Merrill Tileston

“ By noon, gaunt and hidedrawn, two Indian ponies stumbled along the burning sands. Two horsemen with vacant, stony stare, pitifully reeled in their saddles as their horses wabbled slowly, painfully into the camp of the "Lone Fisherman." Pack mules with drooping, lifeless ears, tongues lolling from their mouths and hoofs cracking from contact with the poisonous alkaloids of the desert, staggered under their burdens as they toiled after the silent spectres in the lead. The dust-begrimed, skin-dried, withered, parched and blighted beings athwart those animated skeletons were Jack and Yamanatz. ”

“ From its barren crest one seems able to touch the sky, and one bound into space would land him beyond the world. To the right could be seen Denver, there the Platte River, Longmont in a maze of alfalfa beds and wheat fields, but these were as a drop of water to the ocean, a grain of sand to the plains. A hasty lunch, dry indeed, but for the accommodating snow bank which leaked enough to furnish ice water that coursed in a stream about the size of the lead in a pencil down a boulder, which dwarfed Cheops' pyramid. The labor involved in the return trip caused dejection and woe. ”

“ The son of Big Buffalo is as brave as the wild horse who leads his herd to drink of the waters of the deep cavern, but know this, that in the sky Chiquita reads of deeds done by her white sisters who teach the little paleface to say 'Our Father,' and she hears the song of spirits from another land, as they sing 'peace on earth, good will to man.' The great Antelope is not a hen to cackle and run away at the sight of danger. ”

“ The bright winter sun had not mounted far enough in the heavens to shed any warm rays into the camp when Jack pulled on his boots and poked the fire preparatory to an early breakfast. The ponies did not look as if dyspepsia troubled them, nor did Jack feel overburdened with belly worship. The little larder was a hollow mockery to the knockings of a ravenous appetite. Jack concluded that a well-fed discretion was better than hungry haste, so he meandered down the river in search of a rabbit, while Chiquita attended to her morning ablutions. ”

“ But even this passage to that mountain of wealth was beset by terrors as frightful as those above the ground. Reptiles had ingress and egress from fissures leading to the surface, and one was in constant danger at every step, not from the trail alone, but from the roof and sides of that slimy cañon, the gloom of which added to the dark hideousness, as the feeble, flickering torches awakened the lethargic inhabitants of that abandoned inferno.
The trip from the White River Agency had been made by rail as far as possible. ”

“ Yamanatz, Antelope, Jack, and the mother of Chiquita stood by, while the fairest of the White River maidens told them of the great happiness which awaited her in the Happy Hunting Ground of the Utes which lay just beyond the sky.
"If my father and my mother were only there," said Chiquita, as she pointed beyond the cleft above the river. "And, Jack," she continued, "you must beg leave of absence from the heaven of the white man and visit Chiquita in her happy home. You will find birds that sing and the bounding deer and flowers that bloom. ”

“ As Jack unrolled the buckskin pouch of nuggets and grains of dull, rich gold, the look on his father's face changed from one of intense scorn to deference, from sarcasm to a fawning smile. The avarice in his nature manifested itself in so apparent a manner that Jack was tempted to make one little fling, but restrained himself.
"My son, what you have uttered about the Indian being deprived of his land is the old story. Every once in a while it comes out in a little different cover, but are we to blame for the actions of our ancestors? ”

“ In a grove of tall fir trees, close to the placid waters of the Grand River, Yamanatz erected his tepee, where in the soft, balmy air, fragrant with balsam and cedar, Chiquita could rest and watch the clouds as they made great shadow pictures on the mountain and stream. Like a sentinel, a lone peak stood beyond the cleft in the great divide, whose precipitous sides rose in towering splendor all clad in verdure green. ”

“ For ages, as countless as the sands of the Big River, the fresh waters of the great inland seas skirting the first lofty range of the Rocky Mountains washed in torrents and torrents the salt deposited by the great upheavals of the western continent, through the yawning cañons which were created by these torrents' own irresistible force, to the bases of the great barrier where the sun disappears. ”

“ It took a month to reach the final spot selected for a cabin on Rock Creek, during which time Jack met many of the brave and weather-beaten, buckskin clad frontiersmen living on the firing line of civilization at the very threshold of savagedom. Men who drove the rude stakes marking pioneer advancement into the soil wrested from its occupants by purchase from a broken down dynasty, claiming discovery, a nation whose bigoted avariciousness blinded its foresight to the end of bartering away its last foothold on the great American continent. ”

“ Go to the great sales counters of some of the cheaper grade of stores and follow the life of some poor unfortunate; seek the divorce court and find a victim of misplaced affection; go to the political fountain and gaze at the high chief whose influence restrains the guardian of the public peace from interfering with these dens of vice where voters congregate to do honor to the chief. Seven thousand saloons in the city, with a following of twenty to each saloon to vote for their master who wields the baton of wide-open hell holes to the end of obtaining blood money from those who are protected! ”

“ A Ute does not fear the death that awaits him, even for a crime," proudly asserted Chiquita. "The Great Manitou will send him back. Has he not danced to Wakantanka with a buffalo skull hung to a thong that passed through the flesh of his back? Will one who has danced to the Sun be afraid to return to the Kiowa dogs? Polar Bear knows that the Utes would drive him back from the Happy Hunting Ground and be killed by them if he did not keep his promise to return. Polar Bear knows there is no escape." ”

“ A sudden thought surged within her. "No one would know; should she"— "He is not for me—I am a Ute's daughter, a degraded Indian. Can I live and see him the husband of another and not betray my secret? Oh, Jack! perhaps it had been better that Chiquita had never become a medicine tepee queen! Were it not better that the sister of the forest should never have been educated?
'A little learning is a dangerous thing;
Drink deep or taste not the Pierian spring;
There shallow draughts intoxicate the brain,
And drinking largely sobers us again.'
"I can not turn back. ”

“ Pickett, it is so hard for me, an Indian born girl, a daughter taught to pray to the wind, the sun, the rain as animate gods, capable of doing good or harm, to have that faith you possess—that beautiful faith in the hereafter, in a God whose heaven and home you know not of, yet where, you acknowledge, there are no flowers, no birds, no deer, no giving in marriage, no thirst, and no hunger. ”

“ Jack sat dignified and martyr-like while the minister preached upon the evils which beset the young and dangers to the worldly-minded. "The vain glories of dress and fashion are an abomination of the Lord," said the man of God. Jack moved uncomfortably in his new suit of clothes, while Hazel from her choir seat telegraphed her convictions that the dominie was right, just to plague Jack. And when the admonition came, "He that loveth pleasure shall be a poor man," Jack said to himself, "A whip for a horse, a bridle for an ass and a rod for a fool's back." ”

“ The sun had crossed the noonday meridian when the final adios was given. Striking to the right of the Horseshoe Park road the trail led into a labyrinth of forest burned "down timber," miles of denuded trees—sentries in nature's graveyard—and as the wind wheezed dismally through the few branches left by the consuming fire, their creaking and rattling was not unlike the clatter of a thousand skeletons assembled in some vast amphitheatre to dance away a few years of eternity's exile. ”

“ Meanwhile, Chiquita had brought driftwood and dry sticks until an immense pile of fuel was in readiness for the long night. The ponies were picketed, one on each side of the camp and the third one close to the edge of the stream, forming a guard past which no wild animal would attempt to go. It was now dark and the ponies were foraging for buffalo grass, while Jack toasted some bacon on a stick, made coffee in an old baked-bean can, which he had thoughtfully tied to the pack-saddle, and toasted the frozen bread on a hot rock. ”

“ Susan, seated upon her blanket, appeared even more so; in fact when it became apparent that Antelope was not to be one of the contestants she shook her head and disconsolately continued her beadwork.
The braves vied with each other in feats of running, wrestling, jumping, swinging from one tree to another, riding in all manner of positions on bareback, bridleless ponies; throwing knives at each other's heads, arms and necks in endeavors to pinion the victim to a tree without doing him any bodily harm; torturing themselves with cruel whips; gashing and lacerating the flesh ”

“ About half way, however, the horses floundered into a drift which accumulated over the spongy surface of a willow-banked ravine, the sled pitched its nose down deep, the trapper swore, and Jack wanted to.
"Guess we better 'cache' our stuff and get over thar in the timber and let the 'dod gasted' blizzard play itself out," said the man of many winters' experience. "You have done mighty well for a tenderfoot. An old-timer couldn't have done better in tramping snow and breaking trail than you have. This is about as bad a storm as you will ever get into. ”

“ The paleface has spread out as the wings of an eagle until the lands are gone. The smoke rises from the tall stacks and long ago have we been forgotten by the old Ute warriors who have passed into the great Happy Hunting Ground, there to live on pots of savory flesh while we slave in the sage brush or eat army rations and wear army blankets, which are brought to us on the cars. This is civilization and it is so that Chiquita is to learn what her white sister does in civilization, and Antelope is asked to be patient and wait for Chiquita while she may see the fair sister unto the end. ”

“ Is it not far better to have this country populated with a race of God-fearing, civilized, labor-giving people, a people who by their master minds and master hands today provide the world with food, with clothing, with machinery that other nations may become enlightened and as progressive as we are?"
"Yes," interrupted Jack, "and with our own machinery send back goods and experienced laborers to compete with the skilled labor we have educated up to the necessary standard. ”

“ The remnant of former greatness drooped to a low ebb of cunning, outmatched only by the cunning of the frontier statesman, backed by the grasping political land-grabber and office-holding despot bidding for votes—these jackals whose blighting breath corrupt juries, legislatures and even the church into a belief that it is justice to waylay the child of nature in the onward march of civilization, to wrest from him the land which God gave as an heritage. ”

“ It is hard for Chiquita with all her learning and life among her palefaced sisters to say, 'Lord, into Thy hands I commend my spirit.' But I try to believe that your life is the better one for the world, for the human race, and that in the end there will be no more savages, no more heathens, no more unbelievers. ”