When their Great Father, apparently the less important personage, had smilingly received them, a political colleague approached Peter and took his arm. Gray Eagle would like to speak with you. Come on! Heres your chance! You may be put on the Committee on Indian Relations, and pick up a few facts. Remember we want a firm policy; no more palaver about the Great Father and no more blankets and guns! You know what we used to say out West, The only Good Indian is a dead one. So wade in, and hear what the old plug hat has to say.
Peter permitted himself to be led to the group. Even at that moment he remembered the figure of the Indian on the tomb at Ashley Grange, and felt a slight flash of satisfaction over the superior height and bearing of Gray Eagle.
How! said Gray Eagle. How! said the other four chiefs. How! repeated Peter instinctively. At a gesture from Gray Eagle the interpreter said: Let your friend stand back; Gray Eagle has nothing to say to him. He wishes to speak only with you.
Peters friend reluctantly withdrew, but threw a cautioning glance towards him. Ugh! said Gray Eagle. Ugh! said the other chiefs. A few guttural words followed to the interpreter, who turned, and facing Peter with the monotonous impassiveness which he had caught from the chiefs, said: He says he knew your father. He was a great chief,with many horses and many squaws. He is dead.
My father was an Englishman,Philip Atherly! said Peter, with an odd nervousness creeping over him.
The interpreter repeated the words to Grey Eagle, who, after a guttural Ugh! answered in his own tongue.
He says, continued the interpreter with a slight shrug, yet relapsing into his former impassiveness, that your father was a great chief, and your mother a pale face, or white woman. She was captured with an Englishman, but she became the wife of the chief while in captivity. She was only released before the birth of her children, but a year or two afterwards she brought them as infants to see their father,the Great Chief,and to get the mark of their tribe. He says you and your sister are each marked on the left arm.
Then Gray Eagle opened his mouth and uttered his first English sentence. His father, big Injin, take common white squaw! Papoose no good,too much white squaw mother, not enough big Injin father! Look! He big man, but no can bear pain! Ugh!
The interpreter turned in time to catch Peter. He had fainted.
CHAPTER III
A hot afternoon on the plains. A dusty cavalcade of United States cavalry and commissary wagons, which from a distance preserved a certain military precision of movement, but on nearer view resolved itself into straggling troopers in twos and fours interspersed between the wagons, two noncommissioned officers and a guide riding ahead, who had already fallen into the cavalry slouch, but off to the right, smartly erect and cadet-like, the young lieutenant in command. A wide road that had the appearance of being at once well traveled and yet deserted, and that, although well defined under foot, still seemed to disappear and lose itself a hundred feet ahead in the monotonous level. A horizon that in that clear, dry, hazeless atmosphere never mocked you, yet never changed, but kept its eternal rim of mountains at the same height and distance from hour to hour and day to day. Dusta parching alkaline powder that cracked the skineverywhere, clinging to the hubs and spokes of the wheels, without being disturbed by movement, incrusting the cavalryman from his high boots to the crossed sabres of his cap; going off in small puffs like explosions under the plunging hoofs of the horses, but too heavy to rise and follow them. A reeking smell of horse sweat and boot leather that lingered in the road long after the train had passed. An external silence broken only by the cough of a jaded horse in the suffocating dust, or the cracking of harness leather. Within one of the wagons that seemed a miracle of military neatness and methodical stowage, a lazy conversation carried on by a grizzled driver and sunbrowned farrier.
Who be you? sezee. Im Philip Atherly, a member of Congress, sez the long, dark-complected man, sezee, and Im on a commission for looking into this yer Injin grievance, sezee. You may be God Almighty, sez Nebraska Bill, sezee, but you look a dd sight more like a hoss-stealin Apache, and we dont want any of your psalm-singing, big-talkin peacemakers interferin with our ways of treatin pizen,you hear me? Im shoutin, sezee. With that the dark-complected mans eyes began to glisten, and he sorter squirmed all over to get at Bill, and Bill outs with his battery.Whoa, will ye; whats up with YOU now? The latter remark was directed to the young spirited near horse he was driving, who was beginning to be strangely excited.
What happened then? said the farrier lazily.
Well, continued the driver, having momentarily quieted his horse, I reckoned it was about time for me to wheel into line, for fellers of the Bill stripe, out on the plains, would ez leave plug a man in citizens clothes, even if he was the President himself, as they would drop on an Injin or a nigger. Look here, Bill, sez I, Im escortin this stranger under govment orders, and Im responsible for him. I aint allowed to waste govment powder and shot on YOUR kind onless Ive orders, but if youll wait till I strip off this shell1 Ill lam the stuffin outer ye, afore the stranger. With that Bill just danced with rage, but dassent fire, for HE knew, and I knew, that if hed plugged me hed been a dead frontiersman afore the next mornin.
But youd have had to give him up to the authorities, and a jury of his own kind would have set him free.
Not much! If you hadnt just joined, youd know that aint the way o 30th Cavalry, returned the driver. The kernel would have issued his orders to bring in Bill dead or alive, and the 30th would have managed to bring him in DEAD! Then your jury might have sat on him! Tell you what, chaps of the Bill stripe dont care overmuch to tackle the yaller braid2.
But whats this yer Congressman interferin for, anyway?
Hes a rich Californian. Thinks hes got a call, I reckon, to look arter Injins, just as them Abolitionists looked arter slaves. And get hated just as they was by the folks here,and as WE are, too, for the matter of that.
Well, I dunno, rejoined the farrier, it dont seem nateral for white men to quarrel with each other about the way to treat an Injin, and that Injin lyin in ambush to shoot em both. And ef govment would only make up its mind how to treat em, instead of one day pretendin to be their Great Father and treatin them like babies, and the next makin treaties with em like as they wos forriners, and the next sendin out a handful of us to lick ten thousand of themWots the use of ONE regimenteven twoagin a nationon their own ground?
A nation,and on their own ground,thats just whar youve hit it, Softy. Thats the argument of that Congressman Atherly, as Ive heard him talk with the kernel.
And what did the kernel say?
The kernel reckoned it was his business to obey orders,and so should you. So shut your head! If ye wanted to talk about govment ye might say suthin about its usin us to convoy picnics and excursion parties around, who come out here to have a days shootin, under some big-wig of a political boss or a railroad president, with a letter to the general. And WERE told off to look arter their precious skins, and keep the Injins off em,and they shootin or skeerin off the Injins natral game, and our provender! Darn my skin ef therell be much to scout for ef this goes on. And bgosh!of they arent now ringin in a lot of titled forriners to hunt big game, as they call it,Lord This-and-That and Count So-and-So,all of em with letters to the general from the Washington cabinet to show hospitality, or from millionaires whove bin hobnobbin with em in the old country. And darn my skin ef some of em aint bringin their wives and sisters along too. There was a lord and lady passed through here under escort last week, and were goin to pick up some more of em at Fort Biggs tomorrow,and I reckon some of us will be told off to act as ladies maids or milliners. Nothin short of a good Injin scare, I reckon, would send them and us about our reglar business. Whoa, then, will ye? At it again, are ye? Whats gone of the dd critter?
Here the fractious near horse was again beginning to show signs of disturbance and active terror. His quivering nostrils were turned towards the wind, and he almost leaped the centre pole in his frantic effort to avoid it. The eyes of the two men were turned instinctively in that direction. Nothing was to be seen,the illimitable plain and the sinking sun were all that met the eye. But the horse continued to struggle, and the wagon stopped. Then it was discovered that the horse of an adjacent trooper was also laboring under the same mysterious excitement, and at the same moment wagon No. 3 halted. The infection of some inexplicable terror was spreading among them. Then two non-commissioned officers came riding down the line at a sharp canter, and were joined quickly by the young lieutenant, who gave an order. The trumpeter instinctively raised his instrument to his lips, but was stopped by another order.
And then, as seen by a distant observer, a singular spectacle was unfolded. The straggling train suddenly seemed to resolve itself into a large widening circle of horsemen, revolving round and partly hiding the few heavy wagons that were being rapidly freed from their struggling teams. These, too, joined the circle, and were driven before the whirling troopers. Gradually the circle seemed to grow smaller under the winding-up of those evolutions, until the horseless wagons reappeared again, motionless, fronting the four points of the compass, thus making the radii of a smaller inner circle, into which the teams of the wagons as well as the troopers horses were closely wound up and densely packed together in an immovable mass. As the circle became smaller the troopers leaped from their horses,which, however, continued to blindly follow each other in the narrower circle,and ran to the wagons, carbines in hand. In five minutes from the time of giving the order the straggling train was a fortified camp, the horses corralled in the centre, the dismounted troopers securely posted with their repeating carbines in the angles of the rude bastions formed by the deserted wagons, and ready for an attack. The stampede, if such it was, was stopped.
And yet no cause for it was to be seen! Nothing in earth or sky suggested a reason for this extraordinary panic, or the marvelous evolution that suppressed it. The guide, with three men in open order, rode out and radiated across the empty plain, returning as empty of result. In an hour the horses were sufficiently calmed and fed, the camp slowly unwound itself, the teams were set to and were led out of the circle, and as the rays of the setting sun began to expand fanlike across the plain the cavalcade moved on. But between them and the sinking sun, and visible through its last rays, was a faint line of haze parallel with their track. Yet even this, too, quickly faded away.
Had the guide, however, penetrated half a mile further to the west he would have come upon the cause of the panic, and a spectacle more marvelous than that he had just witnessed. For the illimitable plain with its monotonous prospect was far from being level; a hundred yards further on he would have slowly and imperceptibly descended into a depression nearly a mile in width. Here he not only would have completely lost sight of his own cavalcade, but have come upon another thrice its length. For here was a trailing line of jog-trotting dusky shapes, some crouching on dwarf ponies half their size, some trailing lances, lodge-poles, rifles, women and children after them, all moving with a monotonous rhythmic motion as marked as the military precision of the other cavalcade, and always on a parallel line with it. They had done so all day, keeping touch and distance by stealthy videttes that crept and crawled along the imperceptible slope towards the unconscious white men. It was, no doubt, the near proximity of one of those watchers that had touched the keen scent of the troopers horses.
The moon came up; the two cavalcades, scarcely a mile apart, moved on in unison together. Then suddenly the dusky caravan seemed to arise, stretch itself out, and swept away like a morning mist towards the west. The bugles of Fort Biggs had just rung out.
Peter Atherly was up early the next morning pacing the veranda of the commandants house at Fort Biggs. It had been his intention to visit the new Indian Reservation that day, but he had just received a letter announcing an unexpected visit from his sister, who wished to join him. He had never told her the secret of their Indian paternity, as it had been revealed to him from the scornful lips of Gray Eagle a year ago; he knew her strangely excitable nature; besides, she was a wife now, and the secret would have to be shared with her husband. When he himself had recovered from the shock of the revelation, two things had impressed themselves upon his reserved and gloomy nature: a horror of his previous claim upon the Atherlys, and an infinite pity and sense of duty towards his own race. He had devoted himself and his increasing wealth to this one object; it seemed to him at times almost providential that his position as a legislator, which he had accepted as a whim or fancy, should have given him this singular opportunity.
Yet it was not an easy task or an enviable position. He was obliged to divorce himself from his political party as well as keep clear of the wild schemes of impractical enthusiasts, too practical contractors, and the still more helpless bigotry of Christian civilizers, who would have regenerated the Indian with a text which he did not understand and they were unable to illustrate by example. He had expected the opposition of lawless frontiersmen and ignorant settlersas roughly indicated in the conversation already recorded; indeed he had felt it difficult to argue his humane theories under the smoking roof of a raided settlers cabin, whose owner, however, had forgotten his own repeated provocations, or the trespass of which he was proud. But Atherlys unaffected and unobtrusive zeal, his fixity of purpose, his undoubted courage, his self-abnegation, and above all the gentle melancholy and half-philosophical wisdom of this new missionary, won him the respect and assistance of even the most callous or the most skeptical of officials. The Secretary of the Interior had given him carte blanche; the President trusted him, and it was said had granted him extraordinary powers. Oddly enough it was only his own Californian constituency, who had once laughed at what they deemed his early aristocratic pretensions, who now found fault with his democratic philanthropy. That a man who had been so well received in Englandthe news of his visit to Ashley Grange had been duly recordedshould sink so low as to take up with the Injins of his own country galled their republican pride. A few of his personal friends regretted that he had not brought back from England more conservative and fashionable graces, and had not improved his opportunities. Unfortunately there was no essentially English policy of trusting aborigines that they knew of.
In his gloomy self-scrutiny he had often wondered if he ought not to openly proclaim his kinship with the despised race, but he was always deterred by the thought of his sister and her husband, as well as by the persistent doubt whether his advocacy of Indian rights with his fellow countrymen would be as well served by such a course. And here again he was perplexed by a singular incident of his early missionary efforts which he had at first treated with cold surprise, but to which later reflection had given a new significance. After Gray Eagles revelation he had made a pilgrimage to the Indian country to verify the statements regarding his dead father,the Indian chief Silver Cloud. Despite the confusion of tribal dialects he was amazed to find that the Indian tongue came back to him almost as a forgotten boyish memory, so that he was soon able to do without an interpreter; but not until that functionary, who knew his secret, appeared one day as a more significant ambassador. Gray Eagle says if you want truly to be a brother to his people you must take a wife among them. He loves youtake one of his! Peter, through whose veinsalbeit of mixed bloodran that Puritan ice so often found throughout the Great West, was frigidly amazed. In vain did the interpreter assure him that the wife in question, Little Daybreak, was a wife only in name, a prudent reserve kept by Gray Eagle in the orphan daughter of a brother brave. But Peter was adamant. Whatever answer the interpreter returned to Gray Eagle he never knew. But to his alarm he presently found that the Indian maiden Little Daybreak had been aware of Gray Eagles offer, and had with pathetic simplicity already considered herself Peters spouse. During his stay at the encampment he found her sitting before his lodge every morning. A girl of sixteen in years, a child of six in intellect, she flashed her little white teeth upon him when he lifted his tent flap, content to receive his grave, melancholy bow, or patiently trotted at his side carrying things he did not want, which she had taken from the lodge. When he sat down to work, she remained seated at a distance, looking at him with glistening beady eyes like blackberries set in milk, and softly scratching the little bare brown ankle of one foot with the turned-in toes of the other, after an infantine fashion. Yet after he had lefta still single man, solely though his interpreters diplomacy, as he always believedhe was very worried as to the wisdom of his course. Why should he not in this way ally himself to his unfortunate race irrevocably? Perhaps there was an answer somewhere in his consciousness which he dared not voice to himself. Since his visit to the English Atherlys, he had put resolutely aside everything that related to that episode, which he now considered was an unhappy imposture. But there were times when a vision of Lady Elfrida, gazing at him with wondering, fascinated eyes, passed across his fancy; even the contact with his own race and his thoughts of their wrongs recalled to him the tomb of the soldier Atherly and the carven captive savage supporter. He could not pass the upright supported bier of an Indian braveslowly desiccating in the desert airwithout seeing in the dead warriors paraphernalia of arms and trophies some resemblance to the cross-legged crusader on whose marble effigy SHE had girlishly perched herself as she told the story of her ancestors. Yet only the peaceful gloom and repose of the old church touched him now; even she, too, with all her glory of English girlhood, seemed to belong to that remote past. She was part of the restful quiet of the church; the yews in the quaint old churchyard might have waved over her as well.