VIII
CURTIS WRITES A LONG LETTER
The stage-driver and mail-carrier to Fort Smith was young Crane's Voice,and this was his first trip in December. He congratulated himself onhaving his back to the wind on the fifty-mile ride up the valley. Anorther was abroad over the earth, and, sweeping down from arcticwildernesses, seemingly gathered power as it came. It crossed two vastStates in a single night and fell upon the Fort Smith reservation withterrible fury about ten o'clock in the morning.
Crane's Voice did not get his mail-sack till twelve, but his ponies werefed and watered and ready to move when the bag came. He did not knowthat it contained a letter to warm the heart of his hero, the Captain,but he flung the sack into his cart and put stick to his broncos quiteas manfully as though the Little Father waited. The road was smooth andhard and quite level for thirty miles, and he intended to cover thisstretch in five hours. Darkness would come early, and the snow, whichwas hardly more than a frost at noon, might thicken into a blizzard. Sohe pushed on steadily, fiercely, silently, till a sinister dusk began tofall over the buttes, and then, lifting his voice in a deep, humming,throbbing incantation, he sang to keep off spirits of evil.
Crane's Voice was something of an aristocrat. As the son of Chief Elk hehad improved his opportunities to learn of the white man, and couldspeak a little English and understand a good deal more than heacknowledged, which gave him a startling insight at times into the wordsand actions of the white people. It was his report of the unvaryingkindliness and right feeling of Captain Curtis which had done so much tomake the whole tribe trust and obey the new agent.
Crane's Voice was afraid of spirits, but he shrank from no hardship. Hewas proud of his blue uniform, and of the revolver which he waspermitted to wear to guard the mail. No storm had ever prevented himfrom making his trip, and his uncomplaining endurance of heat, cold,snow, and rain would have been counted heroic in a military scout. Hisvirtues were so evident even to the cowboys that they made him anexception by saying, "Yes, Crane is purty near white," and beingbesotted in their own vanity, they failed to see the humor of such aphrase in the mouth of a drunken, obscene, lawless son of a Missouriemigrant. As a matter of fact there were many like Crane in the tribe,only the settlers never came in personal contact with them.
Crane found his road heavy with drifts as he left the main valley andbegan to climb, and he did not reach the agency till long after Curtishad gone to bed, but he found his anxious mother waiting for him,together with the captain of police, who took the bag of mail to theoffice. As he drove into the big corral out of the wind the boy said, inhis quaint English: "Me no like 'um blizzard. Fleeze ears like buffalohorn."
Curtis came to the office next morning with a heavy heart. He knew howhard the bitter cold pressed upon his helpless wards, and sufferedacutely for sympathy. He spoke to all of those he met with unusualtenderness, and asked minutely after the children, to be sure that nonewere ill or hungry.
As Wilson, his clerk, laid the big package of letters and papers on histable, the pale-blue, square envelope which bore Elsie's handwriting wasostentatiously balanced on top. Wilson, the lovelorn clerk, sighed tothink he had no such missive in his mail that gloomy morning. Lookingin, a half-hour later, he found Curtis writing busily in answer to thatletter, all the rest of his mail being untouched. "I thought so," saidhe; "I'd neglect any business for a sweet little envelope like that,"and he sighed again.
Curtis had opened the letter eagerly, but with no expectation ofcomfort. As he read he forgot the storm outside. A warm glow crept intohis blood. Lover-like, he got from the letter a great deal more thanElsie had intended to say. He seized his pen to reply at once--just afew lines to set her mind at rest; but his thought ran on so fast, sofull of energy, that his writing became all but illegible:
"DEAR MISS BRISBANE,--You have given me a great pleasure by your letter, and I am replying at once to assure you that I did not lay your words up against you, because I felt you did not fully understand the situation. Your letter gives me courage to say that I think you are unjust in your attitude towards these primitive races--and I also hope that as fuller understanding comes you will change your views.
"Here they are, fenced in on the poorest part of this bleak reservation, on the cold slope of the range, exposed to the heat and drought of summer and the storms of winter. This morning, for example, the wind is rushing up the converging walls of this valley--which opens out to the northeast, you remember--and the cold is intense. I am just sending out messengers to see that no children are freezing. Everything is hard as iron, and the Indians, muffled in their blankets, are sitting beside their fires glum as owls, waiting the coming of the sunshine.
"I must tell you something which happened since you went away--it may correct your views of the Tetongs. It is my policy to give all hauling and wood contracts to the Indian instead of the white man, and when I told the white who has been putting in the wood that I was about to let the contract to the reds he laughed and said, 'You can't get 'em to do that work!' But I felt sure I could. I called them together and gave them fifty axes and told them how much wood I wanted. A few days later I thought I'd ride over to see how they were getting along. As I drew near I heard the most astonishing click-clack of axe-strokes, shouts, laughter, the falling of trees, and when I came in sight I 'trun up both hands.' They had hundreds of cords already cut--twice as much, it seemed, as I could use. I begged them to stop, and finally got them to begin to haul. In the end I was obliged to take sixty cords more than I needed.
"You cannot understand what a pleasure it is for me to see ancient lies about these people destroyed by such experiences as this. It was pathetic to me to find the Two Horns, the Crawling Elk, and other proud old warriors toiling awkwardly with their axes, their small hands covered with blisters; but they laughed and joked about it, and encouraged each other as if they were New-Englanders at a husking-bee. My days and nights are full of trouble, because I can do so little for them. If they were on tillable land I could make them self-supporting in two years, but this land is arid as a desert. It is fair to look upon, but it will not yield a living to any one but a herder.
"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. If I could, I would civilize only to the extent of making life easier and happier--the religious beliefs, the songs, the native dress--all these things I would retain. What is life for, if not for this?
"My artist friends as a rule agree with me in these matters, and that is another reason why your unsympathetic attitude surprises and grieves me. I know your home-life has been such as would prejudice you against the redman, but your training in Paris should have changed all that. You consider the Tetongs 'good material'--if you come to know them as I do you will find they are _folks_, just like anybody else, with the same rights to the earth that we have. Of course, they _are_ crude and unlovely--and sometimes they are cruel; but they have an astonishing power over those who come to know them well.
"Pardon this long letter. You may call me a crank or any hard name you please, but I am anxious to have you on the right side in this struggle, for it is a struggle to the death. The tragedy of their certain extinction overwhelms me at times. I found a little scrap of canvas with a sketch of Peta on it--may I keep it? My sister is quite well an
d deep in 'the work.' She often speaks of you and we are both hoping to see you next year."
It was foolish for him to expect an immediate reply to this epistle, buthe did--he counted the days which lay between its posting and apossible date for return mail. Perhaps, had he been in Washington,diverted by Congress, cheered by the Army and Navy Club, and entertainedby his friends, he would not have surrendered so completely to thedomination of that imperious girl-face; but in the dead of winter,surrounded by ragged, smoky squaws and their impatient, complaininghusbands, with no companionship but his sister and Wilson, the love-sickclerk, his thought in every moment of relaxation went back to themoments he had spent in Elsie's company. Nature cried out, "It is notgood for man to be alone," but the iron ring of circumstance held him aprisoner in a land where delicate women were as alien as orange blossomsor tea-roses.
Outwardly composed, indefatigable, stern in discipline and judicial ofreport, he was inwardly filled with a mighty longing to see again thatslim young girl with the big, black, changeful eyes. He made carefulattempt to conceal his growing unrest from Jennie, but her sharp eyes,accustomed to every change in his face, detected a tremor when Elsie'sname was mentioned, and her ears discovered a subtle vibration in hisvoice which instructed her, though she did not attain completerealization of his absorbing interest. She was sympathetic enough tosearch out Elsie's name in the social columns of the Washington papers,and it was pitiful to see with what joy the busy Indian agent listenedto the brief item concerning "Miss Brisbane's reception on Monday," orthe description of her dress at the McCartney ball.
Jennie sighed as she read of these brilliant assemblages. "George, Iwonder if we will ever spend another winter in Washington?"
"Oh, I think so, sis--some time."
"Some time! But we'll both be so old we won't enjoy it. Sometimes I feelthat we are missing everything that's worth while."
He did not mention Elsie's letter, and as the weeks passed without anyreply he was very glad he had kept silence. Jennie had her secret, also,which was that Elsie was as good as engaged to Lawson. No one knew thisfor a certainty, but Mrs. Wilcox was quite free to say she considered ita settled thing.
Jennie was relieved to know how indifferent her brother was to MissColson, the missionary, who seemed to be undergoing a subtletransformation. With Jennie she was always moaning and sighing, but inthe presence of her lord, the agent, she relaxed and became quitecheerful and dangerously pretty. The other teachers--good, commonplacesouls!--went their mechanical way, with very little communication withthe agent's household, but Miss Colson seized every opportunity toescape her messmates. "They are so material," she said, sighfully; "theymake spiritual growth impossible to me."
Jennie was not deceived. "You're a cat, that's what you are--a nice,little, scared cat; but you're getting over your scare," she added, asshe watched the devotee in spirited conversation with her brother.
Elsie's reply to Curtis's long letter was studiedly cool but polite. "Ifeel the force of what you say, but the course of civilization liesacross the lands of the 'small peoples.' It is sorrowful, of course, butthey must go, like the wolves and the rattlesnakes." In this phrase herecognized the voice of Andrew J. Brisbane, and it gave him a twinge tosee it written by Elsie's small hand. The letter ended by leavingmatters very adroitly at an equipoise. It was friendlier than she hadever been in conversation, yet not so womanly as he had hoped it mightbe. As he studied it, however, some subtler sense than sight detected inits carefully compounded phrases something to feed upon, and though hedid not write in answer to it, he had a feeling that she expected him todo so.
Meanwhile the tone of the opposition grew confident. The settlers wereconvinced that Congress would accede to their wishes and remove theTetongs, and they began to treat the redmen with a certain good-naturedtolerance, as if to say, "Well, you'll soon be settled for, anyway."
Calvin Streeter came often to the agency, and not infrequently stayed todinner with Curtis, paying timid court to Jennie, who retained enough ofher girlhood's coquetry to enjoy the handsome cowboy's open-eyedadmiration, even though she laughed at him afterwards in response to herbrother's jesting. Calvin vastly improved under the stress of his desireto be worthy of her. He caught up many of the Captain's nice mannerisms,and handled his fork and napkin with very good grace indeed. He usuallycame galloping across the flat, his horse outstretched at full speed,his hat-rim uprolled by the wind, his gay neckerchief fluttering, hishands holding the reins high--a magnificent picture of powerful youngmanhood. As he reached the gate it was his habit to put his horse on hishaunches with one sudden, pitiless wrench on the Mexican bit and drop tothe ground, and in dramatic contrast with his approach call out insmooth, quiet voice:
"Howdy, folks, howdy! Nice day."
These affectations pleased Jennie very much, though she finallycomplained of his cruelty in reining in his horse so sharply.
"All right, miss, I won't do it no more," he said, instantly.
He quite regularly invited them to the dances given round about, andJennie was ready to go, but Curtis, being too deeply occupied, could notspare the time, and that debarred Jennie, though Calvin could see nogood reason why it should. "I'll take care of you," said he, but thegirl could not trust herself to his protection.
His was not a secretive nature, and he kept Curtis very well informed asto the feeling of the settlers, reporting, as he did, theirconversations as well as their speeches, with great freedom andremarkable accuracy.
In this way the agent learned that the cattlemen had agreed to usecaution in dealing with him. "He's a bad man to monkey with," was thesentiment Calvin reported to be current among the settlers on the WestFork. Young Crane's Voice also circulated this phrase, properlytranslated into Dakota, to his uncles Lame Paw and Two Horns, and so thetribe came to understand that they had a redoubtable defender in SwiftEagle, as they called the agent in their own tongue.
From every source they heard good things of him, and they came to lovehim and to obey him as they had never loved and obeyed even theirbest-regarded chief. The squaws made excuse to come in and shake handswith him and hear his laughter, and the children no longer hid or turnedaway 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 laidtheir arms across his shoulders as they jokingly threatened to pull outthe hairs of his face, in order to make him a redman. His lightest wishwas respected. The wildest young dare-devil would dismount and take ahand at pushing a wagon or lifting a piece of machinery when Curtisasked it of him.
"If I only had the water that flows in these three little streams," heoften said to Jennie, "I'd make these people self-supporting."
"We'll have things our own way yet," replied Jennie, always theoptimist.