guest again, sir."

"You can't leave too quick!" roared the old man, his face twitching with uncontrollable wrath. "You are a traitor to your race! You'd sacrifice the settlers to the interests of a greasy red vagabond!"

"Father, be quiet! You are making a scene," called Elsie, and added, sadly: "Don't go, Captain Curtis; I shall be deeply mortified if you do. Father will be sorry for this."

Brisbane also rose, shaking with a weakness pitiful to see. "Well, sir, you can go, for I know now the kind of sneak you are. Let me tell you this, young man: you'll feel my hand before you are a year older. You can't come into my house and insult me in the presence of my daughter. Get out!" His hands were moving uncontrollably, and Elsie discovered with a curious pang that she was pitying him and admiring the stern young soldier who stood quietly waiting for an opportunity to speak. At last he said:

"Miss Brisbane, I beg your pardon; I should not have said what I did." He turned to Brisbane. "I am sorry I spoke so harshly, sir. You are an older man than I, and--"

"Never mind my age," replied Brisbane, his heat beginning to cool into self-contained malice. "I desire no terms of friendship with you. It's war now--to the knife, and the knife to the hilt. You think you are safe from me, but the man that lines up against me generally regrets it to the day of his death."

"Very well, sir, I am not one to waste words. I shall do my duty to the Tetongs regardless of you or your friends." He turned to Elsie. "Miss Brisbane, I ask you to remember that I honestly tried to avoid a controversy."

Six months before Elsie would have remained passive while her father ordered Curtis from the door, but now she could not even attempt to justify his anger, and the tears glistened on her lashes as she said: "Father, why can't you accept Captain Curtis's hand? These ragamuffin redmen aren't worth quarrelling about. No one ever went away from us like this, and it breaks my heart to have it so. Don't go, Captain Curtis. Father, ask his pardon."

The old man turned towards her. "Go to your room. I will see that this young squirt finds the door!"

Elsie shrank from the glare of his eyes. "Father, you are brutal! You hurt me."

"Do as I say!" he snarled.

"I will _not_!" She faced him, tall and resolute. "I am not a child. I am the mistress of this house." She turned and walked towards the door. "Captain Curtis, I beg _your_ pardon; my father has forgotten himself."

Brisbane took a step towards Curtis. "Get out! And you, girl, leave the room."

The girl's face whitened. "Have you no sense of decency?" she said, and her voice cut deep down into his heart and he flinched. "Captain Curtis is my guest as well as yours." She extended her hand. "Please go! It is best."

"It is the most miserable moment of my life," he replied, as they moved down the hall, leaving Brisbane at the door of the study. "I will do any honorable thing to regain your good-will."

"You have not lost it," she replied. "I cannot blame you--as I should," she added, and the look on her face mystified him.

"May I see you again before I leave for the West?"

"Perhaps," she softly replied. "Remember he is old--and--"

"I will try not to bear anger," he replied.

And as he turned away it seemed that she had leagued herself with him against her own father, and this feeling deepened as she ran up the stairs heedless of the voice whose commands had hitherto been law to her.

The young officer walked down the sunny avenue towards the White House with a curious feeling of having just passed through a bitter and degrading dream. He was numb and cold. Around him the little negro newsboys were calling the one-o'clock editions of the "_Styah_," and the pavements were swarming with public servants hastening to lunch, punctual as clocks, while he, having been ordered from the house of his host, was mechanically returning to his club.

There was something piercingly pathetic in the thought of the good cheer he had anticipated, and the lost pleasure of sitting opposite Elsie made his heart ache. At the moment his feet stumbled in the path of duty. Surely he was a long way from the single-minded map-builder who had crossed the Sulphur Spring Divide.

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.