Hamlin Garland

“ On the buttes horsemen were riding to and fro excitedly crossing and recrossing the same ground—the sign which means an approaching enemy. On every hill-side mounted warriors were gathering and circling. Boys with wild halloos were bringing in the ponies. The women busy, swarming like bees, were dropping the tepees; even as the agent mounted the steps to the office and looked up the valley, the white canvases sank to the ground one by one as though melted by the hot sun. War times were come again, and the chanting cries of the old women came pulsing by on the soft west wind. ”

“ Her mind was filled, too, with the dramatic figure the young officer made as he sat in gesture-talk with his Tetong wards. In case of trouble the safest place on all the reservation would be by his side, for his people loved and trusted him. She did not go to sleep easily; the excitement, the strangeness of being in a tent, kept her alert long after Jennie and Mrs. Parker were breathing tranquilly on their cots.
One hears everything from a tent. It seems to stand in the midst of the world. It is like being in a diving-bell under water. Life goes on almost uninterruptedly. ”

“ Elsie, on her part, was surprised to find a new nerve tingling in her brain, and this tremor cut into the complete self-satisfaction she expected to feel over her refusal of the peace-pipe. Several times during the afternoon, while superintending her packing, she found herself standing in an attitude of meditation—her inward eye reverting to the fine, manly figure he made, while his grave, sweet voice vibrated in her ears. She began to see herself in an unpleasant light, and when at the dinner-table Lawson spoke of Curtis, she listened to him with more real interest than ever before. ”

“ While the sheriff and his deputies alternately pleaded and commanded the mob to withdraw, Lawson touched Curtis on the arm and pointed to the crests of the hills to the west. On every smooth peak a mounted sentinel stood, silent and motionless as a figure on a monument—watching the struggle going on before the agency gate.
"Behind every hill young warriors are riding," said Lawson. "By sundown every man and boy will be armed and ready for battle. If these noble citizens knew what you have saved them from they would bless you." ”

“ Even the Tetongs themselves grew tired of looking when nothing seemed likely to happen, and the forenoon wore away as usual, well filled with duties. Maynard's men got out for drill an hour later, and their bugle's voice pulsed upward to the silent and motionless watcher on the hill like mocking laughter. The clink of the anvil also rose to him on the hot, dry air, and just beneath him the children came forth at recess to play. He became tired of sitting on the ground at last, and again mounted his horse, but no one at the agency seemed to know or to care. ”

“ Now, Grayman, Elk, Two Horns, Standing Elk, Lone Man, and Crow, listen to me. Among white men it is the law that when any one has done a wrong thing—when he steals or murders—he is punished. If he kills a man he is slain by the chief, not by the relatives of the man who is slain. As with you, I am here to apply the white man's rule. If a Tetong has shot this herder he must suffer for it—he and no one else. I will not permit the cattlemen to punish the tribe. ”

“ Early on the morning of the great day—before the dawn, in truth—the Tetongs came riding in over the hills from every quarter of the earth, bringing their finest clothing, their newest blankets, and their whitest tepees, all lashed on long poles between which the patient ponies walked as in the olden time. Every man, woman, and child able to sit a horse was mounted. No one wore a white man's hat or shoes or vest; all were in leggings and moccasins, fringed and painted, and they carried their summer blankets as they once carried their robes of the buffalo-skin. ”

“ Curtis continued, "never lights that pipe you have put in his hands without blowing a whiff to the great spirits seated at the cardinal points of the compass. He makes offerings for the health of his children—he hears voices in the noon-day haze. He sits on the hill-top at dawn to commune with the spirits over his head. As a beggar he is picturesque; as a man, he is bewildered by the changes in his world, and sad with the shadow of his children's future. All these things, and many more, you must learn before you can represent the soul of the redman. You can't afford to be unjust." ”

“ His only sign of nervousness was a quiver of the muscles of one cheek, where he held his quid of tobacco. His bright blue eyes were fixed on the sentinels, while he leaned negligently against the fence. Lawson, smoking a German pipe, was watching the warriors on the hills, a rapt expression on his face, as if he were working out some problem in ethics which demanded complete concentration and absorption of thought. The two girls had drawn close together as if for comfort, their nerves a-quiver with the strain.
"Are you waiting for something to go off?" suddenly asked Curtis. ”

“ It appealed with great power to Curtis, while it appalled his sister. The solitary buttes, smooth of slope and grotesque of line; the splendid, grassy hollows, where the cattle fed; the burned-up mesas, where nothing lived but the horned toad; the alkaline flats, leprous and ashen; the occasional green line of cottonwood-trees, deep sunk in a dry water-course—all these were typical of the whole vast eastern water-shed of the continental divide, and familiar to the young officer, for in such a land he had entered upon active service. ”

“ The crowd was evidently returning from the jail, jubilant and remorseless. Upon reaching the corner of the square Curtis turned to the left, with the design of encircling it, hoping to find the two redmen looking on from a door-way on the outskirts of the throng.
He had crossed but one side of the plaza, when a band of cowboys dashed in from the opposite corner with swinging lariats, whooping shrilly, in close pursuit of a flying footman. A moment later a rope looped, the fugitive fell and the horsemen closed round him in joyous clamor, like dogs around a fox. ”

“ Curtis did not turn, though the tone, more insulting than the words, made his heart hot with battle. It was plain that the sheriff and his party had already entered and reported their defeat. A saloon emptied a mob of loud-voiced men upon the sidewalk before him, and though he feared trouble he pushed steadily forward. The ruffians gave way before his resolute feet, but he felt their hate beating like flame upon his face. He dared not turn a hair's-breadth to the right nor to the left; nothing was better than to walk straight on. ”

“ Twice they circled, and then, as they all massed before him, Curtis rose to sign to them.
"I am very proud of you. All my friends are pleased. My heart is big with emotion and my head is full of thoughts. This is a great day for you and also for me. Some of you are sad, for you long for the old things—the big, broad plain, the elk, and the buffalo. So do I. I loved those things also. But you have seen how it is. The water of the stream never turns back to the spring, the old man never grows young, the tree that falls does not rise up again. So the old things come never again. ”

“ Moreover, Crawling Elk is the annalist and story-teller of his tribe. He carries the 'winter count' and the sacred pipe, and can tell you of every movement of the Tetongs for more than a century and a half. His mind is full of poetry, and his conceptions of the earth and sky are beautiful. He knows little that white men know, and cares for very little that the white man fights for, but his mind teems with lore of the mysterious universe into which he has been thrust, and which he has studied for seventy-two years. ”

“ All about he had observed groups of white-blanketed Indians smoking cigarettes in the shade of the buildings, while a crowd of nearly twenty others stood watching a game of duck-on-the-rock before the agency store.
Now as he looked over the yards not a redman could be seen at his work. On every side the people, without apparent haste, but surely, steadily, and swiftly, were scattering. The anvil no longer cried out, the teamsters were silent, all laughter had ceased, the pots of paint sat scorching in the sun. ”

“ This clamor fell away into a deep, throbbing chant, only to rise again to the yelping, whimpering cries with which it began.
Every woman stiffened with terror, with wide eyes questioning Curtis. "What is all that?"
"The opening chorus," he explained, much amused. "A song of the chase."
The dusk was beginning to fall, and the tepees, with their small, sparkling fires close beside, and the shadowy, blanketed forms assembling slowly, silently, gave a wonderful remoteness and wildness to the scene. To Curtis it was quite like the old-time village. ”

“ The town resembled an ant-hill into which a fleeing bison has planted a foot.
"Oh, sir!" cried one young mother as she caught sight of Curtis, "are the Injuns coming?"
"No," he replied, bitterly, "these marauders are not Indians; they are noble citizens," and set off at a run towards the corral in which Two Horns and Crow were camped. The tumult behind him grew fainter, and at last died to a murmur, and only one or two houses showed a light.
Ladue's was an old ranch on the river, around which the town of Pinon had for twenty years been slowly growing. ”

“ Captain George Curtis, as the Colonel had intimated, was already a marked man at Fort Sherman—and, indeed, throughout the western division of the army. He feared no hardship, and acknowledged no superior on the trail except Pierce, who was as invincible to cold and snow as a grizzly bear, and his chief diversions were these trips into the wild. Each outing helped him endure the monotony of barrack life, for when it was over he returned to the open fire of his study, where he pored over his maps, smoking his pipe and writing a little between bugle-calls. ”

“ Winter in the upper heights of the Bear Tooth Range is a glittering desolation of snow with a flaming blue sky above. Nothing moves, nothing utters a sound, save the cony at the mouth of the spiral shaft, which sinks to his deeply buried den in the rocks. The peaks are like marble domes, set high in the pathway of the sun by day and thrust amid the stars by night. The firs seem hopeless under their ever-increasing burdens. The streams are silenced—only the wind is abroad in the waste, the tireless, pitiless wind, fanged like ingratitude, insatiate as fire. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Your attitude towards the so-called savage races troubles me more than I have any right to mention. The older I grow the less certain I am that any race or people has a monopoly of the virtues. I do not care to see the 'little peoples' of the world civilized in the sense in which the word is commonly used. It will be a sorrowful time to me when all the tribes of the earth shall have cottonade trousers and derby hats. You, as an artist, ought to shrink from the dead level of utilitarian dress which the English-speaking race seems determined to impose on the world. ”

“ At last Two Horns, with his moccasined foot on the brake, broke through the hills out upon the valley land, with Pinon City in sight. The mob and the sheriff were alike left behind. Ambush was now impossible.
"Easy now, Two Horns," called Curtis, with a smile and an explanatory gesture. "We're safe now; the angry white men are behind," and the reeking, dusty, begrimed horses fell into a walk. ”

“ Wolf Robe handed his sombrero, his coat, and his revolver to his friend, Beaver Kill, and ran away towards the corral, agile as a boy.
"What did he do that for?" asked Jennie.
Curtis smiled. "He is Indian now; he doesn't want to be mistaken for a cowboy."
When he reappeared on his pony, his long, dark hair streaming, a red handkerchief bound about his head, he looked like a warrior stripped for battle. "There isn't a faithfuler man in the world," said Curtis, and a lump rose in his throat. "He has been riding half the night for me, but he charges that hill as if he were playing a game." ”

“ She guiltily lowered her lashes and turned away, but that momentary pause—that subtle interplay of doubt and dream—had given the soldier a pleasure deeper than words.
Jennie was waiting at the door of the tiny room in which Elsie was to sleep, her face glowing with admiration and love. "Oh, you queenly girl!" she cried, with a convulsive clasp of her strong arms. "I can't get over the wonder of your being here in our little house. You ought to live always in a castle." ”

“ The presence of a pretty woman had subdued most of them into something like decorum, but they were not pleasant to look at. They were the unattached males of the town, a mob of barkeepers, hostlers, clerks, and railway hands, intermixed with a half-dozen cowboys who had ridden in to "loaf away a day or two in town."
"The ragged edge of the cloth of gold," said Curtis, as he glanced round at them. "Civilization has its seamy side." ”

“ Parker was fairly hooking his chin over Curtis's shoulder to hear every word uttered and to see all that went on, and Curtis was in the midst of an explanation of the significance of the drama of the dance, when a short, sturdy, bow-legged Tetong, dressed in a policeman's uniform, pushed his way in at the door and thrust a letter at his agent's hand.
Instantly every eye was fixed on Curtis's bent head as he opened the letter. The dancers took their seats, whispering and muttering, the drum ceased, and the singers, turned into bronze figures, stared solemnly. ”

“ The squaws made excuse to come in and shake hands with him and hear his laughter, and the children no longer hid or turned away when he came near—on the contrary, they ran to him, crying "Hello, Hagent!" and clung to his legs as he walked. The old men often laid their arms across his shoulders as they jokingly threatened to pull out the hairs of his face, in order to make him a redman. His lightest wish was respected. The wildest young dare-devil would dismount and take a hand at pushing a wagon or lifting a piece of machinery when Curtis asked it of him. ”