Part 7

Dashing out from the greasewood cover, the Indians--half naked and wholly devilish--made quick work of their victims. They did not dally in what they had to do. Back on the plains another wagon--two, three, four, a train!--was coming; they did not dare to stay to meet such numbers. They struck only when sure of their strength. Now they were two to one--nay, ten men to one man! And he, that man, went down with a wife’s shrieks and the screaming of children’s voices in his ears.

It was the old story of early times and emigrants on the plains. You have heard it time and again.

After the arrow, the knife; and bloody corpses left by a burning wagon. Things done to turn sick with horror the next lone wayfarers who should reach this gruesome spot. Human flesh and bone for the vultures of the air and the wolves of the desert to feed upon, till--taken from their preying talon and tooth--they might be laid in the shallow graves hollowed by the roadside.

Yet one was spared. The wee bonny laddie wrested from the clinging arms of a dying mother, was held apart to witness a butchery that strained the childish eyes with terror. He lived, but never was he to forget the awful scene of that hour in the desert. And when the brutal work was over, savage arms bore him away to their homes on the heights of near mountains gashed by many a cañon.

There, for years upon years--growing from babyhood to boyhood--from boyhood to youth--he lived among them; and so became as one of their tribe. They were a small tribe--these--of renegade Bannocks; shifting their camps further and further into the North, and away from the White Man’s approach as civilization began to force them back. Northward; and at last into Oregon.

The sturdy little frame remained sturdy. Some children there are who persist in thriving under the most adverse conditions. And he was one of these. Yet, it must be admitted, his captors were kind; for the Indian--savage though he may be--deals gently, always, with his children; and this boy had become to them as their own.

The baby words of the White Man’s tongue were soon forgotten, and Indian gutterals took their place. The little feet were moccasined with deerskin, and the round cheeks daubed with paint. The little body was kept warm in a rabbitskin robe. Their food was his food--grass seeds ground into paste, and game; and his friends were themselves. To all intents and purposes he had become an Indian.

When, at length, he reached early manhood he took to himself an Indian bride. Then the tribe made him their chief.

* * * * *

Mines in the mountains had brought an army of prospectors into the once wild country. The mines prospered, and camps--permanent ones--multiplied. The Red Men saw their enemy growing in numbers beyond their strength to battle, so the depredations became fewer and fewer, and finally ceased altogether. “Lo” is something of a philosopher, and he generally accepts defeat with a better grace than his white brother. These knew they were beaten, so they were willing to accept peace; and began to mix, by degrees, with the Whites. They adopted the White Man’s dress--some learned his speech. The blue-eyed chief, too, whose position among them was never quite clear to the miners, again learned the language that seemed as one he had never known.

It was a long time before he came to realize that his chains of captivity had dropped away--rusted apart by time and circumstances--and that he might now, if he so chose, go back to the people of his own blood. He thought of it dully, indifferently, at first--then deeply. The way was open for him! He could go! But he came to know that down in the depths of his heart an affection had grown up for these people who had made him their own, that no other people could lay claim to, ever. That for all the days of his life his lot was here.

The awful events of that long gone day in the desert were too deeply branded into his recollection ever to be forgotten (young child though he was at the time); but the years had dimmed its horrors, and the associations of a lifetime had dulled his sensibilities.

No! he would remain among them. As he had been, he would still be--one of them. He had lost all desire to go. How many years had come and gone since the longing for liberty left him? He could not remember. This was his home--these were his people--he would stay.

And there he is today. There, a dozen years ago, a San Franciscan, drawn by the mines, found him; and during a summer’s companionship, gaining his confidence, learned from his lips his story.

Months later, this thrice strange tale served to entertain half a score of people who met together in his parlors on his return. They gathered around the story teller--close listeners--intent on every syllable; but one there was who went white as she heard. And when she could see him apart and unnoted, she said:

“He is my brother! I saw them take him away. I was hid behind a greasewood bush--I do not know how they overlooked me. I saw it all--everything! Then, those in an emigrant train behind ours, came and took me with them. I was a little child then--only eight; and he--my brother--was younger. I thought they had taken him away and killed him--I never guessed he lived. I know--I am sure this is he. Tell me all you can; for I must go and find him.”

* * * * *

What that meeting was, no one can say. She found him there surrounded by those who were his nearest and dearest--a brown-skinned wife and little bronze bairns--his! She stood face to face with him--she clasped hands with him; yet a lifetime and all the world lay between. Children of the loins of one father--born of the same mother--these two had nothing in common between them--nothing--save the yearning for a something that was always to lie just beyond.

He yielded to her persuasions and went home with her to see the city by the sea of which he had heard much, but knew nothing. It was a visit of but a few days; yet in that time no hour struck for each alike. Try as each would for a feeling of kinship, the other was ever a stranger.

She showed him the sights of the city, but he was more and more bewildered by what he saw. At the beach it was better; he seemed to understand the ocean best, though seeing it for the first time. She sought to awaken in him an interest in the things of her world. And to his credit be it said, he honestly tried to respond in the way she would have him.

But up and away to the Northeast was all he had interest in or heart for; and so at the end of a week he went back. Going, he pledged himself to come to her every third year for a week’s stay; for “blood is thicker than water,” and though they might never strike the same chord, yet, after all, she was his sister.

The years wax and wane. Every third one brings in fulfillment of the promise, the very commonplace-looking brother who is something of a mystery to her metropolitan friends. Time has brought brother and sister a little more closely together, but it will never bridge the chasm. Always there is a restraint, a reserve, which comes from a common knowledge that there are things in his past life he may not tell--yet, which she guesses with an unspoken, unnamed fear.

Once (when the bronze-brown woman was dead), he tried to accept civilized life as a finality. The month had not rounded out to fullness when each saw the futility of the attempt.

Back on the rough Oregon mountains were sons and daughters, “flesh of his flesh, bone of his bone,” brown-skinned though they were; and he turned his back on the White Man and his unfamiliar ways, and set his face toward those whom he knew best and loved.

Somehow, you like and respect the man for going, as you couldn’t had he stayed.

The story reads like fiction, doesn’t it? But the pity of it is that it is true.

ACCORDING TO ONE’S STANDPOINT

There were three people in the group on the station platform at Humboldt. The two who were standing were a white man and a white woman.

The man was tall, with breadth in his shoulders, five-and-thirty, and rather good looking. His dress evidenced prosperity, and his manner betokened long residence in a city--one of the cities east of the Mississippi.

The woman also was tall; and graceful, and very pretty, and not over twenty-five years of age. She was, without doubt, a bride, and--equally without doubt--a fit mate for the man. She carried her chin high (a trick common to those wearing eye-glasses) and moved with an air of being quite sure of her social position. She was inconspicuously dressed, but her gown, when she walked, rustled in the way that speaks of silken linings. She looked like a woman whose boots were always made to order, and who, each night, had an hour spent upon brushing her hair.

The third person in the group was an Indian. A Paiute fifty years old, but who looked twenty years older. Old George. His little withered brown face was puckered into a whimsical smile as with head aslant he looked up from where he sat on the bench that was built round a tree-box. This was his frequent seat when the trains came in, and here he came daily to answer the inquisitive questions of people who deem themselves well bred.

He was old, and much dirtier than even the others of his race. But he afforded entertainment for the travelers whose pleasure it was to put questions.

“Yep, me old. ‘Forty?’ I guess so. ‘One hundred?’ Maybe so; I no know.” He chuckled. It was the same thing over and over again that they--on the trains--asked him every day. Not a whit cared he what they asked, nor was it worth while telling the truth. When they asked he answered; saying the things they wanted to hear. And sometimes they gave him nickels. That was all there was about it.

“Where did he live?” “What did he eat?” “Did he work?” his inquisitors queried. “Was he married?” and “Had he any children?” “Had he ever killed any white men?” Then they would note his maimed, misshapen limbs. “How long ago had his leg been broken?” “In what way had he crippled his hands?” But to all there were the same replies:

“I no know. Maybe so. I guess so.”

What did it matter? They were satisfied. And meddlers they were. Yet----generally he got the waited-for nickel.

So today he answered even as they questioned. Then the woman (pretty, and with an unmistakable air of good breeding) nodded and said: “Good-by!” and the man (well-mannered, well-groomed and self-complacent) gave him a silver quarter as he went back to the “Pullman.”

“Henry, dear,” she asked, after they had settled themselves comfortably again in their compartment of the sleeping-car, “how do such creatures exist? Do they work, or only sit idly in the sun waiting for someone to give them one or two nickels?”

“Oh, he is a confirmed beggar, one can see! They never work--these Paiutes. Mere animals are they, eating, drinking and sleeping as animals,” her husband replied. “So degenerate have they become since the days when they were a wild tribe and warriors that they go through life now in docile stupidity, without anything rousing them to what we would call a live interest in their surroundings. I doubt very much if, in the life of any one of them, there ever occurs any stirring event. Perhaps it is just as well, for at least it gives them a peaceful old age, and they can have no harassing recollections.”

“And no happy ones, either,” the woman said. “Think what it must be to live out one’s allotted time of physical existence without ever experiencing the faintest romance--without even a gleam of what love means! I presume that the sense of attachment is unknown to them; such affection as----”

“As ours?” he interrupted laughingly. “Well, rather unknown I should say.”

The man looked with fond eyes into the eyes of the woman; then, as the train pulled out of the station, they saw the old Indian limping away toward his camp.

* * * * *

Are the individual histories of Indians--even Paiutes--even the “degenerate tribes”--uneventful or wholly devoid of human interest? Let us see.

Old George can tell you a different story, it may be. From his point of view there is perhaps love; perhaps even romance. Much depends upon the standpoint one takes. The hills that look high from the valley, seem low looking down from the mountain.

When I first knew George (he was “Young George” then), he was married and had children. Four; two boys and two girls. More than other Indians, he aped the Whites in their ways, and was reckoned (for a Paiute) a decent fellow. His camp was the best, his food the most plentiful, and his children the best kept and cleanest. The mother sewed well, and neither she nor the children ever went ragged. Among Indians they were as the hard-working, temperate laborer’s family is among the white men who work--work with their hands for a living.

George had money laid by--joint earnings of his own and of Susan, his wife. He worked at the settlers’ wood-piles in winter, chopping wood; and in summer he worked in the hay fields. She washed and ironed for the white families. Wage was high in those days, and George and Susan prospered. That was a contented little camp built there in the tall sagebrush, and they were happy as needs be.

And then----

There happened that which is not always confined to the camp of the red man. It was the old story-- another woman. Well, has not the world seen such things before? There are women--even those without the dower of beauty--of whose strange power no explanation can be given save that they can, and do, “charm men.” And in no less measure was this brown-skinned woman a charmer. She had already parted more than one husband and wife--had destroyed the peace and quiet of more than one home, when she and George stood where the ways met.

If this had happened some three thousand years ago, and she had lived on the banks of the Nile, and if you were a poet, or a recorder of history, no doubt you would have written her down a siren--a dark-eyed charmer of men--a sorceress of Egypt; but she lived on the Humboldt river instead, and all this happened within the last four decades, and she was only a squaw of one of our North American tribes. Neither was she a pretty squaw judged by our cañons of beauty. Yet are not such things matters of geography governed by traditions? And when a man is bewitched by a man, brown-skinned or white, he is very apt to see charms where another cannot discover them.

Sophy, the siren, came into the camp, and with her coming fled peace. Poor Susan, unloved and deserted, sat apart and cried her heart out--as many a white woman has done before her, and since--when powerless to prevent, or right the wrong that was done her. So, bewitched and befooled, George gave himself up to the madness that was his undoing. The money which had been laid by went like water held in the hand. The camp was neglected; the stores were wasted. The children, from whom the mother had been banished, went ragged and oftentimes hungry.

It took George a long time to awake from his delirium, but he did awaken finally--after many months. All things come--some day--to the writing of “finis.” And no joy falls so soon and so completely as the joy built on an unsound foundation. One day George came to his senses. Then he cast the woman out; cast her out, and forever. He brought back to his home the mother of his children, and she foregave him. Well, what would you?--she was his wife, and a woman forgives much for the sake of the children she has held to her breast. So the camp was made tidy again and the children cared for as of old, and there were new stores gathered, and money was again saved.

Now George--being an Indian, being a Paiute--had never heard of Colley Cibber, else he might have been reminded that “we shall find no fiend in hell can match the fury of a disappointed woman--scorned! slighted! dismissed without a parting pang.” Neither did George--being a Paiute Indian--know the meaning of the word “Nemesis.”

That was more than twenty years ago; and for more than twenty years the woman, Sophy, made his life a series of persecutions. If he builded aught at the camp, it was torn down; what he raised in his garden was destroyed; what he bought, was quickly broken. Horses were driven far astray; and his favorite dogs were poisoned. Then, when she had exhausted all her ingenuity in these and a hundred other ways of making his life a torment, she turned her wiles on Doctor Jim, one of the great medicine men of the tribe, married to Susan’s mother, and an inmate of George’s camp. Doctor Jim’s long residence in the house had given to George a certain enviable status among the Indians, and this prestige the woman now meant to destroy. On Doctor Jim were bestowed her blandishments, and--like George before him--he was fain to follow whither she led. With the medicine man’s going, departed the glory of the house. And it left, in the person of the deserted wife, another mouth for George to feed; while at the same time the assisting support which Doctor Jim had given the household was taken away.

Troubles came thick and fast to Old George. He had begun to be called “Old” George now. One day while he was handling a cartridge it accidentally exploded and tore away part of his hand. This hampered him in what work he got to do; and sometimes because of it he was refused employment. Then the evil fate that had chosen him for a plaything, threw him from a train running at full speed, and left him lying on the track with broken legs, and pitifully crippled. He got well after many weary months while Susan nursed him, and between whiles of nursing earned the living for the dwellers within the camp. When Spring came, Susan died.

On George fell the care of the four children. It was harder for him to work now, and there was less to be earned; yet he worked the harder for his four. Another year; and there were but two for him to shelter and to feed. The great White Plague stops not at the camps of the White man, but has hunted out the Red man in his wick-i-up, and is fast decreasing the number of the tribe; so two--the older two--of the children had gone to answer its call, and George was alone with the two that were hardly more than babies. Mourning for his dead, he must yet work for the living.

We give our sympathy to the woman left widowed who has little children looking to her for support. But she seldom fails in her trust, for the world is usually kind to a woman and ready to lend her aid. Rather give of your pity to the father who has babes to provide for when there is no woman to take up the burden with him. He must care for the home, and must go out in the world, as well, to work. Remember the burden is no less hard for him to bear even so be he is an Indian. It may not seem so to you, a white man, but you must recollect that the Indian takes a different point of view.

Long, long after his children were grown, and the old grandmother was dead, and George was living in his camp with grandchildren about him, the woman came again--she, Sophy, came to him--trying to win him back now that the woman he cared most for was dead. Sophy at last had tired of her revenge, had tired of jealousy and strife; had tired of everything in life but the one man who had once cast her off. Doctor Jim was dead--had died many years before. And so she came to the one she cared for still--as even she had cared most for. For George she cared always; so she came and stood at his door. Many snows had come and gone since his blood had moved at her will; and now it was too late for her influence to weigh with him. He was old; and when he sat before the campfire and saw a woman’s face move to and fro in the the smoke wreaths, it was the face of the woman who best loved him, always--not the face of the one he had loved for a time--that he saw.

So she went away, and at last there was peace between them. She died the other day. But George--Old George--lives still, and alone. He goes to the station day after day, as is his habit, and watches the trains as they come in, and answers the questions of the inquisitive travelers.

* * * * *

If my characters were white you might call this a love story with a bit of romance threaded in. Perhaps you will, anyway. For it all depends upon how you look at it. It is just a little story of what is happening all the while everywhere in the world. Love and jealousy; hatred and revenge. It does not very much matter whether they live on the water side of Beacon street (as they do who stood talking to Old George yesterday); or whether it is in the wick-i-ups of the sagebrush out on the great Nevada plains. These things come into the lives of all races alike.

George paid for the folly of his youth, as the transgressor usually does have to pay. If you live by the sea in the East, you will perhaps call this a punishment for George laid upon him as a rebuke by the “hand of divine Providence.” But if your home is by the Western sea, and you have knocked about a bit on the rough trails in the West, you will mayhap see in it only the workings of “natural law.”

That is all. It is a little story, but quite true. It might very easily have been made a White man’s story; but it isn’t, it is only the true story of a Paiute.

George is an Indian; but one in a whole tribe--each having his own story. And the tribe is but one of the race. And the race----

Are we not brothers?

For, the world over, under white skin or skin of bronze-brown, the human heart throbs the same; for we are brothers--ay! brothers all.

Yet, even so, there is still the point of view.

WHERE THE BURROS BROWSED

“Hello, Dick!”

“Hello, Reddy!”

Seven little gray burros--browsing upon the dust-covered chamiso--lifted their heads at the words; and turned seven mealy noses and seven pairs of inquisitive ears toward the speakers in indolent curiosity.

The two men who met upon the mesa had been drawing slowly together on the long white road winding up toward the mountain a dozen miles away. The dust, raised by the shuffling feet of their horses, floated--a long streamer of white--down toward the muddy, crooked river in the valley far below. The dust had whitened, too, the slouch hats and worn blue overalls they wore; and their faces were marked with furrows, burned deep by the harsh, relentless sun of the plains. It was pouring its rays down now with the fierce malignance of some demon bent on destroying every vestige of plant-life that had the temerity to put forth its young shoots; and save for the scant bunch-grass, and the sage, and the greasewood, and a few distant and scattering junipers that grew dark upon the mountains beyond, no growth of vegetation was to be seen. It was within an hour of noon, and the scorching rays descended upon the blistered earth through a silver-gray haze that--reaching across the valley--quivered over the scene like the heat that comes through an open furnace-door.

Little gray lizards with black, shining eyes; little horned toads with prickly backs, lay with palpitating bodies in the scant shade. The saucy Paiute squirrels which earlier in the day darted in and out of their burrows, had now disappeared into subterranean darkness. Jack-rabbits, with limp ears lying back, crouched under the edges of the greasewood. The three horses stood with listless, drooping heads; the two men sat with listless, drooping bodies--one leaning forward to rest his crossed arms on the horn of the Mexican saddle he bestrode; the other, with loosely held reins between his fingers, leaned with his elbows on his knees.

After the brief Western greeting, the one on the buckskin horse asked carelessly:

“Been in with some hides, Reddy?”

“Yep.”

“What luck you been havin’?”