Judith of the Plains

  VI

  A Daughter Of The Desert

  Judith knew that the name of the girl whose letter sent Peter Hamiltonvaulting to the saddle was Katherine Colebrooke. There had been a deal ofletter-writing between her and the young cow-puncher of late, of whichperforce, by a singular irony of fate, the postmistress had been theinvoluntary instrument. The correspondence had followed a recent hastyjourney to New York, undertaken somewhat unwillingly by Hamilton in theinterest of certain affairs connected with the settlement of an estate.

  The precipitancy of this latest turn of events bewildered Judith; but yeta little while--a matter of weeks and days--and her friendship with Hamiltonhad been of that pleasantly indefinite estate situated somewhere on theborderland of romance, a kingdom where there is no law but the mutualinterest of the wayfarers. Judith and Peter had been pitifully new at thegame of life when the gods vouchsafed them the equivocal blessing ofpropinquity. Judith was but lately come from the convent at Santa Fe, andHamilton from the university whose honors availed him little in thetrailing of cattle over the range or in the sweat and tumult of thebranding-pen. It was a strange election of opportunity for a man who hadbeen class poet and had rather conspicuously avoided athletics during hisentire college course. In pursuing fortune westward Hamilton did not lackfor chroniclers who would not have missed a good story for the want of anauthentic dramatic interpretation of his plans. His uncle, said they, whohad put him through college, was disposed to let him sink or swim by hisown efforts; or, again, he had quarrelled with this same omnipotent uncleand walked from his presence with no prospects but those within grasp ofhis own hand. Again, he had taken the negative of a fair lady more toheart than two-and-twenty is in the habit of taking negatives. Peter madeno confidences. He went West to punch cows for the Wetmore outfit; he wasa distant connection of the Wetmores through his mother's side of thefamily.

  In those days Peter wore his rue--whether for lady fair or for toweringprospects stricken down--with a tinge of wan melancholy not unbecoming to agentle aquilinity of profile, softened by the grace of adolescence. Hisinstinctive aristocracy of manners and taste would have availed him littlewith his new associates had he been a whit less manly. But as he shirkedno part of the universal hardship, they left him his reticence. He evencame to enjoy a sort of remote popularity as one who was conversant withthe best--a nonchalant social connoisseur--yet who realized the sternprimitive beauties of the range life.

  Judith's convent upbringing had conferred on her the doubtful advantage ofa gentlewoman's tastes and bearing, making of her, therefore, an alien inher father's house. When Mrs. Atkins, who was responsible for hereducation, realized the equivocal good of these things, and saw moreoverthat the girl had grown to be a beauty, she offered to adopt her; butJudith, with the pitiful heroism of youth that understands little of whatit is renouncing, thought herself strong enough to hold together a family,uncertain of purpose as quicksilver.

  In those tragic days of readjustment came Peter Hamilton, as strange tothe bald conditions of frontier life as the girl herself. From thebeginning there had been between them the barrier of circumstance.Hamilton was poor, Judith the mainstay of a household whose thriftlessnesshad become a proverb. He came of a family that numbered a signer of theDeclaration of Independence, a famous chief-justice, and the dean of agreat university; Judith was uncertain of her right to the very name shebore. And yet they were young, he a man, she a woman--eternal fountain ofinterest. A precocious sense of the fitness of things was the compass thatenabled Peter to steer through the deep waters in the years that followed.But the girl paid the penalty of her great heart; in that troublous sea offriendship, she was soon adrift without rudder, sail, or compass.

  Judith was now eight-and-twenty, and a sculptor would have found a hundredstatues in her. Long of limb, deep-bosomed, youth and health radiated fromher as sparks fly upward. In sunlight, her black hair had the bluishiridescence of a ripe plum. The eyes were deep and questioning--the eyes ofa young seraph whose wings had not yet brushed the far distant heights ofparadise. Again, in her pagan gladness of living, she might have been aValkyr come down from Valhalla on a shooting-star. And yet, in thiswilderness that was famishing for woman's love and tears and laughter, bya very perversity of fate she walked alone.

  She was a true daughter of the desert, the child of stark, unlovelycircumstance. No well-bred romance of book and bells and churchlybenediction had ushered her into being. Her maternal grandfather had beenthe famous Sioux chief, Flying Hawk; her grandmother, a white woman, whoknew no word of her people's tongue, nor yet her name or race. The Indiansfound the white baby sleeping by her dead mother after the massacre of anemigrant train. They took her with them and she grew up, in the Black Hillcountry, a white-skinned Sioux, marrying a chief of the people that hadslain her people. She accepted her squaw's portion uncomplainingly; slavedcheerfully at squaw's work while her brave made war on the whites, hunted,and smoked. She reared her half-breed children in the legends of theirfather's people, and died, a withered crone, cursing the pale-faces whohad robbed the Sioux of the buffalo and their hunting-ground.

  Her daughter, Singing Stream, who knew no word of English, but who coulddo better bead-work than any squaw in the tribe, went to live with WarrenRodney when he finished his cabin on Elder Creek. That was before the goldfever reached the Black Hills, and Rodney built the cabin that he mightfish and hunt and forget the East and why he left it. There were reasonswhy he wanted to forget his identity as a white man in his play at beingan Indian. In the first flare of youth and the joy of having come into herwoman's kingdom, the half-breed squaw was pretty; she was proud, too, ofher white man, the house he had built her, and the girl pappoose with blueeyes. Furthermore, she had been taught to serve man meekly, for he was thelord of creation.

  Rodney talked Sioux to her. He had all but forgotten he was a white man.The girl pappoose ran about the cabin, brown and bare, but for the beadjacket Singing Stream had made for her in the pride of her maternity.Rodney called the little girl "Judith." Her Indian mother never guessedthe significance of the strange name that she could not say, but made atleast ten soft singing syllables of, in the Indian way. The little Judithgreeted her father in strange lispings; Warren Rodney was far from unhappyin playing at primitive man. This recessional into conditions primevalendured for "seven snows," as the Indian tongue hath it. Then the squawbegan to break, after the manner of the women of her father's people. Shehad begun her race with time a decade after Warren Rodney, and she hadoutdistanced him by a decade.

  And then the Tumlins came from Tennessee to the Black Hills. They came inan ox-cart, and the days of their journey were more than two years. Theyhad stopped in Ohio, and again in Illinois; and, behold! neither was thepromised land, the land that their excited imaginations had painted fromthe large talk of returning travellers, and that was further glorifiedthrough their own thriftless discontent with conditions at home. They hadtravelled on and on across half a continent in the wake of a vanishingsky-line. The vague westward impulse was luring them to California, butthey waited in Dakota that their starved stock might fatten, and whilethey rested themselves from the long journey, Warren Rodney made theacquaintance of Sally Tumlin, who rallied him on being a "squaw man."

  Warren Rodney had almost forgotten the sorceries of the women of hispeople; he had lived so long with a brown woman, who spread no silkensnares. Sally's blushes stirred a multitude of dead things--the wiles ofpale women, all strength in weakness, fragile flowers for tenderhandling--the squaw had grown as withered as a raisin.

  Now, Sally Tumlin had no convictions about life but that the world owedher "a home of her own." Her mother had forged the bolt of this particularmaxim at an early date. And Sally saw from precocious observation that thebusiness of women was home-getting, to which end they must be neat andsweet and sparing of speech. After the home was forthcoming, then, indeed,might a woman take ease in slippers and wrapper, and it is surely a wife'sprivilege to speak her mind.
Sally knew that she hated travelling westwardafter the crawling oxen; each day the sun pursued them, caught up withthem, outdistanced them, and at night left them stranded in thewilderness, and rose again and mocked them on the morrow. Her father andoafish brother loved the makeshifts of the wagon life, with its chanceshots at fleeing antelope, scurrying sage-hens, and bounding cotton-tails;a chance parley with a stray Indian but added zest to the game of chance.But Sally hated it all. The cabin on Elder Creek had a tight roof; WarrenRodney had money in the bank. He had had uncommon luck at trapping. Histalk to Sally was largely of his prospects.

  Sally knew that the world owed her "a home of her own"; and why should shelet a squaw keep her from it? Sally's mother giggled when consulted. Sheplainly regarded the squaw as a rival of her daughter. The ethics of thecase, as far as Mrs. Tumlin was concerned, was merely a question of whiteskin against brown, and which should carry the day. Singing Stream knewnot one word of the talk, much of which occurred in her very presence,that threatened to pull her home about her ears, but she knew that Sallywas taking her man from her. The white-skinned woman wore white rufflesabout her neck and calico dresses that were the color of the wild rosesthat grew among the willows at the creek. Sally Tumlin's pink calico gownssowed a crop of nettles in the mind of the squaw. It was the rainbowthings, she felt, that were robbing her of her man. All her barbariccraving for glowing colors asserted itself as a means towards the onegreat end of keeping him. Singing Stream began to scheme schemes. One dayRodney was splitting wood at the Tumlin camp--though why he should splitwood where there were two women puzzled the squaw. But the ways of thepale-faces were beyond her ken. She only knew that she must make herselfbeautiful in the eyes of Warren Rodney, like this devil woman, and thenperhaps the pappoose that she expected with the first snowfall would be aman-child; and she hoped great things of this happening.

  With such primitive reasoning did Singing Stream put the horses to thelight wagon, and, taking the little Judith with her, drove to Deadwood, amatter of two hundred miles, to buy the bright calicoes that were to makeher like a white woman. It never occurred to the half-breed woman to makeknown her plans to Warren Rodney. In circumventing Sally Tumlin the manbecame the spoils of war, and it is not the Indian way to tell plans onthe war-trail. So the squaw left her kingdom in the hands of the enemy,without a word.

  Sally Tumlin and Warren Rodney looked upon the disappearance of the squawin the light of a providential solution of the difficulties attendingtheir romance. They admitted it was square of her to "hit the trail," andthey decided to lose no time in going to the army post, where a chaplain,an Indian missionary, happened to be staying at the time, and have a realwedding, with a ring and a fee to the parson. The wedding party startedfor the post, old mother Tumlin fluttering about the bride as complacentlyas if the ceremony had been the culmination of the most decorouscourtship. The oafish brother drove the bridal party, making crude jestsby-the-way, to the frank delight of the prospective groom and the gigglingprotestations of the bride. The chaplain at the post was disposed to askfew questions. Parsons made queer marriages in those tumultuous days, andit was regarded as a patent of worthy motives that the pair should call inthe man of the gospel at all. To the question whether or not he had beenmarried before, Rodney answered:

  "Well, parson, this is the first time I have ever stood up for a lifesentence." And the ceremony proceeded.

  Some of the ladies at the post, hearing that there was to be a wedding,dropped in and added their smiles and flutterings to the rather grimparty; among them, Mrs. Atkins, who had just come to the post as a bride.They even added a trifle or two from their own store of pretty things, aspresents to Sally. And Miss Tumlin left the post Mrs. Warren Rodney, with"a home of her own" to go to.

  Singing Stream did not hasten in her quest for bright fabrics with whichto stay the hand of fate. To the half-breed woman the journey to town wasnot without a certain revivifying pleasure. The Indian in her stirred tothe call of the open country. The tight roof to the cabin on Elder Creekhad not the attractions for her that it had for Sally Tumlin. She hadchafed sometimes at a house with four walls. But now the dead and gonebraves rose in her as she followed the old trail where they had so oftencrept to battle against their old enemies, the Crows, before the whiteman's army had scattered them. And as she drove through the foot-hillcountry, she told the solemn-eyed little Judith the story of the Sioux,and what a great fighting people they had been before Rodney's peopledrove them from their land. Judith was holding a doll dressed exactly likeherself, in soft buckskin shirt, little trousers, and moccasins, allbeautifully beaded. In her turn she told the story to the doll.

  Singing Stream told her daughter of the making of the world, as the Siouxbelieve the story of creation; of the "Four who Never Die"--Sharper, orBladder, Rabbit, Turtle, and Monster; likewise of the coming of a mightyflood on which swam the Turtle and a water-fowl in whose bill was theearth atom, from which presently the world began to grow, Turtlesupporting the bird on his great back, which was hard like rock. The restof the myth, that deals with the rising and setting of the sun, SingingStream could not tell her daughter, as the old Sioux chiefs did not thinkit wise to let their women folk know too much about matters of theology.Nor did they relate to squaws the sun myth, with its account of muchcutting-off of heads--thinking, perhaps, with wisdom, that these goodladies saw enough of carnage in their every-day life without introducingit into their catechism.

  But Singing Stream knew the story of "Sharper," or "Bladder," as he iscalled by some of the people, because he is round and his grotesquely fatfigure resembles a bladder blown to bursting. Bladder's province it is tomake a fool of himself, diving into water after plums he sees reflectedthere from the branches of the trees. He dives again and again in hispursuit of folly, even tying stones to his wrists and ankles to keephimself down while he gathers the reflected fruit. After his rescue, whichhe fights against valiantly, as he lies gasping on the bank of the stream,he sees the fruit on the branches above his head. It is this same Bladderwho is one of the _dramatis personae_ in the moon myth, and that is told towomen as safely without the limits of that little learning that is adangerous thing. Bladder met Rabbit hunting; and Bladder kept throwing hiseye up into the tree-tops to look for game. The Rabbit watched himenviously, thinking what a saving of effort it would be if he could do thesame thing. Wherefore Bladder promised to instruct him, telling him tochange eyes after using one four times, but Rabbit did not think that thefirst time counted, as that was but a trial. So he lost his eye afterthrowing it up the fifth time. And the eye of the rabbit is the moon, andthe face seen in the full moon is the reflection of the rabbit seen in hisown eye as we see ourselves reflected in the eye of a friend if we lookclosely. The little girl was wonderfully impressed. She put her hand toher own eyes, but they were in tight, too tight to throw up to thetree-tops.

  Singing Stream also told little Judith that the Great Mystery had showntruths, hid to man, to the trees, the streams, the hills; and the cloudsthat shaped themselves, drifting hither and yon, were the Great Mystery'spassing thoughts. But he had deprived all these things of speech, as hedid not trust them fully, and they could only speak to man in dreams, orin some passing mood, when they could communicate to him the feeling ofone of the Great Spirits, and warn man of what was about to befall him.Judith was not quite four when she took this memorable drive with hermother, but the impression of these things abided through all her years.It was to the measureless spaces of desert loneliness that she learned tobring her sorrows in the days of her arid youth, and to feel a kinshipwith all its moods and to hear in the voice of its silence a never-failingconsolation.

  And when they had come within a mile of Warren Rodney's cabin on ElderCreek, Singing Stream halted and prepared for the great event ofreinstatement. First she made a splendid toilet of purple calico torn intostrips and tied about the waist to simulate the skirts of the devil woman.Over these she wore a shirt of buckskin, broidered with beads of manycolors, and a necklace of e
lk teeth, wound twice about the throat. On herfeet she wore new moccasins of tanned elk-hide, and these, too, werebeaded in many colors. Her hair, now braided with strips of scarletflannel, hung below the waist. And she walked to Rodney's cabin, not as anoutgrown mistress, but as the daughter of a chief. The little Judith heldup her head and clung tight to the doll. She knew that something of momentwas about to happen.

  The gala trio, Singing Stream, Judith, and Judith's doll, presentedthemselves at Rodney's house, before which the bride was washing clothes,the day being fine. Sally, as usual, wore one of the rose-colored calicoeswith the collar turned well in and the sleeves rolled above the elbows.She washed vigorously, with a steady splashing of suds. Sally enjoyed thishome of her own and all the household duties appertaining to it. She wassinging, and a strand of pale-brown hair, crinkly as sea-weed, had blownacross the rose of her cheek, when she felt rather than saw a shadow fallacross her path, and, glancing up, she saw facing her the woman whom shehad supplanted, and the solemn-eyed little girl holding tight to her doll.Now, neither woman knew a word of the other's speech, but Sally wasproficient in the language of femininity, and she was not at a loss tograsp the significance of the purple calico, the beaded buckskin shirt,and the necklace of elk teeth. The half-breed walked as a chief's daughterto the woman at the tub, and Sally grew sick and chill despite her whiteskin and the gold ring that made Warren Rodney her man in the face of thelaw. The dark woman held Judith proudly by the hand, as a sovereign mightcarry a sceptre. Judith was her staff of office, her emblem of authorityin the house of Warren Rodney.

  Singing Stream held out her hands to Sally in a gesture of appeal--andblundered. Of the chief's daughter, walking proudly, Sally was afraid; buta supplicating half-breed in strips of purple calico, not even hemmed, wasa matter for merriment. Sally put her hands on her hips, arms akimbo, andlaughed a dry cackle. The light in the brown woman's eyes, as she lookedat the white, was like prairie-fires rolling forward through darkness.There was no need of a common speech between them. The whole destiny ofwoman was in the laugh and the look that answered it.

  And the man they could have murdered for came from the house, an unheroicfigure with suspenders dangling and a corncob pipe in his mouth, sullen,angry, and withal abjectly frightened, as mere man inevitably is when hesniffs a woman's battle in the air. The bride, at sight of her husband,took to hysterics. She wept, she laughed, and down tumbled her hair. Shefelt the situation demanded a scene. Rodney, with a marital brevity hardlyto be expected so soon, commanded Sally to go into the house and to "shutup."

  Then he faced Singing Stream and said to her in her own language: "Youmust go away from here. The pale-faced woman is my wife by the white man'slaw--ring and Bible. No Indian marriage about this."

  But the brown woman only pointed to Judith. She asked Rodney had she notbeen a good squaw to him.

  And Rodney, who at best was but a poltroon, could only repeat: "You got tokeep away from here. It's the white man's law--one squaw for one man."

  From within came the sound of Sally's lamentation as she called for herfather and brother to take her from the squaw and contamination. WarrenRodney was a man of few words. It had become his unpleasant duty to act,and to act quickly. He snatched Judith from her mother and took her intothe house, and he returned with his Winchester, which was not loaded, toSinging Stream.

  "You got to go," he said, and levelling the Winchester, he repeated thecommand. Singing Stream looked at him with the dumb wonder of a forestthing. "I was a good squaw to you," she said; and did not even curse him.And turning, she ran towards the foot-hills, with all the length of purplecalico trailing.

  Now Mrs. Rodney, _nee_ Tumlin, was but human, and her cup of happiness asthe wife of a "squaw man" was not the brimming beaker she had anticipated.The expulsion of her predecessor, at such a time, to make room for her ownhome-coming, was, it seemed, open to criticism. "The neighborhood"--itincluded perhaps five families living in a radius of as many hundredmiles--felt that the Tumlins had established a bad precedent. A "squaw man"driving out a brown wife to make room for a white is not a heroic figure.It had been done before, but it would not hand down well in the traditionsof the settling of this great country. Trespass of law and order, withtheir swift, red-handed reckoning, were but moves of the great game ofcolonization. But to shove out a brown woman for a white was a mean move.Few stopped at the Rodneys' ranch, though it marked the first break in thejourney from town to the gold-mining country. Rodney had fallen from hisestate as a pioneer; his political opinions were unsought in the conclavesthat sat and spat at the stove, when business brought them to the jointsaloon and post-office. The women dealt with the question more openly,scorning feminine subtlety at this pass as inadequate ammunition. Whenthey met Mrs. Rodney they pulled aside their skirts and glared. Thisoutrage against woman it was woman's work to settle.

  Mrs. Rodney, who had no more moral sense than a rabbit, felt that she wasthe victim of persecution. She knew she was a good woman. Hadn't she ahusband? Had there ever been a word against her character? What was theuse of making all that fuss over a squaw? It was not as if she was a whitewoman. The injustice of it preyed on the former Miss Tumlin. She took tothe consolations of snuff-dipping and fell from her pink-and-white estate.

  The Tumlin family did not remain long enough in the Black Hill country towitness Sally's failure as the wife of a pioneer. The restlessness of the"settler," if the paradox be permissible, was in the marrow of theirbones. The makeshifts of the wagon, the adventures of the road, were theonly home they craved. The spring after Sally's marriage they set forthfor California, the year following for New Mexico, and still sighed fornew worlds to visit. They were happier now that Sally, the one element ofdiscontent, had been removed from their perennial journeying by themerciful dispensation of marriage. Old Tumlin, his wife, and the son gavethemselves up more than ever to the day-dreams of the road, the freedom ofthe open country, and the spirit of adventure.

  Rodney's squaw wife was taken in by some neighbors, good folk who wereconversant with all phases of the romance. They stood by her in her hourof trial, and afterwards continued to keep her as a servant. Her son Jimgrew up with their own children. When he was four years of age his mother,Singing Stream, died, and Sally persuaded her husband to take young Jiminto their own home, partly as a sop to neighborly criticism, partly as asalve to her own conscience. Sally had children of her own, and looked atthings differently now from the time when she fought the squaw forRodney's favor.

  Jim's foster-parents were, in truth, glad to part with him. From hisearliest babyhood he had been known as a "limb of Satan." He was anIshmael by every instinct of his being. And Mrs. Warren Rodney, _nee_Tumlin, felt that in dealing with him, in her capacity of step-mother, shedaily expiated any offence that she might have done to his mother.

  Sally grew slatternly with increasing maternity. She spent her time in arocking-chair, dipping snuff--a consolation imported from her formerhome--and lamenting the bad marriage she had made. Rodney ascribed hisill-fortune to unjust neighborly criticism. He farmed a little, he raiseda little stock, and he drank a great deal of whiskey. Sally hated theBlack Hill country. She felt that it knew too much about her. Theneighborly inquisition had fallen like a blight on the family fortunes. Avague migratory impulse was on her. She wanted to go somewhere and beginall over again. By dint of persistent nagging she persuaded her husband tomove to Wyoming, then in the golden age of the cattle industry. Those weredays when steers, to speak in the cow language, had "jumped toseventy-five." The wilderness grew light-headed with prosperity. Wonderfulare the tales still told about those fat years in cattle-land. It was inthose halcyon days of the Cheyenne Club that the members rode from therange, white with the dust of the desert, to enjoy greater luxuries thanthose procurable at their clubs in New York.

  Nor was it all feasting and merrymaking. A heroic band it was that battledwith the wilderness, riding the range with heat and cold, starvation anddeath, and making small pin-pricks in that empty blo
tch of the UnitedStates map that is marked "Great Alkali Desert" blossom into settlements.When the last word has been said about the pioneers of these UnitedStates, let the cow-boy be remembered in the universal toast, that bronzedson of the saddle who lived his little day bravely and merrily, and whosereal heroism is too often forgotten in the glamour of his ownpicturesqueness.

  Judith was ten years old when her father, his wife, and their childrenmoved from Dakota--they were not so particular about North and SouthDakota, in those days--to take up a claim on Sweetwater, Wyoming. Judithgave scant promise of the beauty that in later life became at once herdower and her misfortune, that which was as likely to bring wretchednessas happiness. In Wyoming she was destined to find an old friend, Mrs.Atkins, who, as the bride of the young lieutenant, had been present at themarriage of Sally Tumlin and Warren Rodney, and who had always felt awholly unreasonable sense of guilt at witnessing the ceremony andcontributing a lace handkerchief to the bride. Her husband, now MajorAtkins, was stationed at Fort Washakie, Wyoming. Mrs. Atkins happeningagain on the Rodney family, and her husband having increased andmultiplied his army pay many times over by a successful venture in cattle,the scheme of Judith's convent education was put through by the major'swife, who had kept her New England conscience, the discomforts of frontierposts notwithstanding.

  So Judith went to the nuns to school, and stayed with them till she waseighteen. Mrs. Atkins would have adopted her then; but Judith by this timeknew her family history in all its sordid ramifications, and felt thatduty called her to her brother, who had not improved his unfortunate startin life, though his step-mother did not spoil him for the staying of therod.