TEEPEE NEIGHBORS 
 
 GRACE COOLJDGE 
 

TEEPEE NEIGHBOKS 
 
TEEPEE NEIGHBORS 
 
 BY 
 
 GRACE COOLIDGE 
 
 " Renown and grace are dead ; 
 The w me of ii^e is drawn, and the mere lees. 
 Is left." 
 
 MACBETH 
 
 BOSTON 
 
 THE FOUR SEAS COMPANY 
 1917 
 
Copyright, 1917, by 
 
 THE FOUR SEAS COMPANY 
 
 THE FOUR SEAS PRESS 
 BOSTON MASS. U. 5. A. 
 
In admiration, respect, and expectation 
 
 this book is dedicated to the 
 
 SOCIETY OF AMERICAN INDIANS 
 
 the truest expression and the brightest 
 
 present hope of the Indian people. 
 
 M578510 
 
Acknowledgment for permission to reprint is due to 
 the Editors of Collier s Weekly and 1 he Outlook, in 
 which some of these sketches first appeared. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 PREFACE 9 
 
 THE MAN WITH THE AXE .23 
 
 GHOSTS 28 
 
 THE GIFT 36 
 
 SHADOWS 40 
 
 CIVILIZATION 48 
 
 "By ANY OTHER NAME" 50 
 
 AN INDIAN VICTORY 55 
 
 THE PASSING OF FELIX RUNS BEHIND 65 
 
 THE POT AND THE KETTLE 77 
 
 MOTHERS 79 
 
 A BOY S MOTHER 85 
 
 THE DEAD BIRD 96 
 
 A VENTURE IN HARD HEARTS 102 
 
 THE THROWN-AWAY BABY 109 
 
 THE CAPTURE OF EDMUND GOES-IN-LODGE 116 
 
 "IN THE KINGDOM OF THE BLIND" 129 
 
 LITTLE THINGS 135 
 
 A MAN 140 
 
 LAZARUS 149 
 
AT THE END OF His ROPE 154 
 
 THE LOVE WOMAN 165 
 
 THE AGRICULTURALIST 174 
 
 THE INFORMERS 178 
 
 A MATTER OF CUSTOM 186 
 
 THE DAY DREAM 193 
 
 THE UNBORN 196 
 
 THE MAN S PART 199 
 
 TIT FOR TAT 211 
 
 THE OTHER MAD MAN. . .218 
 
PREFACE 
 
 THE OBJECTION has often been made to these sketches 
 that they are too sad. "People won t read such pain 
 ful stuff," editors have said to me. Then I slowly look 
 over and consider my pages. Am I justified in chang 
 ing this, or that? There is only one response possible 
 for me to make. "I m sorry, but they re all true. I 
 cannot alter them." And I gather up my manuscript 
 with a sigh because I know so intimately and so well 
 from my ow r n personal experience as a near neighbor 
 to the Indians that these glimpses of them are indeed ac 
 curate. Every incident, I think, and almost every 
 character, I have drawn from my life and experience 
 of nearly ten years spent with the Indians of Wyoming. 
 Not everything, of course, happened just as it is set 
 down, incidents and events have been combined, the 
 sex and names of characters have been altered, but the 
 whole has its basis in gloomy, even desperate fact ; for 
 I have seen and heard and handled, and my memory 
 is stored with much harrowing evidence. For indeed 
 one of the most appalling, even crushing experiences 
 that can come to a person, is to live for a while in close 
 touch with the Indians on a typical reservation 
 crushing and appalling, of course, vicariously and in 
 direct ratio with one s interest in the Indians, for it 
 
 9 
 
io Teepee Neighbors 
 
 is a noteworthy fact that a great many people live long 
 on reservations who, at the end, are far indeed from 
 being either appalled or crushed. 
 
 I will try to elucidate a little this statement. In the 
 first place the Indians are surrounded by white people 
 mainly of two unfortunate attitudes of mind. The 
 first is the man who hates the Indian. He lives gen 
 erally across the boundary line of the reservation; he 
 toils on his side while the Indian idles on the other; 
 he pays his grudging taxes while the Indian exists free 
 of charge; he sees loads of government freight driven 
 into the agency for free distribution, and he envies. Of 
 course this freight was bought with the Indians own 
 money, at the discretion of the government, not the 
 Indian ; without indeed the consent or even knowledge 
 of the owner of the funds. His mind is full of the old 
 evil stories of the past, told always from the side of 
 the Indian s enemy. And he broods and he draws 
 conclusions and he condemns. There are not many of 
 him, but he talks and harrangues out of all proportion 
 to his relative importance in size. 
 
 Then there is the far larger class of neighboring 
 whites whose attitude toward the Indian is one of ab 
 solute indifference and uninterest. Familiarity of an 
 entirely external sort has bred in them a kind of com 
 fortable contempt. The Indian is tolerated only on 
 account of his not inconsiderable by-products; free 
 
Teepee Neighbors u 
 
 house-rent, free service, a free automobile, almost free 
 beef in these days of soaring prices; and so on, and 
 principally because he offers a field wherein many 
 indifferent and incompetent individuals may safely 
 work a little and worry not at all, for in that field there 
 exists no danger of competition, and once in it is almost 
 impossible to be ousted. 
 
 Thus does the Indian know the white man ; thus, and 
 in the light of his own old evil stories of the past. It 
 is not to be wondered at that he regards him as an 
 altogether unadmirable individual. The sketch called 
 Civilization is entirely typical of his mental attitude 
 toward his white neighbor. 
 
 By far the most harrowing fact of reservation life is 
 the great, omnipresent, overwhelming and constant 
 nearness of death. Indeed, death is no more at home 
 on the river Styx itself than within the boundary lines 
 of the ordinary reservation. 
 
 The statistics tell us that the normal death rate 
 among the whites of this country is annually fifteen 
 per thousand. That means that in the little middle- 
 western town in which I now live, we may look for 
 about one hundred and fifty deaths during the year. Of 
 course so many of these are among the very old people 
 that the end comes generally as a normal visitation. 
 Only now and then is the community shocked by the 
 lantimeliness of a death. 
 
12 Teepee Neighbors 
 
 But among the Indians the death rate is a little over 
 thirty-two per thousand. The difference stated in 
 numbers does not appear as great, but actually it 
 means that with the Indians death confronts one on 
 svery hand. Not one Indian woman, young or old, 
 of the hundreds I know, has all her children living. 
 I can recall mothers who even have borne nine, ten, 
 twelve, fourteen, and have lost them all. When a baby 
 is born to your Indian neighbor, you look at it with 
 your heart in your eyes and wonder: How long? 
 Nothing struck me more forcibly when I left the 
 reservation where I was married and where my first 
 three children were born and went to live in a white 
 community, than the wonderful fact that almost every 
 one of the babies born to my white neighbors lived. 
 
 And among the Indians not only the babies die, but 
 equally the young and apparently strong, the ones in 
 whom should exist the hope of the race. 
 
 There are reasons for these conditions, of course. 
 Reduced vitality from constant underfeeding due to 
 extreme poverty is one of them I wonder if white 
 people generally realize that a certain proportion of 
 their Indian neighbors die of actual starvation every 
 winter? An almost complete lack of adequate or com 
 petent medical attendance contributes ; so does super 
 stition, resulting in the practice, unhindered by the 
 government, of medicine men and of a certain class of 
 
Teepee Neighbors 13 
 
 old women. When I lived in Wyoming a graduate 
 osteopath might not receive a license to practice med 
 icine in the state in his way, and yet on the reservation 
 the medicine man might malpractice unhampered. 
 
 The Indian s attitude toward death is interesting. 
 Personally I found it both illuminating and inspiring. 
 He is not civilized ; that is, he is not a materialist for 
 is not your so-called civilized Indian, the one who lives 
 in a house rather than a teepee, and who has given up 
 his paint and nakedness for store-bought clothes? 
 therefore he does not, as an axiom of conduct, use 
 any and every expedient to keep the breath in his body 
 , and this regardless of the state of decrepitude of 
 that body choosing life invariably rather than death. 
 Indeed death is not to him the castastrophe it is to the 
 ordinary human product of civilization. He is no 
 fatalist like the Oriental, but rather he regards the 
 coming of his last long sleep simply as he would 
 the approach of night or winter with their added but 
 normal rigors. With his native dignity he meets it 
 fairly in the way. Nor is his mind compelled by fear. 
 He is able to use his judgment in this greatest crisis 
 as he would do in any other. 
 
 "If you have your leg amputated your life will be 
 saved; if not, you will die." The doctor speaks; the 
 interpreter, probably one of the sick man s own chil 
 dren, makes the meaning plain. The man addressed 
 
14 Teepee Neighbors 
 
 smokes his pipe slowly, considering. At length he 
 draws the stem from his lips and looks up. "I will 
 die," he says. And from the moment of making his 
 decision a natural, though none the less painful, one 
 to his friends in his whole attitude of mind he abides 
 calmly by his choice. His family do not try to deter 
 him. The wisdom, also the finality of his decision, are 
 undoubted. 
 
 No, the Indian has not the dread, the terror, the total 
 aversion to death of the civilized man ; and undoubt 
 edly, as I believe, this is because the material side of life 
 is not the one which he has been taught and encouraged 
 to regard as pre-eminent. When he goes, he is not 
 forever relinquishing so much of value. In the old 
 days so far indeed was he from being a materialist 
 that he failed to lay claim to the few necessities 
 of his existence what must be possessed belonged to 
 his women-folk; the teepee, the robes, the travois, etc. 
 As for him, save for his horses and his weapons, he 
 stood as naked before God as did the pine tree. And 
 like the pine tree he took with simple openmindedness 
 the sun and the storms as they came. That attitude 
 of spirit gave him another quality which is one of his 
 greatest assets, that of poise. He can remain unruffled 
 and unmoved in the face of the gyrations and panic of 
 the mob. In fact I have never seen a man whose mind 
 was so unaffected by objective influences as the 
 
Teepee Neighbors 15 
 
 Indian s. As an individual, therefore, he comes very 
 near to being a free and perfect whole. Undoubtedly 
 in rejecting the Indian we have lost some valuable 
 ingredients from our national melting pot. 
 
 But today, alas ! the Indian is an individual harried 
 and distressed. Unnatural conditions hedge him about. 
 Artificial laws hamper him. His native values are 
 discredited. His horizon has perhaps been enlarged 
 but at the cost of being lowered. And always at his 
 elbow stands Death. 
 
 Two qualities, or attitudes of mind toward life as he 
 knows it, are characteristics of the Indian. One is his 
 universal and deep love of children. Each new baby 
 comes as an event, hailed, welcomed, received with 
 unclouded joy by family, kinsmen and tribesmen alike. 
 Every baby is everybody s business. I once had a 
 young father announce to me in this manner the birth 
 of his first-born. "One more Arapahoe baby !" he cried, 
 "My wife has a little boy." This intense love of child 
 hood is a touching quality. It would seem as though 
 each new little one came as a sort of symbol, of the re 
 birth of hope, perhaps, or of the resurrection of life. 
 
 The other trait is a certain child-like attitude in the 
 face of the augmenting wretchedness of his existence, 
 of patience, mixed with a degree of perplexity, best 
 illustrated, I think, by a conversation I once held with 
 an old woman who lived across the valley from us. 
 
16 Teepee Neighbors 
 
 Six months before this talk took place a young woman 
 had died, leaving a little girl of about three. I, know 
 ing that there were no grandparents on either side to 
 care for the little thing the government makes no 
 provision for Indian orphans sent for the father to 
 come and see me so that I might ask him for the child. 
 According to Indian custom the child and its disposal 
 belong exclusively to the mother. "I am willing 
 enough," he replied, "but when my wife was dying 
 she gave the little one to an old woman." (He named 
 her. She is, by the way, the same woman who figures 
 in the sketch called Mothers.} "I don t know wheth 
 er or not this woman really wants her. Wait till they 
 have stopped feeling so bad and then ask and find out." 
 
 I followed his advice. In time I sent one of the young 
 men, who spoke English, over to the camp with the 
 message. But the answer she sent back to me was 
 that she did indeed desire to keep the child. Her own 
 were long since dead. This one was all that remained 
 to her. Presently she came across the valley to see 
 me; to make things, if not clearer, at least more per 
 sonal. She talked in signs and I understood her as 
 best I could. 
 
 "I have had nine children," was what she said, "and 
 they are all dead." Indeed her scanty grizzled hair 
 was short from ceremonial severing, and the last joints 
 of both little fingers were lacking, an old-fashioned and 
 
Teepee Neighbors 17 
 
 extreme demonstration of grief. Then, with her old 
 eyes on mine pleasant eyes in a pleasant face, neither 
 bitter, nor hard, nor desperate as with a sort of inward 
 start I could not help remarking, but instead, noticeably 
 sweet and patient it is a fact of which I suddenly just 
 then became conscious, that never, no matter what the 
 provocation, have I heard an Indian indulge in self- 
 commiseration with a twist of the wrist she balanced 
 her old mutilated hand back and forth. "Why?" she 
 asked me in the sign language. "Why?" 
 
 We hear much these days of the "Indian Question." 
 But on that day, talking to the old woman, there it 
 seemed to me it was, with one twist of the wrist. The 
 patient old eyes looked into mine and asked me the 
 question which civilization has thrust upon the Indian 
 people. Why? Why? 
 
 Why, the Indians ask, why must we and our children 
 and our old people die for want of medicine and sur 
 gery, and food and nursing? We have millions in the 
 United States treasury with which to pay for these 
 things if only the government would put our own 
 money into our hands. Why, for the same reason 
 must we often languish in the jails, waiting perhaps 
 as much as six months for the next term of our local 
 court, because none of our friends have money to go 
 on our bail? Why may an agent throw any one of us 
 into the agency lockup and keep us there indefinitely 
 
i8 Teepee Neighbors 
 
 and without any process of law because he so chooses? 
 Why may we not invest what money is allowed us, in 
 teams or farming implements except at the discretion 
 and by the direction of the agent and from the sources 
 he selects? Why may we not cross the lin- of our 
 reservation without the agent s written permit, given or 
 withheld as he alone sees fit, and limited in time 
 according to his judgment or wish? Why do many 
 crimes of Indians against Indians go unpunished while 
 small misdemeanors against agency employees receive 
 the maximum sentence the law permits? Why are the 
 soldiers who are stationed on the reservation, partly, 
 we understand, to protect us, often the greatest menace 
 to our women and girls? Why does the goveinment 
 place our children in the reservation schools where 
 they must remain between the ages of six and eighteen, 
 and yet take them no further in their studies than the 
 fourth grade, where, we understand, little white chil 
 dren of eight or nine belong? Why, in this connection, 
 do the big non-reservation schools offer no higher ed 
 ucation to their students than the eight grammar 
 grades, and then send them out into the world to 
 compete with whites from the universities? And yet 
 we hear of many non-government-educated Indians 
 who are graduates of high schools and colleges. 
 
 Why may we not, because we are Indians, have re 
 course to the Court of Claims, as may all other peoples, 
 
Teepee Neighbors 19 
 
 except by the consent of Congress? Why are laws 
 relating to us not codified, so that we may have some 
 way of finding out what is allowed us and what ex 
 pected of us? Why have not the Indians, who are the 
 first, the only native Americans, the inherent right of 
 citizenship? Why, if not otherwise accorded us, does 
 not the diploma of one of the government s own schools 
 for us lead directly to it? Why must our eligibility for 
 citizenship depend upon the favorable report of an 
 agent, or on the findings of a "Competency Commit 
 tee?" Why is the Indian Bureau, with its host of em 
 ployees, still maintained by the government? Why 
 will the people of the United States allow millions a 
 year of their taxes to be appropriated by Congress to 
 carry on the old, worn-out, debilitating, crushing res 
 ervation system which outgrew its usefulness at least 
 a generation ago? All Indians now under forty, or 
 forty-five, except on very remote reservations, such as 
 the Navajo though these people have always been 
 self-supporting through their native industries have 
 attended the schools and speak English and know 
 enough of civilized customs to give them a fair chance 
 of making a living in the world. Why, then, must this 
 elaborate paternal system be maintained to support our 
 few remaining old people? Why? 
 
 Not, of course, that my old neighbor with the pleas 
 ant eyes dreamed of all these complexities, but the 
 
2O Teepee Neighbors 
 
 burden and weight of them she, with the rest of her 
 people, felt, though not discerning. But many, many of 
 the Indians do dream of them, and their dreams are not 
 roseate. 
 
 This Indian question is the Indians question. It is 
 time indeed that their white neighbors in general were 
 taking it to heart and answering it. 
 
 G. C. 
 Oct. 6, 1916. 
 
TEEPEE NEIGHBOKS 
 
THE MAN WITH THE AXE 
 
 IT WAS one of those days in Wyoming, sharp and sting 
 ing past belief, when you go out with reluctance and 
 only as you must. But the Half-breed, having some 
 thing particular to say to me and wishing to impart it 
 on the instant, had come forth for that purpose, regard 
 less, His lean pony stood now at our hitching rack, its 
 head low, one gaunt hip thrust up above the level of the 
 other, while its master and I, sitting side by side before 
 the stove, leaned forward, our elbows on our knees, our 
 eyes glaring at each other. For we were arguing pas 
 sionately. My friend was in a mood sardonic to the 
 point of ugliness. He spared no one, his words were 
 two-edged swords, he flung caution to the dogs. 
 
 " everlastingly crammed down your gullet; ever 
 lastingly reminded that you re the under dog ; everlast 
 ingly shown the way and then told with a curl of the 
 lip that you re incapable of following it. . ." 
 
 He gesticulated with abandon, spoke as though he 
 were declaiming. "There s not a white man living who 
 hasn t that point of view, bar none." 
 
 He had to pause just an instant for breath, long 
 enough at any rate to let me cry, shaking my finger in 
 his face : "But look at me ! Look at me !" 
 
 He looked. It was his lip that curled, though I was 
 kind enough not to call his attention to the fact. 
 
 "You!" he cried. "Aren t you always sending the 
 23 
 
24 Teepee Neighbors 
 
 white doctor to them? Aren t you always instilling 
 white ideas of hygiene into them? Aren t you the one 
 who in winter buys arctics for them fruit of this 
 vaunted civilization? Isn t it you who advocates their 
 going to law ? Going to perdition, 7 say !" 
 
 "You say other things too. You cry down the med 
 icine men as much as I do. You denounce the old un 
 clean ways. You " 
 
 "Yes, I do. I have. But now I say, if a man s got 
 to die, at least give him the privilege of choosing his 
 own poison. Your white man not only kills the Indian 
 but wants to dictate the very manner of his death." 
 
 Then at last he took note of my efforts to stay the 
 torrent of his words. 
 
 "I wish you d be still for just one minute. I think 
 there s some one knocking." 
 
 We both turned our eyes toward the door. 
 
 The sound being made against it was not exactly 
 that of knocking, rather it seemed that an unfamiliar 
 hand fumbled at the knob. 
 
 "Won t you see?" I said. 
 
 He crossed the room, seized the handle, flung open 
 the door. The Half-breed was one who never did 
 anything by halves. 
 
 A muffled old man stood upon the step. 
 
 "Come in," cried the Half-breed. 
 
 The old man, stamping and shuffling, made encum- 
 
Teepee Neighbors 25 
 
 bered, noisy progress across the room. I offered him 
 my visitor s vacated chair. 
 
 He was a very old man and very much wrapped up, 
 his feet and legs were bound about with gunny sacks ; 
 his head and shoulders swathed, layer on layer, in 
 strange, inappropriate materials. Finally his head was 
 crowned with the folds of a pin "fascinator." The 
 effect of his lined and wizened face peering from this 
 roseate frame was indescribable. 
 
 He lowered himself safely into the proffered chair, 
 peeled off a few of his enshrouding layers, stretched 
 out his old hands toward the blaze, leaned back tent 
 atively but with satisfaction against the softness of the 
 upholstery. 
 
 "Do you think he wants anything?" 
 
 The Half-breed asked him in Indian. 
 
 "He says he is cold and as he was driving by he just 
 thought he would come in." 
 
 "Oh ! Well, tell him to stay as long as he likes and 
 warm up." 
 
 The Half-breed found himself another chair and 
 drew it near to mine. We endeavored, feebly, to con 
 tinue our discussion, but in the face of those old search 
 ing eyes our efforts lacked spontaneity. Then we 
 talked of incidentals; still at the sound of the incom 
 prehensible words, the old man sat staring at us, de- 
 tatched and somnolent. 
 
26 Teepee Neighbors 
 
 At last his silent presence got upon my nerves. 
 
 "Surely he s warmed up now." 
 
 "Shall I ask him?" 
 
 "Of course not! He ll think I want him to go." 
 
 "Which you do." 
 
 "Well, but I don t mean that he shall know it." 
 
 "Don t think about him." 
 
 "He must be bored sitting there idle so long." 
 
 "I thought you understood Indians." 
 
 I shot him a glance. "I shall give him some pictures 
 to look at anyway. It will be much better for his mind 
 than so much vacancy." 
 
 The eyes of the Half-breed twinkled suddenly. "By 
 all means," he cried, "civilize him ! It s never too late 
 for that, nor they too old. What missionaries the 
 whites are! What apostles of progress! What " 
 
 "Do you mind giving him this book and telling him 
 it s got some nice pictures in it? Some of them are 
 Indian ones." 
 
 The old man accepted the book, listened solemnly 
 to the explanation. Then he settled the volume on his 
 uncertain knees, opened it at the back, and awkwardly 
 with a moistened thumb succeeded in lifting and turn 
 ing its leaves. He bent laboriously to his task. 
 
 But he was, I soon discovered, even more disturbing 
 when occupied than he had been idle. The Half-breed 
 seemed to feel this also. After a while he went and 
 
Teepee Neighbors 27 
 
 stationed himself behind the Indian s chair, looking 
 over his shoulder at my vaunted pictures. 
 
 Then the old man paused and suddenly lifted his 
 book. He slewed himself about, this way and that, to 
 get it or his dim eyes more into the light. He peered 
 closely at the exposed page. The Half-breed as well 
 leaned a little forward. 
 
 "What s the picture?" asked I, curiously. 
 
 "It s a naked savage on the ground, and a white 
 man standing over him with an axe upraised." 
 
 In the depths of his old throat the aged Indian chuck 
 led a little. Then over his shoulder he flung a remark 
 to the Half-breed who listened, twinkled, then laughed. 
 
 I looked up expectantly. 
 
 "He says," said the Half-breed slowly, "that if an 
 Indian had made that picture he would have had the 
 white man on the ground." 
 
GHOSTS 
 
 HE WAS a little boy, a very little boy, but as naughty 
 as he was small. In the autumn his people put him in 
 the Government school, thus at a blow robbing him of 
 his freedom, his tongue for he might not speak Indian 
 and knew as yet no English his tastes, his instincts, 
 his pursuits; of everything, in short, except his ingenu 
 ity. Above his sealed mouth his little, up-tilted eyes 
 ranged and returned, sought and seemed to find; then 
 his small round face from bearing the stamp of vacancy 
 grew guardedly eager and finally satisfied to the point 
 of being actually smug. 
 
 One day he was found bending absorbedly over the 
 agent s back yard fence. On nearer approach he seem 
 ed to be fishing with rod and string and baited hook. 
 His game, alas ! was the agent s chickens ! Lying on 
 the ground at his feet and proving his prowess were 
 several victims, sprawled in ruffled impotency. 
 
 At the sound of his discoverer s voices he turned, 
 revealing a face alight with a sportsman s triumph. But 
 the glow faded as a hand reached up and brought him 
 to earth. Subsequently the same hand gave him a taste 
 of this world s possible pains and penalties. 
 
 Sunday during the hour of service was a favorite 
 time with him. He could so easily disappear beneath 
 the pews to emerge only when and where he pleased. 
 Hands grabbing stealthily at vanishing feet and coat 
 
 28 
 
Teepee Neighbors 29 
 
 tails were seldom able to check his progress. The 
 clergyman finally complained to the superintendent. 
 
 Nights in the dormitory were also enlivened by him. 
 When bigger boys came to bed, shuffling, and mut 
 tering under their breath, he would wake up the little 
 boys had retired two hours earlier. Then when the 
 lights were out and the door locked for the night from 
 the outside, he would slip from under the red Govern 
 ment blankets, and, white-clad and noiseless, progress 
 from bed to bed, stealing along, a shadow amongst 
 shadows, till entrenched in a secure corner of cupboard 
 or window or empty bed, safe from the reach of the 
 longest arm, he would begin a series of weird, blood- 
 chilling cries, unearthly, mournful. Clipped listen 
 ing heads would duck beneath blankets, clutching hands 
 seek the solidity of Government matresses ; bedfellow 
 would hug bedfellow; and the hearts of those sons of 
 warriors would pound painfully. Finally and valiantly 
 some boy would plunge from his bed, and in disgust 
 kick the little ghost into silence ; then the small disturb 
 er woud slink away through the shadows, fists dug into 
 his eyes, and creep into the oblivion of his blankets, 
 nestling himself against his bedfellow s warm if hostile 
 back. 
 
 The next night he who had kicked was likely to 
 receive, just before the wailing of the ghost began, a 
 sudden, unaccountable and vicious pinch. 
 
3O Teepee Neighbors 
 
 Of course, before long, rumors of these nocturnal 
 disturbances reached the ears of those who had in 
 charge the boys dormitory. 
 
 Lickings were tried on the culprit but proved in 
 effectual. Other measures were resorted to, but with 
 out hope; felt beforehand to be inadequate. He was 
 such a little boy and his naughtiness was so out of all 
 proportion to his size. 
 
 At last in despair the superintendent put him in the 
 guard house, the real guard house at the Agency, not 
 the school lock-up, but the place for grown-up offen 
 ders, for malefactors, ever; the place where breath 
 lessly that night in the dormitory it was remembered 
 a visiting Ute medicine man, a madman, had been con 
 fined and had died And the superintendent had 
 
 said that the boy was to be left there for the night. 
 
 It was dark in the guard house, and it was cold, and 
 supper of water and dry bread is a thing soon forgotten. 
 Also when you have a body that is uncomfortable and 
 a head that is always daring you to perform just one 
 feat more . . . 
 
 Sitting hunched in the center of the stone floor, list 
 less, trying to acquire patience, suddenly he realized 
 that his eye had begun to measure. Then up reached his 
 
Teepee Neighbors 31 
 
 hand, following it. There was a very little opening in 
 the wall above the door where the adobe bricks looked 
 loose and through which could be seen a patch of vivid 
 sunset sky . . . The situation seemed impossible but the 
 room was deep in shadows, its corners full of night, 
 and somewhere without an owl cried weirdly .... 
 
 The boy felt the spur of necessity, raised to his 
 tiptoes, propped himself with a knee, strained, grasped, 
 strove and then suddenly, attained. The bricks were 
 easy to pry out. As the sky darkened the opening in his 
 wall widened. Behind him lay a well of shuddering 
 darkness, before him the whole wide world. . . 
 
 With a thud he came down on the ground outside. 
 He picked himself up. He looked about. At any rate 
 there were no ghosts in sight, of medicine men or of 
 others. But he was outside the guardhouse when he 
 had been carefully deposited within it; and he was in 
 the midst of the Agency. It was nearly dark of course, 
 but sooner or later he must be discovered, even if he 
 went home a dreadful ordeal to undertake in the 
 night or if he returned to the school, or if he sought 
 out the agent s house and gave himself up. His quick 
 little mind considered all the possibilities. 
 
 Somewhere about his clothes he had stowed away a 
 wad of chewed gum. His hands, thrust into his 
 pockets for warmth, suddenly came upon it. For com 
 fort s sake he pulled it out and put it into his mouth . . . 
 
32 Teepee Neighbors 
 
 Little uncertain fingers pecked rather than knocked 
 at the agent s door. The agent looking up from his book 
 at the sound was surprised to see no shadow against the 
 lighted glass in the upper half of the door. 
 
 "Who on earth ?" he cried, and opened his door. 
 
 A little shaver, earth-stained, begrimed, hatless, stood 
 at his feet looking upward obliquely from timid eyes. 
 One hand was pressed against the side of his head. 
 
 "Why, it s Johnny !" cried the agent, and a kindly 
 hand went out to the boy s shoulder. It was as though 
 the image of the littlest, naughtiest boy of the school, 
 who should have been cowering alone in the ghost-in 
 fested guard house, the image which all the evening 
 had been obtruding itself between the agent and his 
 book, had now suddenly become corporeal. 
 
 "Come in, boy. Come in here. Why, how did you 
 get out?" 
 
 The little fellow obeyed, reluctantly it almost seemed. 
 Inside, he crowded close against the agent s legs. He 
 still held a hand to the side of his head. His little, up- 
 tilted eyes showed perilously near to tears. 
 
 At last in a thick uncertain whisper he spoke a single, 
 all-elucidating word : "Ghosts !" 
 
 "You were afraid. I told the superintendent he was 
 going too far in shutting you up in there." 
 
 The little head nodded. 
 
Teepee Neighbors 33 
 
 "Why do you hold your head that way? Are you 
 hurt?" 
 
 "Yes. Me hurt." 
 
 "Let me see." 
 
 The boy removed his hand and bent his head. It 
 might have been noticed that he turned the injured side 
 a little from the light. 
 
 "You ve hurt your head. Right at the edge of your 
 hair there s a great lump. Let me feel." The explor 
 ing fingers reached forth gently. 
 
 But the boy winced, dodging suddenly. 
 
 "No, no! Hurt!" 
 
 "Let me put something on it." 
 
 "No, no!" 
 
 "Just a little hot water. 5 
 
 The boy began to cry. 
 
 "There ! There ! Don t do that, I won t bother you. 
 I won t touch it." 
 
 "Sure?" 
 
 "Of course. Quite sure." 
 
 The tears ceased tentatively, but the little up-tilted 
 eyes were evidently on their guard. 
 
 The agent was stirred. Although it was evening 
 he ordered his team pre-emptorily. While they 
 waited for the buggy to be brought the boy sat on a 
 chair, one hand to the side of his head, the other 
 turning with carefully suppressed avidity the pages of 
 
34 Teepee Neighbors 
 
 the comic supplement of the last Sunday paper. At 
 
 length he lifted his eyes wistfully. "Hungry," he 
 
 whispered. 
 
 "Why, of course. Old fool bachelor that I am!" 
 The man disappeared into his kitchen to return with 
 
 plunder. 
 
 During the two mile drive to the school the boy 
 
 munched contentedly. 
 
 "It was no place to have put a child." 
 
 "I suppose not," assented the superintendent rue 
 fully. "It ll not happen again." 
 
 Together they carried the boy off to bed. Nothing 
 would induce him to let them touch his head. 
 
 "Morning," he would cry. "Morrow. No tonight." 
 Then he would burst into a paroxysm of grief. 
 
 "Poor little cuss ! Frightened half sick." 
 
 In the morning the superintendent sent for him. A 
 big boy brought him to the office. But he appeared 
 a very wilted little fellow in the big one s hands. The 
 sparkle was all gone from his eyes. 
 
 "And his head?" asked the superintendent. 
 
 As the big boy wheeled him around, and not too 
 gently, it seemed as though his very knees bent beneath 
 him. The big one turned to the man s view the space 
 behind the little one s ear. It was exceedingly clean, 
 
Teepee Neighbors 35 
 
 bore indeed the marks of recent and vigorous scrub 
 bing; there was also a queer jagged cut up into his 
 hair. That was all. 
 
 The big boy spoke. "Tell him," he commanded, 
 sternly. 
 
 But the little one was past speech, sobbing, quite 
 dissolved in tears. 
 
 "Then me, I tell him. Mr. Knight, he ain t got no 
 bump. That thing behind his ear was gum, chewin 
 gum. He" 
 
 "What?" cried the superintendent. 
 
 "He was scared after he got out that guard house 
 so he took his gum and he stuck it " 
 
 But the superintendent laid a helpless head down 
 on his table. 
 
 The big boy stopped, astonished. 
 
 "What," he began gleefully, "what you goin do to 
 him now?" 
 
 There was a moment s silence, then the superintend 
 ent disclosed one suffused eye. 
 
 "Nothing," he said. 
 
THE GIFT 
 
 THE OLD couple came in without knocking. It was 
 nearly dinner time, the morning was very frosty. 
 Though not tied, their lank, small horses stood by the 
 hitching rack, their heads drooped in resignation. The 
 man was old, but wide and powerful of frame, his 
 wife was a large stately woman; she walked a little 
 heavily. As I watched her fold her shawl about her 
 ample bosom, the handsome marked lines of her face 
 visible in profile, I remembered that it was said about 
 the camps that once, in her youth, a man had been 
 shot for her sake. They shook hands as with special 
 meaning. They gave us searching looks, veiled smiles. 
 Their faces were kindly; his decidedly aged. 
 
 Sitting uncomfortably on the edge of a chair the 
 old man talked to us in the Indian sign language, 
 using his gnarled, dark hands. 
 
 It seemed that he had brought a gift. We stood in 
 front of him grasping at his meaning. Christmas was 
 just past, and in the dance hall there had been the 
 usual tree, laden with appropriate and plentiful gifts 
 sent from the East by compassionate friends. A few 
 years ago the tribe had had no trees, no gifts. It was 
 wonderful, he thought, that these friends who now 
 supplied them had never seen him nor his people. He 
 understood that they lived very, very far away, and 
 yet they gave, and in the dark, as it seemed to him. 
 
Teepee Neighbors 37 
 
 He thought they might as well have stood at the head 
 waters of some stream and flung in their possessions 
 as to give thus strangely to unknown aliens. And see 
 with what rejoicing their presents were received. He 
 and his wife, for instance, were an old couple and poor; 
 he was often sick, himself. Yes, it was his side that 
 troubled him and almost constantly, just here, a 
 growth, he didn t understand it. But one day, to 
 better it, he had sat down on the floor of his teepee, 
 had stripped himself to the waist and taking out his 
 knife he had removed the excrescence. But the 
 place had not healed well, it always troubled him more 
 or less. 
 
 The old handsome wife, watching the talk, sighed a 
 little, her eyes solicitously upon her man. 
 
 Well, to them these gifts had come as from above. 
 He was grateful. He would never see the donors, he 
 was an old man, he did not know even where they 
 lived, but he wanted to make them a present. Not 
 knowing how to go about doing so he had brought it 
 to us. It was not, he explained, an ordinary gift such 
 as Indians love to make to each other, a compliment 
 which must be returned by bestowing an equal gift. 
 No, this was a free present. He made the sign which 
 signifies "Nothing." "No return." We nodded, 
 understanding. 
 
 Then he went down into his clothes, and from some 
 
38 Teepee Neighbors 
 
 recess produced a little bundle wrapped in buckskin. 
 Unfolding it he displayed a veiy ancient flint and steel. 
 He looked at them long. His wife looked at them. 
 They had been his companions no doubt in the dim, 
 romantic days of his youth, the nomadic days of 
 freedom and desire. Now of course he could get 
 matches, much quicker and handier, two boxes for a 
 nickel at the trader s. He did not depend on these 
 as he once had done, but they were old friends . . . 
 He cradled them tenderly in his hand. 
 
 Then smiling, and rising, he held them out to us. 
 "For our friends," he said. And turning from us, his 
 wife at his heels, he passed out into the frosty day. 
 In the strong light of out-doors I noticed suddenly that 
 both their faces showed grey and pinched. 
 
 I recollected at that moment that I was cooking our 
 dinner and that I should not have let them go. The 
 old man paused to break off a willow switch with which 
 to urge on his dejected horses. The wife had climbed 
 upon the wheel on her way up to the high seat of their 
 lumber wagon. 
 
 Then I ran after them. "Come back," I called. "It s 
 almost time for dinner. Don t go. Come back." 
 
 They came. There was no veiling of their smiles 
 now. They were undisguisedly glad. They stood 
 about the stove rubbing their old hands. They beamed 
 upon me. 
 
Teepee Neighbors 39 
 
 I spread a red table cloth on the floor for them and 
 set upon it their dishes. They ate with a sort of weary 
 hunger, as though their appetite was difficult to 
 appease. 
 
 At last they got up. He wiped his hands on an old 
 bandanna, she on some rag of her clothes. They shook 
 us both by the hand. Then he spoke again. "We 
 thank your wife because she gave us something to eat. 
 We were very hungry. We have had nothing but 
 coffee for nearly two days." He laughed a little, not 
 wishing to seem to make too much of the statement. 
 "Now we feel good. We are full. We have nothing 
 to eat in our house, nothing." He dusted his fingers 
 together, making that sign which means : "All gone." 
 "We were just going up to the store to see if they 
 would trust us once more. After a while when the 
 snow goes out of the mountains I can haul wood and 
 sell it at the Post, but now there is no way of earning 
 money. The traders do not like to trust us. We are 
 all asking for credit, but what can we do?" The 
 sentence ended with that balancing gesture of the hand 
 which denotes a question. 
 
 Tenderly I took up from the table the little buckskin 
 package. "You might have raised some money on 
 this." 
 
 He smiled at me, they both smiled. "This is for our 
 friends," he said. 
 
SHADOWS 
 
 THE GROUND was pale and barren with snow. In a 
 bend of the river, on a stretch of low meadow land, 
 where skeleton willows rustled and shivered, was 
 situated the winter camp of the Indians. On the edge 
 of the hill which formed the upper tier of the shallow 
 amphitheatre surrounding the camp, stood a lone tent. 
 It was perhaps an eighth of a mile distant from the 
 main body of the camp. In it lived an old man and his 
 blind wife. 
 
 Each day the never-failing Wyoming sun made 
 strange sport of the grey-white tents. In the morning 
 when it stood in the east, they seemed to bow in unison 
 over their trailing shadows which reached toward the 
 west; in the afternoon the figure would be reversed. 
 Over their heads, continuously, these strange and 
 stately dancers waved shadow scarfs, flirted and 
 agitated them, signalled and beckoned with them. 
 These were made of the smoke which issued from the 
 projecting stove-pipes; evanescent, etherial. Day after 
 day throughout the long winter, whatever the events, 
 whatever the privation, whatever the painful patience 
 within the tents, outside this queer posturing went on. 
 
 The tent which stood aloof also participated in the 
 figure dance, but with less abandon, with less throwing 
 of scarf, for the reason, indeed, that there came from 
 
 40 
 
Teepee Neighbors 41 
 
 its stove-pipe a smaller quantity of smoke. Perhaps this 
 was because the old wife was blind. It had been very 
 hard for her man when, near the time of the birth of 
 her last child like his brothers before him, now long 
 since dead she had lost her sight. It had come sud 
 denly, an unlooked-for visitation, the falling of an un 
 attended shadow, which had engulfed even as it de 
 scended. Now the old man must needs do more than 
 half her work. He must fetch the water, split the 
 wood, which he was obliged first, of course, to drive 
 up into the hills to obtain. He must do most of the 
 cooking, and besides he must be continually watchful 
 of her, for she accepted her setting aside rebelliously, 
 and constantly would be found overtaxing her powers. 
 
 Twice in trying to cook for him she had burned 
 herself badly. Several times she had lost herself out 
 side the tent and had been brought back by him, towed 
 at the end of a horizontally-held stick, laughing, but 
 ashamed. 
 
 In the morning from off their bed she could fold 
 up the blankets and in the evening spread them out 
 again. She could cook a little, not forgetting her scars, 
 and she could sew. When the women came into her 
 tent to visit her she would sit by them sewing and 
 smiling. 
 
 "Why do you work when we are here to see you?" 
 they would say, and she, still smiling and holding 
 
42 Teepee Neighbors 
 
 together with the tips of her sensitive fingers the edges 
 of the seam, would answer: 
 
 "Because you are here to thread my needle for me." 
 
 But necessarily there were many hours when she 
 must needs sit idle, her strong hands in her lap, her 
 keen face listening. Sometimes when her man was 
 long absent and the fire had sunk low, though she had 
 replenished it with all the wood he had left inside for 
 her, she would get up, a look of adventure on her face, 
 and finding the tentflap, she would thrust it aside and 
 slip out into the sunlight. With her eager hands she 
 would feel about for more wood, for chips, anything. 
 Once even, finding no wood ready, she attempted to 
 split some with the axe. But though she slashed 
 valiantly the axehead always fell into the snow. She 
 could never strike the wood with it. 
 
 Coming home just then he had laughed at her and 
 had led her back inside the tent. Even as he did so 
 he felt that her hands were icy and that underneath 
 her heavy blanket she shivered and shook. He meant 
 to be very solicitous of her, but he was an old man, he 
 liked his pipe and his game of cards, he liked the old 
 men s talk of other days and he sometimes forgot. 
 
 As for her, whether he remembered or forgot, her 
 face was always animated with a sort of fiery patience 
 which made it seem, old and sightless as it undoubtedly 
 was, somehow young ; as though in some recess of her 
 
Teepee Neighbors 43 
 
 soul she were always crying out to Life : "You can 
 beat me down, you can filch from me everything I have, 
 but on me, on my true self, the essence of my being, 
 you dare not lay so much as a finger." 
 
 But in the end, when she came to her last grim 
 grapple with Death, he won, or seemed to win. 
 
 On a certain day those in the main camp noticed the 
 old man out catching and bringing in his horses, then 
 hitching them to his wagon, and finally, through the 
 shining of the morning sun, while all in one direction 
 the tents curtsied to their shadows, driving, rattling 
 and clattering, away. 
 
 There were some who said that she was on the seat 
 beside him, again there were others who maintained 
 that he was alone. Subsequently appearances seemed 
 to show that those latter ones were right, for through 
 out the greater part of the day a thin, wave ing veil of 
 smoke, accompanied by its agitated shadow, showed 
 above and about the solitary lodge. The tent door 
 opened away from the main camp, therefore even if 
 she were there and had come out through it to grope 
 about in the snow for more fuel she would have been 
 hidden from their sight. Of course she might easily 
 have felt her way around the corner of the tent and, 
 carefully avoiding the guy ropes, have followed along 
 its side to the farther end and there, silhouetted against 
 the snow, she might have called to them ; an eighth of a 
 
44 Teepee Neighbors 
 
 mile is no great distance to see or to hear . . . they 
 thought of all this afterwards. But this old man and 
 his blind wife were a couple who lived mainly to them 
 selves : no doubt this was her doing, for in spite of all 
 that she had lost she still clung fast to her piide, or 
 however much of it her long dependence had spared to 
 her. They were not people who very greatly encouraged 
 visitors ; she could not minister to them when they did 
 come, could not cook for them even. And: "Better 
 hide what may not be displayed," was, I suppose, the 
 thought in the back of her head. Also they were not 
 ones to ask favors. 
 
 The day wore to its close. The sun set. The shadow 
 dance ended. 
 
 The next morning those who said that she had gone 
 with her husband pointed triumphantly to the lifeless 
 tent. 
 
 "You see, there is no smoke." 
 
 "Can it be that he was going to ask some one of us 
 to see her, but forgot to do so?" ventured a single 
 voice. "Or had he meant to send some one from an 
 other camp to her ? I almost think I shall go over there 
 and see..." 
 
 "No, no. She does not like us to intrude." 
 
 "He did not ask me to go over." 
 
 "Nor me." 
 
 "Nor me." 
 
Teepee Neighbors 45 
 
 "Well, we can wait till tomorrow." 
 
 It was growing cold, bitterly cold. 
 
 "If she were there alone without fire or food she 
 would certainly call to us." 
 
 "Of course, of course." 
 
 The women, their shawls flapping, swung their axes 
 stoutly. The men banked up the tents with snow. 
 Children shivered about the stoves. One young woman 
 who had her first baby that night came near freezing 
 to death, and there was a great to-do to keep the little 
 one alive after it was finally born into so inhospitable 
 a world. 
 
 On the second morning it was still lifeless about the 
 solitary camp. 
 
 By afternoon the weather grew a little milder. Then 
 the wind sprang up and blew tempestuously, shaking 
 the frail tents. The children ventured out to play. 
 Their eyes, like the eyes of their elders, were forever 
 turning toward the lone lodge and slipping hastily away 
 again. The bravest of them strayed over toward it, 
 fled back, looked, and strayed yet again. About it 
 there were but few tracks. The children edged near. 
 No sound issued from within, no boiling of kettle, no 
 crackling of fire, no stirring, no voice, nor were there 
 any familiar odors of cooking or of wood smoke. One 
 very bold boy called her name gently, "Walks First! 
 Walks First!" 
 
46 Teepee Neighbors 
 
 A great gust of wind came, and wrenched and 
 shook the flimsy tent, ridge pole and all. Then from 
 within there issued a long, haunting, creaking noise, 
 unearthly, disquieting. Again and again it sounded, 
 diminishing as the violence of the gusts subsided. It 
 was for all the world the sound that a new rope 
 would make drawn taut over a ridgepole, straining and 
 groaning as a dead weight bore it down. 
 
 Spell-bound the children listened, then, with their 
 story, they fled back to the camp. They retraced 
 their steps, followed by the women and by one old 
 man. The people stood outside the tent, they walked 
 about; there were plenty of tracks in the snow now. 
 One or two of the women even called her name, 
 gently, as had done the boy. But the only answer 
 came when the wind blew and shook the tent, ridge 
 pole and all ; and that weird, uneasy grinding, slow and 
 prolonged, as though a dead weight were being 
 heavily stirred. 
 
 The old man harangued the women: "Open the 
 tent flap," he said. "Don t be afraid. Put your hands 
 inside and untie the door strings. Go in." 
 
 But the women folded their shawls about them and 
 bent a little from the wind. "We are afraid," they 
 faltered. 
 
 And still the old man exhorted. And the wind 
 
Teepee Neighbors 47 
 
 blew, and that heavy thing, which seemed to be 
 suspended within the tent, creaked and protested. 
 
 The sun dropped low, shining full on the back of 
 the tent. A little corner of the flap blew up, and then 
 a strange blurred shadow lay outlined beneath the 
 opening, and cast itself, writhing, upon the snow at 
 their feet. .. 
 
 You could hear the hissing of the women s breath 
 as they drew it in sharply. The old man was struck 
 silent. At last he turned to a boy, that one who had 
 been the boldest. His old voice shook. 
 
 "Get a horse," he said. "Ride as fast as you can. 
 Tell her husband he must come back." 
 
CIVILIZATION 
 
 IT WAS I who brought the story home. I had been 
 up at the Agency for mail and supplies and there I 
 had heard it. On my return I found at the house 
 a young Indian of the tribe. I hastened to divest 
 myself of my wraps and to go and prepare some sup 
 per for all of us. When it was ready we sat down 
 at the table. Then, with chuckles of unrighteous 
 mirth, I told it. 
 
 At a "condemned sale" at the Post, a Mexican 
 half-breed had, it seemed, bought a horse, but one 
 which, sleek with Government care and full of Govern 
 ment oats, appeared mendaciously well. The man was 
 said to have given less than ten dollars for it. Then 
 for a few days he had ridden it, saddled sumptuously, 
 around the Agency, till the covetous eyes of all the 
 loafers about the store and offices knew it well. 
 Noticing one old Indian of known possessions whose 
 eyes seemed to rest with special intensity of longing 
 upon his horse, the Mexican had approached him, 
 making a tentative offer of trade. The result was that 
 he had taken his old well-appearing horse to the man s 
 ranch he first frugally removed his saddle and bridle 
 and had walked back without it, driving before him 
 a young cow and her calf, the worth of which must 
 have been five times or more that of the horse for 
 which he had exchanged them. 
 
 48 
 
Teepee Neighbors 49 
 
 My story done, I laughed with unhallowed glee, and 
 my husband, equally depraved, laughed also. Of 
 course it was a contemptible thing to have done, but it 
 was cute to have so cleverly overreached the dull old 
 man. One considered the slow witted Mexican, the 
 slower witted Indian ; yes, it was funny . . . 
 
 I raised my eyes, and met the stormy ones of my 
 guest. He was frowning heavily. His gaze was on 
 his food, on the room, but not on us. 
 
 A troubled silence fell. Having seen the lack of 
 sympathy in his face, we both became quiet. 
 
 Then he spoke. "That was a regular white man s 
 trick," he said. 
 
"BY ANY OTHER NAME" 
 
 THE SICK child lay in the center of the room, propped 
 high with pillows. She was turned so that she faced 
 the window, and the west; the oblique rays of the set 
 ting sun shone directly into her eyes, already glazing. 
 Her bed which was raised but little from the ground, 
 was composed of quilts, smeared, discolored, stale. 
 Her long narrow pillows were stuffed to solidity, likely 
 enough with the down of cat- tails, and covered with 
 calico of colors sombre or vivid. They lifted her so 
 high that she was almost in a sitting posture. Her 
 hands, bent like bird s claws, sprawled upon the bed. 
 Her matted hair was still more or less restrained in 
 tight, dusty braids, doubtless plaited before her illness. 
 Because she had been sick but three days, her arms 
 and face all that was visible of her above the covers 
 were not so very much wasted ; but her eyes were heavy 
 and dull, her lips parted to receive the gasping breath, 
 her nostrils strangely chiselled and distended. 
 
 The white doctor pottered about her, breathing 
 audibly. He was an oldish man, and stout. In the 
 absence of the Agency physician he had been called in 
 from the nearby town. This was almost his first exper 
 ience of huddled, crowded, unsanitary cabins, of ground 
 made beds, of dying children but lately relinquished 
 from the hands of the medicine men. 
 
 50 
 
Teepee Neighbors 51 
 
 The Government field-matron, a big, kindly, untidy 
 woman, stood by the little window, arranging and re 
 arranging the row of bottles given to her care by the 
 doctor. The space of the window-sill being the only 
 available shelf in sight, she had placed her vials there. 
 
 From time to time the doctor rose, bent down again ; 
 breathed, muttered. 
 
 By the stove the child s mother, a gaunt unhappy 
 looking woman, imperturbably turned over the fried 
 bread in the boiling grease. She wore the look of one 
 who had already relinquished hope; who, because her 
 hold on life still trammelled her, went ever stolidly on 
 with her petty tasks ; as would go a prisoner, or one 
 caught in the ceaseless iteration of a tread-mill. She 
 looked at you when indeed she troubled to notice you 
 at all with the eyes of a fatalist. 
 
 About the room, in corners, on low beds, stood or 
 sat people, Indians, many of them; old, young; even 
 among them the superseded medicine woman. All 
 were silent, all patient, all watchful, all resigned. 
 
 The doctor puffed and grunted as he moved and bent, 
 his heavy slow breathing almost covering the sound of 
 the child s, which was light and shallow and fearfully 
 rapid. 
 
 The rays of the sinking sun penetrated the dingy 
 panes of the window and shimmered in the fading eyes. 
 
 "Can t you hang something across that window?" 
 
52 Teepee Neighbors 
 
 said the doctor. "Or, better, give me a hand here and 
 we ll turn this whole contraption around." 
 
 The doctor seized one end of the bed, the field-matron 
 the other. An old man strode forward, empty pipe 
 held in one skinny hand on his arrival the doctor had 
 at once caused the smoking in the house to cease. He 
 laid a detaining hand upon the pillows of the child s 
 bed; with the other, the one that held the pipe, he 
 motioned toward the sun. He spoke ; but few only of 
 his words were intelligible to the doctor. There existed 
 an abyss of black misunderstanding between this phy 
 sician and his patient s people, and few common words 
 had they with which to span it. 
 
 It was clear that the old man objected to the moving 
 of the bed. 
 
 The doctor looked at the field-matron, the field- 
 matron at the doctor. Then the doctor turning to the 
 old man pointed to the sun, then to the child, then laid 
 a hand upon his eyes. , 
 
 In answer the old man made a sharp gesture of nega 
 tion. Apparently there was some connection other than 
 material between the dying sun and the dying child; 
 some potency, some desirable "medicine." 
 
 The cabin w r as full of the smell of ground-dwelling 
 humanity, of the ground itself in the shape of the earth 
 en floor, of the boiling grease and the frying bread. 
 
 The doctor, breathing stertorously, bent low above 
 
Teepee Neighbors 53 
 
 the child. He took into his grasp one of her limp arms ; 
 his fingers touching, groping at the wrist. 
 
 "The whiskey, Miss Haines." 
 
 The field-matron seized from- her shelf a spoon and 
 a little bottle labelled "Whiskey," and extended them 
 to the kneeling man. 
 
 But again the old man with the empty pipe strode 
 forward. He looked upon the bottle disapprovingly; 
 again his old hands fashioned a fierce negative gesture. 
 
 "What the devil ?" began the doctor. 
 
 The old man signalled to a young fellow standing 
 back against the door. In the Indian tongue he spoke to 
 him and with great brevity. Then the young man in 
 terpreted, enunciating with bashful faintness. 
 
 "My father he say that stuff no good. On that bot 
 tle that say Whiskey/ Whiskey that somethin makes 
 men crazy. That no good for that little girl. She sick. 
 You a doctor you ought to know that, he say." 
 
 The doctor, still kneeling, listened, his eyes imperturb 
 able ; only his mouth twitched just a little. 
 
 "He don t want me to give her this whiskey even if 
 I think she needs it?" 
 
 The old man, watching, waved his hand contempt 
 uously toward the stove whereon dinner was cooking. 
 He spoke. 
 
 "You might just as well give her coffee," the young 
 
54 Teepee Neighbors 
 
 man interpreted. "That what he say. Medicine that 
 what she want. Give her medicine." 
 
 "I see." With a grunt the doctor heaved himself to 
 his feet. "I ll go outside and fix up some medicine. 
 I ll I ll throw this whiskey away/ 
 
 The old man slipped back to his place, muttering 
 gutturally. 
 
 The doctor, making a way for himself through the 
 group of people about the door, left the room. 
 
 In a few moments he returned carrying con 
 spicuously in his hand a larger bottle containing a small 
 amount of amber-colored fluid. On its label was pen 
 cilled in large plain letters : Medicine. 
 
 The doctor knelt again. Carefully, with the tip of 
 a spoon inserted between the parted lips, he gave the 
 child of the "medicine." 
 
 His eyes, very solemn, were lifted to the face of the 
 field-matron, bending above him and above the child. 
 Her answering eyes were equally solemn. 
 
 He spoke, but softly in that hushed room. "It isn t 
 as though you could change a good thing by merely 
 changing its environment," he said. "A lesson in 
 philosophy, Miss Haines; a valuable lesson in philos 
 ophy. Er are you keeping something hot at the 
 feet?" 
 
AN INDIAN VICTORY 
 
 THE BABY was sick and that was the reason I had not 
 paid much attention to Damon the first time he came 
 that afternoon. Saturdays they let out the boys from 
 the Government Indian boarding school at one o clock, 
 and he had come down on foot to borrow my pony. 
 He and I had taken to sharing the pony since the baby 
 had interfered with my horse-back days. He came in 
 with a smile on his nice boy s face, and asked where 
 my saddle was. Then I forgot all about him in the 
 baby s troubles. I suppose it must have been near four 
 o clock when he got back again. It was May, but chilly 
 yet ; at any rate, on the baby s account, I was keeping 
 a fire in the living-room stove. I remember that Damon 
 entered without knocking that s the Indian way and 
 slumped down into a chair behind the stove. The 
 baby s attack seemed to be over ; he was nearly asleep. 
 I sat on the sofa jiggling his carriage. I was still wip- 
 ping an occasional tear from my own eyes, and the 
 baby, poor lamb, every now and again shook all over 
 with sobs. 
 
 For a long time the boy sat quiet, but after a while 
 I heard little broken sounds coming from behind the 
 stove, and snuffles. I made haste to emerge from 
 the gloom into which the afternoon had cast me. 
 
 "Why, Damon. Why boy! What on earth is the 
 matter?" 
 
 55 
 
56 Teepee Neighbors 
 
 Had I been Indian I should never have been so rude 
 as to ask a direct question, but well, it took him a long 
 time to answer it. He, at least, was Indian enough. 
 At last he got it out. 
 
 "Elk wouldn t sign for me." 
 
 "You mean to say you went way down to Goes-in- 
 Lodge s, where Elk is staying, and that he wouldn t 
 sign your Carlisle paper, though he promised you to 
 do it today?" 
 
 "Yes, ma am ," said Damon, and snuffled again. 
 
 "But I don t understand at all why he wouldn t. He 
 has always seemed willing enough for Mr. Knight, 
 when he goes East next week, to take you with the 
 other children. Why, boy, what on earth can you do 
 now? Elk s surely the one who ought to sign for you. 
 Why do you think he went back on you?" 
 
 There was a long pause. At last Damon managed : 
 "John Pine, he died Then he stuck again. 
 
 Conversation between the naturally reticent Indian 
 and the as naturally loquacious white man is very likely 
 to impress one as does an overheard telephone talk; 
 one man apparently doing all the work. 
 
 "Oh, John Pine s dead," said I. "Well, I knew he 
 was going to die before long, of course. He came 
 back about Christmas time, wasn t it, from that Kan 
 sas school, and with consumption? And now he s 
 dead. So your uncle 
 
Teepee Neighbors 57 
 
 "Yes, ma am. Elk, he got scared, and he said what 
 did I want to go off so far for, and couldn t I learn 
 enough at this here school." 
 
 "And then what did you say ?" I didn t want him to 
 run down till I had got it all out of him. 
 
 "I just kept sayin : I want to go to Carlisle, I want 
 to go to Carlisle." 
 
 "Well, there s Hubert. He s a kind of an uncle to 
 you, too. He s been off at school. Maybe he could 
 sign for you. Did you try him?" 
 
 "He was to Goes-in Lodge s too. But he just talked 
 mean to me. He said, why did I want to go and try to 
 learn to be a white man? He said I d forget how to 
 talk Indian, and I d come back and marry one of them 
 half-breed girls. And look at the ones that s come 
 back, he said, can they earn any more money than us 
 fellows here? They ain t white and they ain t Indian. 
 You better stay here, he said, and this summer I ll 
 take you out on my ranch with me, and maybe in the 
 fall me and you ll have a little huntin trip back of 
 Black Mountain. " 
 
 "And what did you say to that, boy ?" 
 
 "Just the same thing. I kept sayin : I want to go to 
 Carlisle. I want to go to Carlisle. There ain t never 
 been one of us Northern Arapahoes graduate from 
 Carlisle, and I want to be the first one, I said." 
 
58 Teepee Neighbors 
 
 Well, Damon, there s your mother. Do you think 
 anyway she could be made to do it?" 
 
 "No, ma am," said Damon, and again he snuffled. 
 
 "She s old," said I, "and, being blind that way, it 
 surely would be hard to make her understand. She d 
 just hate to have you go so far. To her it would be 
 like sending you off to the moon. And she couldn t 
 realize where the advantage to you would be. Let me 
 see, you must have other relatives, plenty of them, who 
 could sign that paper." 
 
 "No, ma am," said Damon again. "Can t nobody 
 sign for me but just Elk or my mother. That s what 
 the agent told Mr. Knight." 
 
 "But last year anybody could sign for the ones who 
 went. You know what a time your own cousin, 
 Tabitha, had. Elk wouldn t give his consent to her 
 going to Carlisle, and she got just a young man, a 
 cousin, to sign for her, and she went anyhow." 
 
 "Yes, ma am." said Damon dolefully. 
 
 He was young, but when you live on an Indian res 
 ervation you get your eyes open early to a good deal 
 of pretty obvious irony. Last year, to further the 
 interests of an employee who wished to travel East 
 in charge of the children, and so at the Government s 
 expense, the regulation requiring actual parents or 
 guardians to sign their consent for the child to go away 
 from the reservation to school had been waived. This 
 
Teepee Neighbors 59 
 
 year, however, when a lesser govermental light was 
 desirous of taking the children East, the observance 
 of the ruling on the question was being more strictly 
 adhered to. 
 
 Poor boy of fourteen! Vaguely, in his groping 
 child s heart, he craved a little more education than 
 the reservation school could offer, and he was fired 
 also with a dim desire to see something of the outside 
 world in this his one and only chance, living as he did 
 in so remote a part of the country. Poor youngster! 
 To be forced thus to fight for the chance a good 
 government had meant to place within his easy reach, 
 on the one hand the indifference of self-seeking 
 whites, and on the other the ignorance and stubborn 
 ness of his own purblind people. I wondered how, at 
 fourteen, my boy, there in the cradle, would face a 
 similar situation. 
 
 We seemed to be in a cul-de-sac, which is the French 
 for box-canon, a horrid place in which to find yourself 
 when all your desire is to be at the other side of the 
 end wall of it. 
 
 Well, there I was in my box-canon, off the trail, no 
 suggestions to offer. I told Damon to keep my pony 
 all night and to come back tomorrow ; and in the 
 meantime to tell Mr. Knight, the lesser light, and the 
 boy s good friend, all his difficulties. Perhaps, among 
 
60 Teepee Neighbors 
 
 us all, we might be able to find some way out of the 
 dilemma. 
 
 In the morning I saw a buggy drive through the 
 ranch gate. The sun was shining, the baby smiling 
 again. I remember I was just doing the dishes. 
 
 "Oh! leave your dishes and come along. We re 
 going over to Wind River, to get Damon s mother to 
 sign this paper if we can. This boy s just got to go to 
 Carlisle, and we ll leave no stone unturned to get him 
 there." 
 
 So I bundled up the baby and put on my linen duster 
 and threw my heavy coat under the back seat. That s 
 the way it is in Wyoming; the dust is always with us, 
 and the cold generally. So we go prepared for any 
 thing. 
 
 The river was high, but we got through it all right. 
 Government horses are big and strong. We turned 
 north across "Dobe Flat," then a little eastward up 
 the long divide between the two rivers. We always call 
 it five miles to the summit ; it s all of that, a long, heavy, 
 gradual grade. At the top Mr. Knight pulled up the 
 team to let them breathe, and we all turned back to 
 look at the country behind us, the big sunny valley 
 sloping up to the foothill^ and lined with little brush- 
 bordered creeks, each one tracing its tortuous way back 
 to its own cleft canon. Beyond we saw the mountains, 
 
Teepee Neighbors 61 
 
 delicate, graceful, snow-sprinkled, and outlining the 
 whole west of the world. 
 
 We stood there at the summit, the hill falling away 
 from us both ways. You could hear the wind singing 
 away off ; you always can on the plains, no matter how 
 still it is. There were a few cactus plants growing near 
 us, and they were in bloom. The sage smelled good, 
 that clean, primeval smell that takes you back to the 
 beginning of all camping, of all life. Everything was 
 sparkling in the sun, and, most of all, those mountains, 
 so many of them, in such a wide, powerful line. 
 
 We started at a good clip down the other slope. The 
 road wound through red, sage-covered, rolling country ; 
 down there, miles ahead of us, we could see the big 
 river, marked by a wide band of cottonwoods. 
 
 The country through which we were passing, though 
 looking most accessible, was in reality so completely 
 the reverse that you couldn t help admiring the clever 
 way the road nosed its passage between the little hills, 
 down gulches and draws, along hogbacks, finding out 
 and following the only possible ways. 
 
 At last we were nearly down. We passed through 
 a narrow draw, all pinkish-red sand, very hard and 
 ancient looking. There the sage grew as high as your 
 eyes as you sit a horse. It looked gnarled, misformed, 
 and old, as though it had been the very first thing of 
 its kingdom created of God. As we came down that 
 
62 Teepee Neighbors 
 
 sand-draw I turned my head to the left and hugged 
 the baby close. You can t see it from the road, but just 
 a little way back from it there s a box- canon, red and 
 sandy and sage-covered, where the people over here 
 on the river bury their dead. I have heard them up 
 there "crying" at twilight, the age-old lament of grief. 
 
 At last we got to the river. Elk s camp stood right 
 at the edge of the tall timber, within sound of the roar, 
 if not quite within sight of the water. There stood 
 three cabins, set at irregular angles, the most primitive 
 form of human-built house ; rough, dusty logs, the ends 
 not so much as sawed off even, chinked with red mud, 
 dirt roofs and floors, crooked door and window frames 
 of hewn logs. There also stood at one side a tall teepee, 
 graceful and free, compared to its squat house neigh 
 bors. 
 
 By the side of one of the houses a post was driven 
 into the ground, and sitting in the dirt, facing it, was 
 a woman. Her hands held the two ends of a wet cow 
 hide, scraped of its hair, and which, to soften, she kept 
 pulling back and forth around the stake. At the 
 sound of the buggy she turned her face toward us, 
 listening expectantly. We tied the team to the fence 
 and all went over to her. Mr. Knight shook hands 
 with her. 
 
 "How! Blind Woman." 
 
 I did likewise. "How! How! Blind Woman." 
 
Teepee Neighbors 63 
 
 It never seemed to me either polite or considerate to 
 call her that. But that was her name. We all used it. 
 
 Damon hung back. 
 
 "You ll have to interpret for us," said Mr. Knight 
 to him. "There s no one else." 
 
 The boy came forward bashfully and stood in the 
 sunshine by his blind mother. She let the hide slip 
 from her hands. The ends lay touching her feet, within 
 reach. She lifted her face to us, her blind face, which 
 wore, as do the faces of so many of the Indians, a look 
 of child-like sweetness and agelong patience. 
 
 Mr. Knight explained. Damon interpreted. I sat 
 on. somebody s saddle, which lay on the ground, holding 
 my baby. 
 
 "Six days to get there?" 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 "And for five years?" 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 The light faded from the blind face. 
 
 "My husband is dead," said the woman. "I have 
 but two sons. The other one, as you know, is sick. 
 Five years !" 
 
 Damon interpreted on. Then a slow tear stole down 
 the old woman s face, and another. She wiped them 
 away with the palms of her hands. Tears ran down 
 the boy s face also. A sudden sob shook him. They 
 spoke quietly to each other; scantily. 
 
64 Teepee Neighbors 
 
 At last Damon said: "She says to give her the 
 paper, she will make her mark." 
 
 Mr. Knight handed it to her. He guided her hand. 
 He and I witnessed the crude signature. Then we 
 went down to the river bank to eat our lunch, leaving 
 the mother and son together. I felt somehow as 
 though I could not let the baby out of my arms. 
 
 On our way home we were all inclined to be quiet. 
 The hills were glorious in the afternoon light, long 
 shadows pointed back from the mountains it was all 
 so world-wide, so everlasting looking. It made you feel 
 the way reading some parts of the Old Testament does, 
 as though suddenly, mysteriously, you were in touch 
 with the things that transcend time and space. 
 
THE PASSING OF FELIX RUNS 
 BEHIND 
 
 I DROVE two miles down the river to the ford we use in 
 summer. It looked solid enough now, but snow lay in 
 an undisturbed sheet over the ice. I urged my horse 
 down close to the edge but stopped him there. I was 
 afraid to venture on it. Last night there had been the 
 first great freeze of the winter. The ice was so new, I 
 quailed. But the cold was bitter. It gripped me. My 
 feet ached. I remember I moved them awkwardly 
 under the covers, hoping to quicken them a little. Then 
 I fumbled with the lines. I even spoke to the horse, 
 starting him forward, straight for the ice. But after 
 all my heart failed me and I turned him short about 
 and made him follow his own track back up the river. 
 His trail was the only one in all that vast waste of 
 snow. 
 
 The old horse went stiffly. I drove him to an up 
 per ford. Here the water showed, running between 
 rocks and the ice that clung to their edges. At least 
 here there was some sound of water moving, not the 
 deathlike stillness of the lower country. A hot spring 
 above this upper ford kept the river "open" through 
 the bitterest weather. I drove into the water. The 
 little buggy crashed down oft the edge of the ice into 
 the current and rocked over the stones of the bottom. 
 
 65 
 
66 Teepee Neighbors 
 
 Then it wrenched up over the ice along the other bank, 
 creaking and straining. Again, I headed the horse 
 down the river, we broke through fresh snow, our 
 slender track making a faint line of bluish shadow on 
 the virgin whiteness. 
 
 Saddle Blanket s camp lay a mile or more below us 
 in the valley. A clump of bare and ragged cotton- 
 woods stood over it. There were three squat, careless 
 cabins, huddled together; there was a corral protecting 
 a diminutive hay stack ; there stood also an old wagon 
 and a mowing machine. Smoke was pouring from a 
 stove pipe which protruded at a crazy angle from one 
 of the roofs. 
 
 Clumsily I freed myself from the blankets and let 
 myself down to the ground. Cautiously, with stiff 
 fingers, I tied the horse to one of the rear wheels of 
 the wagon. His breath steamed in a cloud about me. 
 In the extreme cold everything creaked uneasily. 
 Here, at least, though, were tracks in the snow, moc 
 casin tracks, dog tracks. In a tiny teepee made of 
 gunny sacks and rags, a mother dog whined miserably 
 amidst her blind litter. 
 
 I stepped over the complaining snow and knocked at 
 the home-built door of the house from which came the 
 smoke I have never been able to accustom myself 
 to the Indian way of entering without announcement. 
 A voice from within called out something to me. I 
 
Teepee Neighbors 67 
 
 turned the handle, pushed the door, but finally had to 
 force it with my knee before I managed to open it. 
 
 "How !" They cried at sight of me. "How ! How !" 
 They used my Indian name as they spoke to me. At 
 least it was warm within. A woman slapped back a 
 couple of half grown dogs from before the little sheet- 
 iron stove and made a place for me. With my teeth 
 I pulled off my gloves and held my aching fingers 
 above the warmth. I stamped my feet, clumsy in 
 arctics, upon the dirt floor. 
 
 It seemed very dim in the cabin after the glare with 
 out. I looked about puzzling out the faces. There 
 were a lot of people there, old ones mostly. They sat 
 on the floor along the walls, smoking, and talking in 
 low voices, the accent guttural, the words to me in 
 comprehensible. But it was easy enough to find the 
 sick man, the one I had come to see. He was stretched 
 on a bed in the corner away from the door, on an iron 
 bed which had, in all probability, been condemned and 
 thrown out upon the dump behind the Government 
 school. It was mended and propped with boards from 
 some store packing-box. He lay back, supported by 
 pillows and blankets, a veritable death s head, but alive, 
 looking, knowing, suffering, speaking even. He was 
 quite horrible. By the foot of the bed, in the dirt, sat 
 his mother, a blind woman. Except indeed the sick 
 
68 Teepee Neighbors 
 
 man, I saw no one in all the roomful who knew English 
 and so could interpret for me. 
 
 When the pain in my hands left me free to think, 
 I stepped over the ubiquitous puppies to the bed and 
 reached for his hand, the hot nerveless thing of bones 
 he held out to me. 
 
 "I heard only yesterday that you were so sick, 
 Felix" 
 
 "I can t hear," he croaked to me. His eyes devoured 
 me. 
 
 I repeated my words in a louder voice. 
 
 When they turn deaf that way it is near the end. I 
 have seen enough of consumption to know that. He 
 indeed was at the very end; one look at him, one 
 breath of the tainted air, told you that. There was red 
 paint on his cheeks, on his forehead, "medicine" paint, 
 sacred. He was anointed for his passing. 
 
 Can you think of anything I might do for you?" 
 
 The low Indian voices had ceased. It was hard to 
 speak so loud in that still place. You felt Death wait 
 ing, sinister, implacable, just outside the home-built 
 door. 
 
 "I m hungry!" rasped that dreadful voice. "I m 
 hungry !" The skeleton hands repeated the words in 
 the Indian sign-language; the whole body said it, the 
 eyes burned it into me. 
 
 "I ll go home," I cried, "and bring you something to 
 
Teepee Neighbors 69 
 
 eat." My heart was full of a sort of joy that I had 
 found one definite thing to fix on, to do for him. 
 "What shall I bring you, Felix?" 
 
 "Meat," he said, "meat. You cook it, in the oven, 
 and no salt; will you?" 
 
 "And oranges," I said, "and bread, shall I bring 
 you them?" 
 
 "No," he croaked again. "Meat, just meat, I m 
 hungry." 
 
 A lean woman sitting against the opposite wall, 
 spoke to him, said something in a loud voice. He 
 turned his death s-head toward her so that he might the 
 better hear. 
 
 "She says bring the bread and the oranges," he got 
 out, hoarsely. Then he coughed and let his head fall 
 back upon the pillows. 
 
 I looked at the hungry greedy eyes of the lean 
 woman. I knew her well for a "medicine" woman, the 
 keeper of the Sacred Pipe, an adherent of the old 
 heathen ways. She had children by her as she sat, a 
 little ragged girl and dirty boy. I saw their worn moc 
 casins and matted hair, their eager eyes and pinched 
 faces. I saw indeed the greediness of her look but also 
 I saw in her that most miserable thing, a mother of 
 hungry children. 
 
 "I will bring them," I said. I spoke to her with the 
 signs of the Indian "hand talk." 
 
7O Teepee Neighbors 
 
 I stood with my hand resting on the iron of the 
 bed s foot, waiting for Felix to revive and speak to me 
 again. After a little, without lifting his head, he asked, 
 in Indian, for something. An old woman, taking a short, 
 black stone pipe from her mouth, got up and brought 
 him water in a tin cup. He drank noisily, the cup 
 shaking in his hand. When the old woman had sat 
 down again, he opened his eyes and turned his face 
 towards me. 
 
 "Felix," I said, "would you be willing to let me bring 
 you the doctor? There is a kind young doctor at the 
 Post now. I think he could give you something so 
 that you would not suffer so much. May I bring him?" 
 
 His face brightened. He made as if to acquiesce, but 
 half a dozen voices from the other side of the room 
 cried him down. He heard them but could not, I sup 
 pose, distinguish the words. Then the lean woman got 
 to her feet suddenly and said something angrily, and 
 apparently to me. 
 
 He smiled up at me deprecatingly. "She says no," 
 he said. "She s curing me herself. When I get so I 
 can walk then I ll go up to the Post with you and see 
 that doctor." 
 
 I smiled back at him some way, what else could I 
 do? "Very well," I said, "We ll leave it that way." 
 
 I saw it all, of course. A free doctor who helped 
 might be a menace to the prestige of a medicine woman 
 
Teepee Neighbors 71 
 
 demanding pay and who well, didn t help. I under 
 stood something of the situation in which this blind 
 woman and her dying son were placed. There had 
 been trouble recently between them and Elk with 
 whom they habitually lived. Elk, their relative, was 
 a hard, imperious man, and had, so it was said in the 
 camps, turned them both out of his home. They had 
 then been forced to take refuge where they could, at 
 least during the bitter winter time; and it was, of 
 course, not for nothing that this lean woman with the 
 wild eyes was taking the scanty scraps of food for 
 them from the mouths of her own children. I knew 
 well, bitterly well, how it must be. All the possessions 
 of these two refugees had not yet been converted to the 
 healer. They two must be kept a little longer. Some 
 starving cow or pony, some quilt or piece of bead work, 
 was still to be got hold of. The Indians are not by 
 nature a grasping people, but when you are a mother 
 with hungry children at your knee necessity drives you 
 with a double goad. 
 
 Therefore I smiled, promising to drive up at once for 
 the meat, the four or five miles from the camp to the 
 Post, cook it in my oven, without salt and bring it 
 to the dying man tomorrow. My hand was still resting 
 on the iron foot of the cot. Then I felt creeping 
 fingers, and a hand, an old hand, closed gently over 
 
72 Teepee Neighbors 
 
 mine, pressed, seemed to caress. I had no need to look. 
 It was the blind mother who thus groped for me. 
 
 Yes, I understood it all, understood that she realized 
 what I had been thinking of, the attitude toward her of 
 her hosts, and that she recognized also friendship when 
 it came to her. At length I slipped my hands from 
 tinder hers to take again Felix s in parting. Oh ! the 
 horrid, pitiful touch of that hand, soiled and sick. 
 
 "I will come tomorrow," I cried, in the loud voice I 
 must needs use. "Tomorrow, tomorrow/ I repeated 
 in Indian the one word of the sentence that I knew in 
 that language. 
 
 The next day was mild. A "Chinook" wind blew 
 strongly from the distant ocean. It cut into the snow, 
 making it look ragged and unnatural. 
 
 When I drove this time to Saddle Blanket s, I took 
 the baby with me. I laid him in a little bed, im 
 provised from the top of an old canvass "telescope"- 
 at my feet, on the floor of the buggy. He could be 
 warm and covered there, and at the same time leave my 
 hands free for driving. This time there were people 
 about outside the camp. An old man came up and tied 
 my horse for me. I lifted out the baby and carried him 
 on one arm, my panful of things on the other. I fumb 
 led at the door. The lean woman from within opened 
 it. The room was less filled, the air mercifully fresher. 
 Felix was better, you could see it. There was hope 
 
Teepee Neighbors 73 
 
 in his face. The medicine paint was gone. He was 
 even making out to sit up, after a fashion, still propped 
 by the litter of blankets and dirty pillows behind him. 
 He had on a clean shirt, a light one, it was buttoned 
 decently over his skeleton chest, whereas yesterday his 
 miserable nakedness had been half disclosed. 
 
 I came in stumbling, laughing a little, so encumbered 
 was I. The blind woman, still sitting on the ground at 
 the bed foot, turned her face to me. The baby made a 
 little gurgling sound. The mother heard it. She 
 reached out her old arms. Then I let the baby slip, 
 all bundled and hooded as he was, into her lap. Her 
 hands found everything: the knot of the capstrings, his 
 rounding cheeks, his little bent ringers. She nestled 
 him, under her shawl, spoke endearingly to him. He 
 answered her in his own way. 
 
 I was talking at the bedside to Felix, showing him 
 the food, explaining. He sat with his shoulders bent, 
 his bony hands resting on the quilts, his long braids 
 falling forward in the hollows of his chest. 
 
 "Thank you !" he cried, "Thank you ! That s good. 
 I ll eat good." 
 
 It came into my mind just then that they had told 
 me that at the mission school he had attended he had 
 been one of the Sanctuary boys, one of the servers of 
 the Mass. Well, he would "eat good" and die a little 
 less hungry, perhaps, because of my meat and bread. 
 
74 Teepee Neighbors 
 
 The lean woman emptied my food into dishes and 
 pans of hers and handed me back my things. The 
 children played about with the puppies. Everything 
 today seemed easy, relaxed. Perhaps, after all, he 
 was not as near gone as yesterday he had seemed to be. 
 Consumption is so deceptive. 
 
 I went, at last, taking the baby from the reluctant 
 arms of the blind woman. I promised to return in 
 a few days with more food. The mother followed me 
 to the door and stood outside in the sunlight against 
 the grey walls of the house, smiling and turning toward 
 me her listening face. 
 
 It was two days after that, that my baby was taken 
 suddenly and seriously ill. He would not eat at all. 
 We, on that ranch remote from neighbors and help, 
 hung over him impotently, watched, feared. It had 
 turned very cold again, but in despair we wrapped him 
 up, and drove with him the long nineteen miles we 
 must needs go to the one town of this ranch region 
 and the only place where medical help of much use 
 might be had. My husband left me there with the 
 baby, returning the next day to the ranch and his 
 duties. He bought food in the town for Felix. My 
 last words to him were as, bundled to the ears, he sat 
 gathering up the lines and whip, "The first thing 
 in the morning, you ll go down to Felix, the first thing. 
 You won t put it off an hour, will you?" 
 
Teepee Neighbors 75 
 
 When he came back at the end of the week he told 
 me about it. He had gone with the meat and things 
 only to find the camp deserted. The cabins were there, 
 squat and wretched under the ragged cotton woods, 
 the corral still contained the scanty hay stack, the 
 mowing machine stood blocked with snow. But the 
 wagon was gone, and the dog teepee. The place was 
 empty of all life. A short log of wood resting against 
 the door of the cabin where Felix had been, signified, 
 in the Indian way, that the place was to be considered 
 locked. Looking in through the window it could be 
 seen that the sick man s bed was also gone. 
 
 You take the signs for what they mean, of course. It 
 had happened; evidently, was over; on some rocky 
 ledge, in the scant, frozen earth of that wilderness of 
 snow and sunlight stretching back from the river, they 
 had buried him. His skeleton, racked body, the long 
 hair smoothed and anointed, the face painted ceremon 
 ially, dressed in all his best which for this even the 
 cupidity of the lean medicine woman had spared to 
 him beaded moccasins on his feet, wrapped in new 
 quilts, many, many of them, a great, stark motley 
 bundle, they had laid him in that freezing bed, and on 
 top of him, as he lay, they had placed the cup from 
 Avhich on the day of my first visit the old woman 
 had given him to drink, the dishes and pans which had 
 held the food I had brought him, his pillows and dingy 
 
76 Teepee Neighbors 
 
 quilts. The iron bed mended with boards no doubt 
 was thrown dismembered at the side of the grave. 
 
 I could see it all ; the blind woman standing in her 
 scant rags, and thin, torn shawl, perhaps the blood 
 streaming from her legs, which, in her sorrow, she had 
 gashed with knives, her hair falling loose, her half -un 
 covered flesh shivering in the bitter cold ; and wailing 
 wailing, half a song, half a cry. Other w r omen had 
 dug his grave : She was blind ! Other women had 
 swaddled him for his long sleep: She was blind! 
 Other women had seen the last flicker in his eyes, the 
 look of love meant for her: She was blind. But she 
 might cry for him, standing, swaying and uncertain, by 
 the grave, hearing the heavy, creaking steps of those 
 who bore him. 
 
 Afterwards she must needs go patiently back to life, 
 must take up her lonely, stumbling burden, until she 
 also should be borne to her shallow grave. Back she 
 must creep, shorn of her son, naked of her goods, a 
 public care, a never ceasing burden on her tribe. 
 
 It was nearly a year before I so much as set eyes 
 on her again. In our wandering Indian world it is often 
 that way ; long distance, long time, may separate those 
 whose hearts have for a moment beaten in friendship. 
 
 I remember also, that when my husband told me 
 that Felix was gone, with a heavy heart, seeking soft 
 words, I sat down to write to Damon, his young 
 brother away at school, my sorry news. 
 
THE POT AND THE KETTLE 
 
 SHE THUDDED into my room, grunting a little and 
 closing the door behind her noisily. Then she flung 
 the solid, square bulk of herself into a chair, with 
 rough abandon shaking back from her face her 
 grizzled hair. When I came in to salute her she was 
 grumbling under her breath. 
 
 "How!" said I. "I m glad to see you. But what 
 are you doing here? I thought you were washing for 
 the trader s woman." 
 
 "Yes. Me wash." 
 
 "Well, it s dinner time." 
 
 Her keen little eyes shot me a glance. "Yes. Me 
 hungry." 
 
 "Well," I began, "I suppose the trader s folks eat 
 dinner, don t they?" 
 
 She hitched her shawl, settled herself back into the 
 chair with a jerk, cleared her throat, spat into the 
 stove. "Yes, heap cook. Big one, black woman. Me 
 no like um. No good!" Her big hand leaped from 
 beneath her shawl and was thrust out to one side, the 
 fingers opening in that derisive, unmistakable gesture 
 which means indeed "No good!" 
 
 The old woman laughed with her big coarse voice, 
 eyeing me sharply. 
 
 "You kimme dinner," she said. "You clean. Black 
 77 
 
78 Teepee Neighbors 
 
 woman, that dirty. No good ! No good !" Her liana* 
 proclaimed disgust. 
 
 Her grizzled locks straggled stiffly about her neck, 
 short and shaggy and unbraided. So often had she 
 hacked them off in mourning, so often worn them veil- 
 like about her weeping face, that now, as with her 
 "white" sisters, many long-time widows or the mothers 
 of long-since dead children still wear black, so she 
 never gathered her hair into even a semblance of that 
 order which had proclaimed her once happy state. Her 
 checked outing flannel shawl a bed sheet in reality 
 was soiled and grimy ; where lately she had stood at the 
 tub her dress was splashed and wet, her moccasins also 
 were sodden. 
 
 She grumbled on. "You kimme eat. All day, heap 
 work, no eat. No good ! No good !" 
 
 I had gone back to my duties in the kitchen but I 
 could hear her flinging herself about in the chair. 
 
 "Dirty. Dirty. Heap work. No eat. Buffalo-sol 
 dier-woman." 
 
 I peeped at her through the door-way. Back and 
 forth before her bulky middle she drew the edge of her 
 hand, saw-like, in the "hungry" sign. 
 
 "Hungry. You kimme eat. She dirty. No good. 
 But you my friend. You clean." 
 
 Again she spat into the stove, wiping with a corner 
 of her grimy shawl the sweat from her fat face. 
 
MOTHERS 
 
 THEY CAME in the middle of the afternoon, an old 
 bent woman with ragged clothes and hair; her sleeves 
 hanging open in the way old people make their 
 dresses afforded a glimpse of withered discolored 
 arms ; and with her a young woman, neatly braided 
 and shod, a little carmine paint on each rounded cheek. 
 Entering they went to the baby carriage and bent above 
 it. The younger woman, holding back with slender 
 pointed fingers her shawl, leaned down over the baby. 
 
 "Is he sick?" 
 
 "Yes," I said. I was stupid with weariness. Half 
 of the night before we had been up with him, and 
 added to that physical strain there was the constant 
 wearing of anxiety. 
 
 The younger woman interpreted for the old one. 
 Together they stooped above the child, speaking to 
 each other in low voices. 
 
 I offered them chairs. "Won t you sit down?" 
 
 They did so. Absently the old woman held out her 
 fingers toward the stove. The air was full of the chill 
 of spring. I talked to them a little but with effort. 
 They must have noticed. 
 
 "And how many children have you, Katherine?" 
 
 She looked at me a little heavily. "Three," she said. 
 
 It is so seldom that you see an Indian mother sep- 
 79 
 
8o Teepee Neighbors 
 
 arated from her children that I suppose I must have 
 stared at her in surprise. At any rate she explained. 
 
 "Two are dead," she said. The words were spoken 
 with a faintly breathed sigh. 
 
 "Oh!" I said, "Oh!" 
 
 No doubt the old woman guessed what we were 
 saying, for she turned to me, and, half behind the 
 girl s back, made with her hands certain signs. I 
 looked hastily at the younger woman. She smiled at 
 me a little out of the corners of her eyes. 
 
 "And one isn t born yet," she went on. 
 
 I smiled too, that sweet intimate smile that women 
 know. 
 
 "When?" I asked. 
 
 "In June, I guess." 
 
 "Then you ll be happy again." 
 
 She rocked her arms suddenly in her shawl and a 
 vague tenderness crept into her eyes. She smiled at 
 me again. 
 
 Then they sat, each on her chair, talking to one an 
 other occasionally in low tones, their eyes straying over 
 the pictures that hung on the walls, drifting back to the 
 baby. 
 
 I was alone on the ranch that afternoon and was due 
 to be so all the evening. 
 
 "Your man away?" 
 
 "Yes." 
 
Teepee Neighbors 81 
 
 She interpreted to the old woman. 
 
 "When he come back?" 
 
 "About bedtime, I think." 
 
 At last I got up and, I am afraid with reluctance, 
 went to cook them some supper. I had not intended to 
 do so for just myself ; a little bread would have sufficed 
 me. But I remembered that it was the hungry time of 
 the year when money was gone and credit stretched 
 to the breaking point. I knew they must need my 
 food. 
 
 They sat on the floor to eat. Chairs did very well 
 for ordinary use but when it was a question of enjoying 
 the sparse carnal pleasures of life, borrowed customs 
 could not be allowed to stand in the way of one s 
 gratification. They devoured the food almost vor 
 aciously. But very soon the old woman ceased eating. 
 With her old dark hands she took the meat from her 
 plate and some of the bread and tied these fragments 
 of food in a corner of her shawl. The young woman 
 looked at me uncertainly. 
 
 "She say she take that home to her man." 
 
 "Oh ! that s all right." 
 
 Then it was that I noticed that the old hands, 
 fumbling with the corner of the shawl, were marred. 
 The last joint of each little ringer was massing. You 
 never see young hands thus marked, but the old ones 
 are often so. It is an ancient custom, that of maiming 
 
82 Teepee Neighbors 
 
 one s self in token of mourning, of slashing and sever 
 ing and scarring one s self. 
 
 "She has no children living, has she?" 
 
 "No," answered the girl. 
 
 "I wonder how many she has had." 
 
 According to Indian etiquette one must hint rather 
 then question. 
 
 The young woman spoke to her gently, then looked 
 up at me. "Nine," she said. 
 
 The old woman raised her hands, nine of their fin 
 gers elevated. Then she spread her hands upon her 
 lap and stared at them strangely, with who knew what 
 of pain and recollection in her rheumy eyes. 
 
 I shook my head deprecatingly. There seemed to be 
 nothing adequate to say. 
 
 The girl gathered up their empty dishes. "Shall I 
 put them in the kitchen ?" 
 
 "Do, please." 
 
 I thought then that they would surely go. I wanted 
 to be alone. I wanted to look at my baby, to listen to 
 his breathing; I wanted to hoard the sight of him. 
 But their presence and their talk continually intervened. 
 
 "It s getting late." 
 
 They looked at the baby, at the darkening windows, 
 at the baby again. 
 
 "Yes." They smiled at me faintly. 
 
 And still they sat. 
 
Teepee Neighbors 83 
 
 An owl across the river cried out dismally. I stole 
 a furtive look at them. The Indians believe that the 
 owl s cry is that of some vagabond marauding ghost. 
 To them it is the wail of the dead. They made no 
 sign, and yet I knew that they had heard. 
 
 After that there was silence. Twice the young girl 
 looked at the clock. I had never previously had any of 
 my Indian callers stay thus into the night, braving a 
 return through the haunted dark. 
 
 And still they sat. 
 
 "Is anyone at your camp?" 
 
 "Her man, he s there." 
 
 The windows grew quite black. Again the owl 
 broke forth in his sudden mournful melody. Then 
 the old woman spoke energetically to the young one. 
 The girl turned toward me. 
 
 "She says, ain t you fraid here? " 
 
 "Oh ! no," I answered. 
 
 "But alone?" 
 
 "No." 
 
 "You not fraid to stay here till your man come 
 home?" 
 
 I shook my head, smiling. The girl interpreted. 
 Then they both looked at the baby. With a little 
 grunt the old woman got up, gathering her shawl about 
 her. The other followed her example. 
 
 "She say, then we go home. We think maybe you 
 
84 Teepee Neighbors 
 
 fraid. Her man, he hungry; there ain t much to eat 
 over there." 
 
 There was no doubt but what they went with re 
 lief, you could see it in their stride, in the set of their 
 shoulders. They covered their heads with their shawls 
 and, one behind the other, they drifted silently away 
 into the night. 
 
 "Goodbye," I called after them. 
 
 And they cried back something to me out of the 
 dark. 
 
 I closed the door to sink down beside the carriage. 
 
 Then again, forlorn and sweet, from out of the 
 night, sounded the cry of the owl. 
 
A BOY S MOTHER 
 
 Tap, tap, tap. 
 
 I sat up in bed with a jerk. "Wake up !" I whis 
 pered, "Wake up! There s somebody knocking/ I 
 shook my husband a little by the arm. 
 
 He opened a sleepy eye. "Can t be," he grumbled. 
 "Why, it s the middle of the night. I never heard of 
 anybody coming into the ranch at this hour." 
 
 Then fumblingly, tentatively, it sounded again: tap. 
 tap, tap; and ended faintly, as with an apology. 
 
 "By Jove!" he cried, and jumped out of bed. 
 
 Through the high, scantily-curtained window the 
 moonlight poured in a flood, half revealing the familiar 
 objects of the room, a little distorted and meta 
 morphosed. 
 
 He opened the door a crack. No one lived near 
 our place except the Indians, so we seldom locked up 
 of a night. Then followed a sound of talking, A 
 voice as timid, as deprecating, as had been the knocking 
 answered my husband. 
 
 He turned back into the room. "It s one of the boys 
 from the Government school," he said. "He lives way 
 off down the river and they re letting him go home 
 early, though the regular vacation doesn t begin till the 
 end of the week. He says he stopped at the hot springs 
 for a swim and his horse got away. He doesn t know 
 
 85 
 
86 Teepee Neighbors 
 
 very well any of the Indians who live up this way and 
 asks if we will let him come in here and sleep for the 
 rest of the night." 
 
 "Why, of course. Which boy is it?" 
 
 "It s that youngest son of Island Woman s, Herman 
 Island, I think they call him. He s just a little shaver, 
 twelve or so, I should say. Is the spare-room bed 
 made up?" 
 
 I answered that it was. He got into some clothes 
 and disappeared to conduct our nocturnal guest to it. 
 
 "That was sensible of him to come here, wasn t it?" 
 I said when he had returned. "I never knew one of 
 the boys to do that before, yet I m sure I always try 
 to make them feel at home when they drop in." 
 
 "He seems a plausible kid, but shy, I couldn t get 
 much out of him." 
 
 We settled down to sleep. But I was struggling 
 with a thought. Though it seemed an unworthy one 
 it very much wanted to escape in words. 
 
 "Are you asleep? Do you do you suppose he 
 could be running away?" 
 
 He turned over suddenly. "I thought of that," he 
 said. 
 
 "They ve had so much trouble with the big boys 
 lately that way. I hate to suspect him, but " 
 
 "Oh! well; go to sleep. We can call up the super 
 intendent in the morning." 
 
Teepee Neighbors 87 
 
 "The boy may be gone by the morning. But still we 
 couldn t get the school in the night, there d be no one 
 in the office to answer the phone. If he stays for 
 breakfast and hangs around and just acts natural I 
 shall conclude that everything is all right." 
 
 Oh ! I guess it is. Go to sleep before the baby 
 wakes up again." 
 
 Morning disclosed our boy sitting on the flat rock 
 that served us for a step at our living-room door. He 
 was imperturbable, and unhurried. "Well, Herman ; 
 aren t you sleepy after being up so late?" 
 
 He lifted his eyes to me. Soft eyes, they were, for 
 an Indian s, a little wistful, inclined to be pathetic, 
 very shy, almost furtive. 
 
 "No, ma am." He turned from me with his little 
 drooping smile. 
 
 "Weren t you afraid of ghosts, running around in 
 the night that way?" 
 
 He shot me a shy glance. "A little bit." 
 
 "Well, they didn t get you. I don t believe they 
 bother good boys. Are they letting you go home early 
 because you live so far away? How far is it to your 
 place? Forty miles? Fifty?" 
 
 "It s a long way. I don t know how far. My mother, 
 she sick. I just hear it yesterday." 
 
 "Oh ! I m so sorry. But where do you think your 
 horse can be?" 
 
88 Teepee Neighbors 
 
 He pointed to the low hills opposite. "I guess he 
 joined some -bunch over there. I find him easy, I 
 think. I know his tracks." 
 
 Inside the house the baby whimpered a little. I 
 went to her. "Herman, would you mind holding her 
 for me while I get breakfast? I can do it so much 
 quicker if you will." 
 
 He settled himself more solidly upon the door step, 
 lifted a face lit by a young, sweet smile. "I hold her," 
 he said. Then, shyly, "My mother, she got a baby, a 
 boy though." 
 
 I brought the baby, tied up Indian way in her little 
 blanket, and handed her down to him. He stretched 
 up his short, boy s arms to receive her. The clothes 
 he wore were of the regulation government variety; 
 iron grey, patched, not too clean, misfits. The coat 
 and shoes were two sizes too big for him. 
 
 While I cooked, and set my table, I could hear great 
 conversation in progress on the door-step, gurgles and 
 little squeals, interspersed with soft encouraging words. 
 No one seemed to be in a hurry for the meal. 
 
 Breakfast over, I supplied Herman with a stereo 
 scope and pictures while I took the baby into the 
 kitchen to give her her bath. Presently the boy fol 
 lowed me ; the splashing and laughing allured him. He 
 crept in at the door, a little drooping, altogether shy, 
 
Teepee Neighbors 89 
 
 almost furtive. He had no eyes for me. His sweet 
 winning smile was turned toward the baby. 
 
 "How big is your mother s baby?" 
 
 He smiled reminiscently. " Bout like this one, I 
 guess." He looked up at me suddenly. "He got teeth," 
 he said, "two." 
 
 We laughed together over the teeth. I wouldn t for 
 the world have called up the superintendent. 
 
 After a while: "Well, I guess now I go look for 
 my horse." He got his hat, sidled toward the door. 
 At the last moment he smiled back at me shyly. 
 "Thank you," he said. 
 
 "Oh! You re welcome. It was very sensible and 
 nice of you to have come. I do want you boys to feel 
 that we are always your friends." I was waxing sen 
 timental. "Goodbye, and be sure you stop again." 
 
 I watched him, in his ungainly clothes, trudging 
 toward the lower gate. 
 
 "I wonder ..." I said, "I wonder . . ." The baby 
 had fallen asleep on my lap. "That s not at all the 
 direction he said the horse was in." 
 
 The next time I saw the superintendent was at the 
 end of the short vacation. What he said to me caused 
 me to cease wondering suddenly. I began to tell him 
 the story of our nocturnal visitor. Half way through 
 he wheeled about on me: "Why on earth didn t you 
 call me up?" 
 
90 Teepee Neighbors 
 
 I looked at him blankly. Could the thing that he 
 implied be true? I remembered those wistful eyes, 
 that sweet, sweet smile, the short, boy s arms held up 
 for my baby. I remembered how little and mis formed 
 he had looked trudging toward the wrong gate. "It 
 was Herman Island," I ventured. 
 
 "Herman Island! Oh, I know! Pulled out that 
 night somehow. Must have gone by the window, for 
 the dormitory door was locked. Hadn t any more 
 horse than a jack-rabbit. And the nerve of him to 
 stop at your place ! Knew well enough no one would 
 look for him there. The other children, the whole two 
 hundred of them, are back from their holiday, but we 
 can t find hide nor hair of him." 
 
 "He said his mother was sick." 
 
 "Likely enough. She s a frail sort of woman. 
 Sometimes when he runs away she brings him back. 
 Oh yes! he s a chronic case; gone half the time. This 
 trip we ve had half the Indian police out after him, 
 but nobody seems able to locate him. Shucks ! I wish 
 you d called me up." 
 
 "I I really couldn t have anyway, he was so sweet 
 with the baby." 
 
 He withered me with a look. "You d have saved 
 him a licking, for I tell you I won t do a thing to that 
 boy when I get him back, not a blame thing" 
 
Teepee Neighbors 91 
 
 "Such a little boy, and such glib lying. My good 
 ness !" said I. 
 
 "That s why we ve got him here at the government 
 school. They couldn t hold him at all at the Mission. 
 We don t seem to be doing much better." 
 
 A few weeks after that I drove in to the school 
 grounds. The boys, drawn up in a long row graduated 
 according to size, were standing to salute the flag, 
 which at sunset was being hauled down. I stopped 
 to watch them. At the end of the row, quite out of 
 his proper place, stood a boy of twelve or so, his coat 
 and boots several sizes too big for him. The line 
 wavered and broke, the boys scattering in all direc 
 tions ; only the misfit boy walked alone. He halted 
 strangely in his gait. 
 
 The superintendent came out to me. "How d ye do?" 
 he said. He pointed to the slow-moving boy. "See 
 Herman? Yes, we got him back. It took a couple of 
 policemen and the agent in person to do it. I licked 
 him till well, I licked him good and proper, I can 
 tell you. But do you know we caught him that very 
 night sliding down the rain pipe. Oh ! He beats any 
 thing I ever saw. That s why I put the ball and chain 
 on him." 
 
 "The what?" 
 
 "Ball and chain. I suppose that if an inspector 
 caught him with it he d give me something to remem- 
 
92 Teepee Neighbors 
 
 her, but by Jove ! the agent s always after me for not 
 holding that boy. What am I to do? I wish some of 
 those cocky inspectors would stay awhile and tackle 
 one or two of our chronic cases. They just come and 
 take a look and slip away to some other field. We 
 have to do all the devising." He turned toward the 
 retreating figure of the boy. "Hey there, Herman! 
 You hurry up and get those chores done, d ye hear?" 
 
 The slow-moving boy lifted patient unsmiling eyes, 
 dropped them again, toiled haltingly on his way. 
 
 "How long shall you keep it on him?" 
 
 "Oh ! till I think he s reformed. But you can t tell. 
 He s a sure slick one." 
 
 The next time I went to the school I asked for the 
 boy. The superintendent shot me a side-long look. 
 "Gone," he said. "That ball and chain business got 
 on my nerves " 
 
 "It s been on mine !" I interrupted. 
 
 " so I took it off. I declare I hadn t got it stowed 
 away yet before he was gone." He looked at me whim 
 sically. Then we both laughed. 
 
 "What next?" asked I. 
 
 He shook his head. "A long vacation for Herman, I 
 guess. I think I m at the end of my resources." 
 
 It was three days later that wishing to send a tele 
 gram I drove to the school to use their phone, which 
 connected directly with the telegraph office in the sta- 
 
Teepee Neighbors 93 
 
 tion at Rawdon. Our phone at the ranch was only 
 a local one. There was a sound of talking in the office. 
 I went in tentatively. 
 
 The superintendent sat behind his desk. In front 
 of him on a straight-backed chair was an Indian wom 
 an. She was thin to emaciation. Her lean, lined face 
 wore an harassed expression. Her bony hands held 
 together the folds of her blanket which supported the 
 weight of a sleeping child. Her moccasins, made 
 obviously of the denim of old overalls, were ragged; 
 her hair straggled untidily. Backed against the wall, 
 hat in hand, head drooped, stood the listless figure of 
 a boy. The superintendent was speaking. I paused, 
 listening. With a ruler he tapped his desk, emphasizing 
 his words. 
 
 "No more lickings, no more lock-up, no more ball 
 and chain. But, understand, the police of this res 
 ervation have something better to do than to hunt up 
 the same runaway all the time. Herman, I shall keep 
 you in school and just as free as the other boys. But 
 this I say to you, the next time you go, I shall send 
 directly down to your camp, and your mother," he 
 made a little gesture toward her, "shall go straight to 
 the lock-up. Your mother, you understand, not you . . " 
 
 The boy jerked suddenly, lifted a startled face. 
 
 "Interpret," commanded the superintendent inex 
 orably. "Tell her just what I said." 
 
94 Teepee Neighbors 
 
 Without looking at her the boy spoke ; his voice, pro 
 nouncing the guttural Indian words, was low and halt 
 ing. 
 
 The woman made a faint inarticulate cry, looked 
 quickly from the boy to the superintendent, and then 
 back to the boy. She spoke to him suddenly in art 
 eager voice. He shook his head. 
 
 "Does she understand?" 
 
 "Yes, sir !" 
 
 "Well, you may go. That s all." 
 
 The boy made a sign to his mother and turning sidled 
 out of the office. The woman gathered her shawl more 
 securely about the baby and followed him. 
 
 When I finished my telephoning and went out, I saw 
 them sitting side by side and close together on the edge 
 of the board walk. As I passed them she got up. 
 Stooping, she lifted the sleeping baby to her back and 
 balanced it there, its little face against her neck, while, 
 with hands extended behind her back, she drew her 
 shawl up over it and gathered the folds tight across 
 her breast. She bent down still further and kissed the 
 bowed face of the boy. Then, rising, she walked away 
 from him, striding a little with her long, flat-footed 
 steps. He sat where she had left him upon the edge 
 of the walk, a huddled bunch of misfitting clothes. 
 
 "And did he ever run away again?" It was the next 
 
Teepee Neighbors 95 
 
 year at the school Christmas tree that I asked the ques 
 tion. 
 
 The superintendent beamed upon me. "Never!" he 
 said. 
 
 Santa Claus, of orthodox shape and costume, stand 
 ing on a chair, reached down from the tree a big bundle 
 and handed it to the superintendent, who turned it over 
 to read the name on it. Holding it high, and with a 
 smile on his not unkindly face, he called out over the 
 hubbub of murmuring children and crackling peanut 
 shells : "Come up and get your stuff, Herman Island." 
 
THE DEAD BIRD 
 
 I STOPPED the horses before the Government school, 
 for I always found it hard when the children were out 
 in front playing, to drive callously by. The girls for 
 I was on their side in their blue "hickory" aprons 
 sprawled or sauntered over the short alfalfa lawn, or 
 from the edge of the terrace or the board walk dangled 
 feet shod with clumsy "Government" boots. Although 
 there were many of them over a hundred I should 
 say they made but little noise. Like fawns slipping 
 amongst tree trunks, they frolicked, something a trifle 
 furtive always in the eyes of the boldest of them, a 
 shred of silence forever enfolding them. They walked, 
 even the very youngest ones, with shoulders and heads 
 a little bent, as though constantly they supported in 
 visible shawls. Their steps were long and a little 
 shambling, as are the steps of those who go habitually 
 without heels, and who are never forced to hurry. 
 Their aspect implied a sense of endurance, of reserve, 
 of patience invulnerable. They walked even the big 
 girls who spoke fluent English and had put in their ten 
 or twelve years at the school but most of all they 
 played, as do children in a familiar house made sudden 
 ly strange by mourning. They frolicked indeed, but 
 with just a touch of inadvertence, as do those who take 
 what amusement they can find rather than what they 
 would have chosen. In fine, they seemed to be what 
 
Teepee Neighbors 97 
 
 they were, the children of an ancient, enduring over 
 powered people. One lifted one s eyes from them to 
 the chain of mountains walling the western sky and felt 
 that some way those mountains and these children, 
 despite the Government blue, were of kindred stock; 
 that the roots of the one reached down, groping, to 
 ward the roots of the other; and that only one s self 
 in the store-bought buggy and the clothes that sug 
 gested remote civilization was an alien. One was 
 overpowered suddenly and strangely by the sense of 
 being an outsider in one s own land. 
 
 Then there came from some place out of sight around 
 the corner of a building, a drawling sound of singing. 
 An old familiar hymn though one had to force one s 
 self to recognize it rose and fell in sing-song, toneless 
 voices ; garbled words, uncertain rhythm. 
 
 To the ring of shy and smiling faces vaguely en 
 circling me I turned. 
 
 "Why, what s that?" 
 
 The smiles deepened, the eyes were upon me atten 
 tively. But it is difficult to speak out before many 
 listeners. No one seemed able to overcome her diffi 
 dence. 
 
 Then a little one Bridget, she was inappropriately 
 called ceased suddenly from scrutinizing the worn 
 boot on her twisting foot. She slipped down from off 
 the terrace wall. Like a leaf impelled by a gentle 
 
98 Teepee Neighbors 
 
 current she drifted to my side. She lifted one foot 
 up on the step of the buggy, raised herself till her eyes 
 were almost on a level with mine, found a hold for her 
 other foot, slipped a small chapped hand into mine. 
 
 "Well, Bridget," said I, encouragingly. 
 
 The little brown face was tilted downward, away 
 from too close scrutiny. The sound of her voice, deep 
 for a child s, and very soft, crept to me as might have 
 come, trembling yet allured, some half -wild thing that 
 one had fondled. 
 
 "It s a funeral. Them girls" her child s lips, 
 pouted, indicated in the Indian way the direction 
 whence came the singing "they bury a bird. They 
 find little bird out here, dead, all draw up ; his hands, 
 this way." The small chapped brown hands twisted 
 and distended themselves to imitate the piti fulness of 
 the dead claws. "Bessie, she take her doll rags, she 
 wrap him all up. Then Miss Jones, she give them box. 
 They put box in that hole. Now they have funeral." 
 
 All the furtive smiling eyes of the circle were upon 
 me, and from me strayed to the side of the building 
 where the group of little, blue-clad figures enjoyed the 
 expression of their mock grief. 
 
 In a corner of the steps, her back against the railing, 
 her eyes upon her lap, so little that she was more than 
 half obscured by the smiling, "hickory" dressed circle, 
 
Teepee Neighbors 99 
 
 sat a small thin girl; a limp bit of self-absorbed child 
 hood. 
 
 "Who s that little thing?" 
 
 A big girl shambled over to her and gathered her 
 up in her arms. 
 
 "This is a new little girl. Come and shake hands, 
 Nancy, will you? This is High Eagle s wife s little 
 girl. I guess you know her mother. 
 
 "But what ails her?" 
 
 The big girl looked down at the bent black head 
 with its tight, ribbon-tied braid, at the little figure 
 pressing against her side. 
 
 "She s homesick, I guess," she said. 
 
 She brought the child to me. Lifting one apathetic 
 hand in hers she extended it to me. I shook it gently. 
 The child s big brooding eyes, strangely sombre in 
 their depths, were for just an instant of awakened 
 interest raised to me. Then they drooped back to a 
 wan scrutiny of the ground. 
 
 "Did you ever see such big eyes ! And she s gettin 
 so thin " The little bird claw of a hand still rested 
 inertly in mine "I guess maybe they ll let her stay 
 home after Christmas. She s not six yet and she 
 wouldn t be here only her mother s so poor. The agent 
 thought it was best to put her in the school. All the 
 people say her folks don t never have enough to eat." 
 
ioo Teepee Neighbors 
 
 "But you said she was fat when she came and she s 
 thin enough now." 
 
 "Yes," said the big girl, and she sighed a little, feel 
 ing suddenly, I suppose, though vaguely, the burden 
 that life had laid upon her race. Or was it only, that 
 she was remembering the two or three little flames that 
 each year in September came brightly to the school, 
 but before the year s close were snuffed out? Yet 
 none of us who cared for them was ever able to re 
 mark the blowing of any wind. 
 
 The big girl set the child down. The little drooping 
 figure walked slowly back to her place by the railing 
 of the steps. 
 
 "Does she cough?" 
 
 "No, ma am; but they give her cod liver oil. She 
 don t like it. I seen her cry last night when she had to 
 swallow it The cook she fixes eggs for her." 
 
 After that I acquired the habit of seeking her out 
 with my eyes at least, every time I came to the school ; 
 she was much too shy to allow of more direct ap 
 proach. She was almost always to be found in some 
 sunny, sheltered corner, her little head bent, her eyes 
 upon her lap. I think I never once saw her playing. 
 
 Then I missed her; even before Christmas it was, 
 when she was to have gone home to her mother. 
 
 I stopped the buggy by the terrace wall. The blue- 
 clad figures were stirring about at their quiet play. 
 
Teepee Neighbors 101 
 
 Bridget came and climbing up to the step of the buggy 
 thrust her little chapped hand into mine. 
 
 "Where s the little homesick one?" I asked. 
 
 She looked up at me for an instant with her deprecat 
 ing smile. Then her face went suddenly grave. 
 
 "Nancy?" 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 "She s dead." 
 
 "Oh!" I cried, "but she never coughed" 
 
 "No, she never cough. She just die. Two days 
 ago her mother come for her. She die in the wagon, 
 they say. I guess you hear them cryin when they drive 
 down past your place." 
 
 And the little chapped hand still in mine, I looked 
 out across the irrigated, parti-colored valley to the 
 mountains walling the western sky. 
 
A VENTURE IN HARD HEARTS 
 ALWAYS FROM the time I left the reservation with him 
 except once which time is the occasion of the telling 
 of this present anecdote, he moved in a sort of bliss 
 ful exaltation. In his timid, repressed way he was as 
 much beside himself as is a new lover or an artist in 
 the throes of creation. A train even he had never 
 seen until the one which was to take us to Denver 
 thundered dustily up to our little Sub-Agency station, 
 and he, crowding behind me, clung with frantic hands 
 to my skirts. But when I had hoisted him up the high 
 step and we had got fairly seated and were off, his 
 delight knew no bounds; his dark eyes twinkled and 
 gleamed, his young mouth was quite awry with the 
 effort to repress the joy that was proving itself ir 
 repressible. He snuggled beside me in the seat, peer 
 ing out of the smoke-grimed window, bracing himself 
 involuntarily when there seemed to be sudden dips and 
 rises in the road ahead of us, and then laughing softly 
 at himself as the train sped level and serene across 
 them. 
 
 "Who s that?" he would whisper as some new 
 person whose appearance caught his eye, came in at the 
 door. And he was astonished, even incredulous, when 
 I failed to be able to answer so simple a question. At 
 home on the reservation we of course knew everyone, 
 at least by name and appearance. 
 
 102 
 
Teepee Neighbors 103 
 
 Before he had left the Government boarding school 
 the little boys matron who supplied him from her 
 store with a new tam-o -shanter for his travels, had 
 carefully directed him as to the wearing of it. "This 
 bow," she had explained, "must always go on the left 
 side." At home his old and much-punctured sombrero 
 with its beaded hat band went on any way. But now, 
 no matter what our hurry at twenty-minute eating 
 stations, nor with what breathless haste we followed 
 the rush of passengers toward a panting train, we must 
 needs pause till we had found the bow and were quite 
 sure which side was the left one and then got the two 
 in conventional conjunction. 
 
 To reach Denver the exigencies of train connections 
 required us to stay over night in Cheyenne. We took 
 a room in a nearby hotel. Going to the station in the 
 morning my little boy looked back over his shoulder 
 with glowing eyes. 
 
 "My!" he cried. "Wasn t that strange man good to 
 let us sleep in his house?" 
 
 Once in the train he fingered our tickets, eyeing them 
 carefully. 
 
 "How much did you have to pay for them?" he 
 asked. 
 
 I told him; the amount as I remember it was well 
 over ten dollars. 
 
 He looked at me with eyes of startled unbelief. 
 
IO4 Teepee Neighbors 
 
 "Why, you shouldn t have given all that money for 
 them! They are only pieces of paper/ 
 
 He was indeed very much impressed by the fact that 
 everything we did required money; our food, trolleys, 
 busses, everything. At home we seldom handled cash. 
 The trader and the butcher sent in monthly bills and 
 we paid by cheque, if we were able, or didn t pay, in 
 the reverse case, and went on buying "on jaw bone," 
 as the saying goes in Wyoming. Actual money was 
 seldom visible. 
 
 But the arrival in Denver was I think the happiest 
 moment of all. Night had already fallen. The streets 
 were garish with lights, grouped, single or in designs, 
 marvellous set-pieces that moved by magic power. 
 There was a great clattering and crying of voices about 
 the station, a pleasant welcoming turmoil. Different, 
 indeed, all this to the arrival of trains at our little frame 
 stations set solitary in the midst of the prairie night, 
 their silence scarcely broken by the slipping away of 
 the train, or their darkness cloven by the station- 
 master s single lantern. 
 
 The child almost forgot his timidity, so great was his 
 elation. 
 
 "Is it fairyland?" he whispered against my elbow. 
 And the bus that bore us jolting to the hotel he felt 
 sure must be a second Cinderella s coach. He even 
 spoke in quite a brave, loud voice so that our fellow- 
 
Teepee Neighbors 105 
 
 passengers, the usual blase travelling men, became 
 suddenly aware of him and eyed him from the height 
 of their lofty indifference, taking note of his ill-fitting 
 Government clothes as well as of his eager eyes set in 
 the smooth childish face. 
 
 One of them even asked : "This the little Injun s 
 first trip?" 
 
 And while I assented the boy, becoming suddenly 
 self-conscious again, shrank back under the shadow 
 of my arm. 
 
 At the hotel he was a little disturbed by the elevator ; 
 the alligator, he called it. And, suddenly recollecting : 
 "Shall we have to pay to ride in that too?" he 
 demanded. 
 
 On his account I had brought him to a doctor for 
 special treatment our stay bade fair to become rather 
 unexpectedly extended, too much so at any rate to 
 allow of our remaining in the hotel. So the child and 
 I went forth to seek lodgings. Our search proved to 
 be a weary one. We progressed languidly from door 
 to door, from address to address. 
 
 At last a certain house opened to us, disclosing in 
 its doorway a kindly- faced woman. 
 
 "You have a sign out advertising rooms to rent." 
 
 "Yes, ma am. But the lady of the house ain t in 
 just now." 
 
io6 Teepee Neighbors 
 
 "Do you happen to know anything about the 
 rooms ?" 
 
 "Yes ma am but, excuse me, is that your little 
 boy?" 
 
 I said "yes," and as I spoke my eyes went out to 
 meet those of the little boy who was not mine. 
 
 "Well, it ain t no use for you to ask about the rooms 
 then. I m real sorry about it but she won t take no 
 children in here." 
 
 So we turned and went together down the steps. I 
 confess that I felt dashed. I had lived so long 
 amongst a people to whom a child represented the 
 chief blessing of life that I had forgotten the "white," 
 more civilized, attitude toward them. 
 
 Beside me the lad walked, his head lowered, shrunk 
 into himself, even withdrawn somewhat from my pro 
 tecting shadow. It was as though the better to bear 
 this new-found burden he walked alone. 
 
 We gave up our search for that day and boarded a 
 car for home. As for myself other thoughts soon 
 drove that of our rebuff from my mind. This seemed 
 to be true also of the child. Beside us in the car sat 
 a party of Swedes talking volubly in their own tongue. 
 The boy listened to them, all attention. He eyed them 
 up and down carefully and appraisingly, his dark gaze 
 especially on their blonde heads, their pale eyes. Then 
 he turned his eager little face up to mine. 
 
Teepee Neighbors 107 
 
 "They don t look like Indians but what kind of 
 Indian are they talking?" 
 
 It never, I suppose, had occurred to him that the 
 whites could have more than the one language. And 
 even as I explained, laughing at him the while, I re 
 membered that I had met many of the dominant race 
 who firmly believed that all tribes of Indians use a 
 common speech. 
 
 That night some friends came in to see us and we 
 recounted to them our adventures of the day. I did 
 the talking, for when several persons were present he 
 became far too timid to undertake such an act of 
 temerity. He joined in the conversation only with shy, 
 acquiescing smiles or a "Yes, ma am," whispered 
 tremulously and under great pressure. 
 
 I spoke finally of our last enquiry and the subsequent 
 rebuff. Then I felt him straighten himself beside me ; 
 his eyes grew hard, his mouth stiffened. 
 
 "What do you think she said to us?" he cried out, 
 his timidity lost at last in the greater indignation. 
 "She told us they didn t like children! They didn t 
 want them ! They didn t want me !" 
 
 My friends, who of course did not realize the Indian 
 point of view, could not feel all the enormity of the 
 statement. They murmured polite sympathy. 
 
 The child searching them with those eyes grown 
 
io8 Teepee Neighbors 
 
 suddenly hard, sighed at length, drooped a little, nestled 
 against my arm. 
 
 Subsequently, from his cot drawn close to mine, and 
 several times repeated during the night, I heard a long 
 trembling sigh. Even in his dreams, it seemed, the 
 disturbing discovery was pursuing him that life was 
 turning out to be not just what he had always thought 
 it. He was indeed beginning the toil of the long in 
 evitable years of unlearning. 
 
THE THROWN-AWAY BABY 
 
 SAY that he is getting better, and some that 
 he is worse, and one old woman even told me that he 
 was dead. She talked with signs, but I am sure that is 
 what she meant." 
 
 "Who is dead?" asked the girl. She hesitated before 
 she spoke, dropped her eyes, holding them resolutely 
 down. She was obviously evading my implied question. 
 
 "You know very well, my dear; the Gros Ventre 
 boy who was shot in that drinking scrape somewhere 
 around Lost Wells. The Agency doctor saw him 
 and reported that the bullet was still in him. But the 
 medicine woman claims that she had really got it out." 
 
 "She did take it out." The black eyes challenged 
 me steadily. "My father he seen her do it." 
 
 "But really the doctor ought to know." 
 
 "It was all nasty from the wound." 
 
 "She played a trick on you. Don t talk to me! 
 Anybody who claims to be able to change rocks into 
 potatoes . . . And didn t she tell the Indians plainly at 
 the Fourth of July celebration that she was in league 
 with the devil and that it was his power his medicine 
 that helped her?" 
 
 "But she probe for it. There were a lot of em there. 
 They seen it, all of em." 
 
 "Probed with what?" 
 
 109 
 
no Teepee Neighbors 
 
 "A willow stick." 
 
 "Oh! Oh!" 
 
 "At first he get better, but after a while, worse." 
 
 "After the probing. Naturally!" 
 
 The girl relaxed her vigilant expression ; she laughed, 
 even. "I guess so." 
 
 "And is he really dead?" 
 
 She nodded. "That s what they say. The whole 
 camp s moved." 
 
 "The way they move when any one dies?" 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 "That old devil! She has just as good as killed 
 him." 
 
 "Oh, my!" 
 
 "With a willow stick. Ah! the poor young man!" 
 
 The girl put up her hands and smoothed her sleek 
 hair from its straight, red-painted parting to the tips 
 of her buckskin-tied braids. 
 
 "If her medicine is so strong why didn t she cure 
 him?" 
 
 She peered up at me from under her hands. "The 
 Indians say everybody she takes care of dies." 
 
 "And yet they always have her !" 
 
 She dropped her eyes, then shot me a look from 
 under her lids. "I guess they re afraid of her," she 
 said. 
 
 "And well they may be if those are her methods." 
 
Teepee Neighbors in 
 
 She gave a quick little sigh. "You know her girl?" 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 "She just got married." 
 
 "I know." 
 
 "That s a white girl." 
 
 "So they say. She always paints so much you can t 
 tell it though." 
 
 "And she always say she Rapahoe. She gets 
 awful mad if you call her white." 
 
 "She is white though, isn t she?" 
 
 "Oh yes! But even that old woman won t let on. 
 She always tellin that girl, A box, that s your 
 mother/ " 
 
 "And that old woman brought her up from a little 
 brand-new baby?" 
 
 "Just born." 
 
 "Do tell me the story." 
 
 "That happened eighteen years ago, I guess. She 
 little bit younger than me. The Indians they all camp 
 round the Agency that time. It s winter, and the creek 
 is froze so they have to go for water up above that 
 bend where there s a hole in the ice. Every little while 
 they passin up and down that lane behind the Agency 
 houses. Then one day there s a big new box out there 
 close to the fence. Just after they first see it there 
 my mother-in-law she walkin up along the road to get 
 water." 
 
112 Teepee Neighbors 
 
 "Which woman is that?" 
 
 "Don t you know? She s the one with them yellow 
 eyes. That s what they calls her in the camps, Yellow 
 Eyes. She s got a real name beside that though. Many 
 Horses/ I guess you d call it." 
 
 "I know her, I think." 
 
 "Well, when she got to that box she stop and look 
 down then she pretty near drop her bucket. First 
 she jump back, then she bend down again. She lean 
 way over and she look, and look. Then she turn 
 round quick she don t go on for the water she just 
 run back to camp. My grandmother and some of 
 them women they see how funny she actin and they 
 kind o go out to meet her. What s the matter? What s 
 the matter, Yellow Eyes? they say. Then she begin 
 to cry, and she point to that box, and she say, It s in 
 that box. It s in that box. And all them women cry 
 out, What, Yellow Eyes? What? Somethin pale, 
 she say, Way down in a corner. Then she look up 
 at them all. It s a white baby, that s what it is. And 
 it ain t even got rags round it. She have to stop to 
 wipe her tears. But is it live? Yes. I seen it movin 
 and I hear it making a little noise? And the women 
 all cry, Ah-ee ! Ah-ee ! What shall we do ? A new 
 born baby and thrown away ! A white baby ! Then 
 they all begin rememberin . Must belong to that girl 
 livin in the second house. We all see she going to 
 
Teepee Neighbors . 113 
 
 born a baby and she always wrappin herself up and 
 hidin We never noticed no man round. Her old 
 mother she looked mean. Guess it was the mother 
 throw that baby away. Then they all say, Ah-ee! 
 Ah-ee! some more, and them that s cryin they wipe 
 their eyes with their hands. 
 
 "Then that old medicine woman come only then 
 she wasn t old nor a medicine woman and she say, 
 Why, what s the matter? Everybody begin talkin at 
 once, and pointin to that box. She laugh, and she put 
 her hands over her ears cause she can t hear them, all 
 talkin so loud and fast. But she see the box, and she 
 think if she go over and look in it then maybe she 
 understand. She walk that way takin long steps, and 
 all the women followin long after her. She stoop 
 down too then she jump back and she cry out. Next 
 she dive down again and she pick up that little naked, 
 thrown-away baby in her hands, and she hold it right 
 up in the sunlight, and she turn it all round and look 
 at it every way. Then she raise her eyes to them 
 Agency houses, and her face get mighty mean; she 
 turn toward them other women, and last she look back 
 at the baby. A little girl/ she say. Then she speak to 
 her. Well, baby/ she say, this box I guess must be 
 your mother, only she don t seem to take care of you. 
 And these women/ she say, and she look them all up 
 and down, hard-like, they let you lie shiverin and 
 
ii4 Teepee Neighbors 
 
 freezin here while they cryin like a pack o* coyotes. 
 I guess I be a better mother to you than that fool box 
 or them fool coyotes/ She put that baby inside her 
 shawl, against her breast, and real slow and smilin she 
 walk past them women, never turnin her eyes, and 
 right back to the camp." 
 
 "And what did she do?" I cried. "Where did she 
 get milk for it? She had no cow, I suppose, and no 
 money with which to buy canned milk at the store." 
 Out of the corners of her eyes the girl smiled at me 
 cannily. "Oh ! She just go where there bese mothers 
 with babies," she said. 
 "And it lived !" 
 "It s nearly as old as me." 
 
 "I heard that long afterwards the real mother tried 
 to get it back." 
 
 "Yes, she come to that old woman s tent, she even 
 bring an interpreter with her. When that medicine 
 woman see that white mother comin she lift up the 
 back of the tent, and she push that little girl under it. 
 Go down to the willows/ she say, and hide. There s 
 some bad folks comin . Maybe they wantin to steal 
 you. Don t you come back till I call you/ 
 
 "Well, that white woman come in and the first thing 
 she do she look all round that tent, quick. The med 
 icine woman she pull her shawl up over her head so 
 
Teepee Neighbors 115 
 
 her face way back in the shadow and she never take 
 her eyes off that mother. 
 
 "Then that woman she make herself a little bit stiff, 
 and she say right out, They tell me you got my daugh 
 ter. That old woman she like the straight way that 
 woman speak, but you see she love that thrown-away 
 baby so much she awful fraid; she just shakin inside. 
 I got a daughter myself. But I not know you got one/ 
 The mother she look at her hard, hard. No/ that med 
 icine woman say. Seven years ago I find my daughter, 
 a little thrown-away baby, in a box. She only new 
 born, but I don t see no other mother for her but just 
 that box. Somebody got a bad heart/ she say, can 
 throw away little live babies, just like blind puppies, or 
 trash/ That mother she put her hands up and she 
 cover her face. That s a white baby/ the foster-mother 
 say, but Indian hands washed her, Indian womans sew 
 for her, Indian mothers milk make her fat, Indian love 
 keep her live. That little girl got white skin, but her 
 heart that s Indian heart/ Then she stop cause that 
 mother kind o groan, then take her hands down from 
 her face and stare and stare at that Indian woman. 
 That woman stare at her. Afterwhile that mother she 
 turn round and she put out her hand and begin feelin 
 for that door-flap, same as if she be blind. Once like 
 she going to speak she look back over her shoulder; 
 then that old woman see that she cryinV 
 
THE CAPTURE OF EDMUND 
 GOES-IN-LODGE 
 
 THEY RANGED themselves in an awkward, bashful row, 
 three half -grown boys, their hats in their fumbling 
 fingers. Being Indian boys they stood in silence, words 
 struggling with their shyness for utterance. The dis 
 ciplinarian, his pen still in his hand, half turned in his 
 chair and looked at them over his glasses. "Well?" he 
 said. 
 
 The middle boy, the one who showed in his skin and 
 his hair an admixture of "white" blood, spoke : "We 
 Rapahoe boys are shamed of Edmund Goes-in- 
 Lodge." His voice was low and deep, the intonation 
 peculiar. 
 
 "And well you may be!" cried the disciplinarian 
 cordially. "I m ashamed of h im myself." 
 
 He waited for them to speak again, but they stood 
 mute. "Well?" he interrogated again. 
 
 "Mr. Knight, us boys, we wanted to ask you if you d 
 let us be absent from Sunday School and dinner today. 
 We goin down there to his father s and we goin cap 
 ture him and bring him back. We got a fine plan, Mr. 
 Knight." 
 
 The disciplinarian laughed; he leaned back in his 
 chair and enjoyed the joke to the full. Then he laid 
 down his pen and laughed again. 
 
 116 
 
Teepee Neighbors 117 
 
 "Capture Edmund, the worst boy in the school 
 you three kids ! With all the Indian police after him 
 and his old warchief of a father doing all he can to get 
 him back, or claiming to, anyway. Heap crazy, every 
 one of you!" and he laughed again. 
 
 The boys grinned and in laughing forgot something 
 of their shyness. 
 
 "Honest, Mr. Knight, we can do it. We ve got a 
 fine plan, sure we have." 
 
 "Well, let s have the fine plan." 
 
 "We goin down to Goes-in-Lodge s this mornin on 
 our ponies. Me and Roy s goin to ride together, and 
 Chester s got his big black horse. We goin tell 
 Edmund s mother we runnin away too, then she tell 
 us where s Edmund. Then we ll tell him, Come on, 
 let s go up in them Bad Lands across the river and play 
 awhile/ We ll say, Don t bring no horse; you just 
 jump on that black one behind Chester. We ll have 
 a good, new raw-hide rope with us; Chester he s got 
 one. Well, out there we ll play awhile, have lots of 
 fun; all the time we ll be workin up the creek to the 
 next ford above Goes-in-Lodge s, the one at Black 
 Man s place, I guess you know it. Then when we get 
 near to that ford with the hills between us and his 
 father s place we ll begin to say We re gettin hungry/ 
 and Let s go back and get some dinner/ Then Chester, 
 he ll say to Edmund, You jump on my horse first. 
 
n8 Teepee Neighbors 
 
 You sit in the saddle and I ll ride behind you. Edmund, 
 he ll like ridin that way, he ll jump up quick. Then 
 Chester ll get up behind him. Me and Roy we ll have 
 our horse right close, but we won t get on him. We ll 
 be kind o foolin with the cinch. We ll have the rope 
 tied on our saddle, not on Chester s, and while I m 
 pullin up the cinch, Roy ll be untying the rope. Then 
 when Chester has got up behind Edmund he ll give a 
 kind of yell and he ll grab Edmund right around his 
 arms and he ll hold him tight. Chester, he ain t so tall 
 but he s awful strong, he can sure hold Edmund for a 
 while anyhow. Then me and Roy ll come quick with 
 the rope and we ll tie Edmund s feet together under 
 the horse and we ll wind the rope around him to hold 
 his arms down. Then Chester, he ll reach around him 
 and he ll take the lines. We ll get on our horse, Roy 
 and me, and we ll be up here by five o clock." 
 
 "By all the powers!" gasped the astonished dis 
 ciplinarian. "W^ho on earth ever thought all that up? 
 Why, it s wonderful!" 
 
 "All of us, I guess," said Jack, but he grinned with 
 suspicious glee. 
 
 "Boys," the man began, seriously now, "you never 
 could put it through. Edmund would see through you, 
 and he s mighty mean when he gets mad. I sure want 
 to give him the licking that s coming to him, but I don t 
 want him to get the chance to try the licking on you 
 
Teepee Neighbors 119 
 
 first. I know Chester is strong, but I doubt if he could 
 hold him. Besides that, if that old Sioux mother of 
 his ever got her hands on any of you, there wouldn t 
 be enough left to bring you home, and that s no sheep- 
 herder s dream! I remember the time, and so do you, 
 that she came here and pulled a knife on the agent 
 because her girl was sick in the school here and he 
 wouldn t let her take her home. You re three of my 
 best boys and I sure couldn t afford to lose you." 
 
 They all grinned this time. Again the spokesman 
 took up his plea. 
 
 "Mr. Knight, if we don t get that boy there can t no 
 police man never get him. His father and brothers 
 has got the best horses among the Rapahoes. His 
 mother watches for him and tells him when she sees 
 anybody comin down the road. Then he just goes out 
 into the Bad Lands and hides out. He s got a cache up 
 there. He could stay for weeks. Everybody s fraid 
 o him, he s so mean, and fraid o his mother, too. His 
 father he tells him to come back to school but his 
 mother, she helps him so he don t have to. Mr. Knight, 
 you know in the beginnin of the year the Agent told us 
 if we d stop the runnin away in this school we could all 
 keep our ponies in the school pasture and be free to go 
 home Saturday and Sunday afternoons. We sure 
 don t want him to take that privilege away from us on 
 account o Edmund. He said he would if the boys 
 
I2O Teepee Neighbors 
 
 began runnin away again, and Edmund he s the first 
 boy to go. We re shamed of him. You let us try to 
 bring him back. You ll see ; we can." 
 
 "By Jove," said the disciplinarian, "You re a lot of 
 good sports, every one of you. Go ahead and get him. 
 You re excused from everything till you show up 
 again. But mind," he said, and his eyes twinkled at 
 them, "don t you three run away on me !" 
 
 They were gone on the instant, down through the 
 basement to pick up saddle blankets, bridles and rope ; 
 their saddles were lying out in the pasture. Boys of 
 all sizes to eighteen years of age, were scattered about 
 shining their Sunday shoes, giving their hair an extra 
 wet dab, assisting little ones, new from the camps, in 
 the difficulties of donning Sunday clothes, urging the 
 wearing of the shirt inside the trousers, so contrary to 
 the preconceived Indian idea of the fitness of things. 
 Envious eyes, nudges, jokes, followed the exit of the 
 three conspirators. 
 
 They caught their horses and started in the manner 
 planned, riding at a good lope down the valley road. 
 The prairies were gay with flowers, growing between 
 the grey sage bushes ; gentian, lark-spur, Indian paint 
 brush ; a dozen different parti-colored varieties. Down 
 the dusty road the boys passed, free in the dazzling 
 sunshine. Their manner, their talk were quiet enough, 
 most of their energy, however, was centered in their 
 
Teepee Neighbors 121 
 
 eyes and ears, in that power of observation so marked 
 in their race. They swung lightly to the horses pace 
 with strong easy muscles. The feeling of loyalty to 
 the school, to their tribe s best welfare, was strong in 
 them as was also a boy s love of mischief. 
 
 A couple of miles below the school at Squaw Greek, 
 a little tributary of the river, where they pulled up to 
 let their horses drink, a contretemps befell them. 
 
 An old gnarled man on a pinto pony rode up to them 
 from the opposite direction and accosted them. He 
 spoke quietly enough in the deep Indian voice with its 
 almost monotonous intonation. 
 
 "Are you three running away?" 
 
 It was Jack sitting in front on the smaller pony, who 
 answered. By common consent the others waited for 
 him to take the lead. He humped himself a little as 
 he sat on the pony, his head low, so that the brim of 
 his sombrero shielded his face from the old man s eyes ; 
 he grumbled out a sort of acquiescence. 
 
 Rock knew his duty. A big metal star inscribed in 
 plain letters "Indian Police" did not rest for nothing 
 on his breast, neither was it for nothing that he 
 received from a munificent Government the sum of 
 ten dollars a month for the keep of himself and the 
 horse he must furnish, the time he must give, the cour 
 age he must not fail in, the risk, even to life itself, he 
 
122 Teepee Neighbors 
 
 must frequently assume. An old but useful six-shooter 
 sagged in its holster on his hip. 
 
 "You must go back," he said quietly. 
 
 "We re going down to Edmund Goes-in-Lodge s," 
 said the shameless Jack. 
 
 The man sized up the three with his old keen 
 eyes. "Edmund s no good," he said. "Better go 
 quietly back to school. Turn around now. Go on." 
 
 No one moved. There was silence. The horses 
 splashed in the shallow ford. Chester s big black 
 pulled at the lush grass along the edge, the sound of his 
 crunching teeth and jingling bit filled the pause. The 
 leather of the old Indian s saddle creaked with his 
 horse s breathing. 
 
 "Singing Rock" Jack, who of course spoke in his 
 Indian tongue, used the full name "we can t go back ; 
 we won t go without Edmund. If you take us back, 
 Mr. Knight will beat us. Besides that you know that no 
 one will ever will be able to catch Edmund. But you 
 come with us down to Goes-in-Lodge s ; we ll go in 
 ahead of you and we ll talk to Edmund and get him 
 to ride with us a ways up the road. You can hide 
 yourself some where and when you hear us, you can 
 just come out and pull your gun on him. Then we ll 
 all go back with you. We say we ll do this and we ll 
 surely do it, but we can t go back to the school without 
 Edmund." 
 
Teepee Neighbors 123 
 
 Whence the boy evolved this plan, why indeed he 
 evolved it at all, he would have been the last one able 
 to explain it to you. It was as natural for him to meet 
 strategy foiled with new strategy, as for the beaver to 
 build his symmetrical dam, the bird his balanced nest. 
 
 The old man surveyed the three critically. Here 
 was a chance, as it seemed to him, to do double duty 
 and with assistance at that. The boys, as he knew, did 
 not exaggerate when they said that the police were 
 quite unable to cope with the problem of Edmund s 
 capture. Well, they were good boys, as had been their 
 fathers before them, his friends ; he would trust them. 
 
 "Come on/ he said, and wheeled his pony about. 
 They splashed out of the ford behind him. 
 
 Before they reached Goes-in-Lodge s a good ten 
 miles down the valley they left the old police man 
 safely sheltered from sight by the bulk of a point of 
 land that at a certain place crowded the road to one 
 side against a wire fence. 
 
 As they approached the little huddled cabins, tents 
 and corrals, that made up Goes-in-Lodge s camp, the 
 conspirators saw a figure cross, from the inside, the 
 little window of the principal cabin; Edmund s 
 mother reconnoitering, no doubt. The boys jumped 
 from their horses and went into the house. Only 
 Goes-in-Lodge s immediate family was there. The 
 old man smoking his Indian pipe and eyeing them 
 
124 Teepee Neighbors 
 
 gravely sat on the side of his home-made bunk. The 
 run-away and his mother began laughing and joking at 
 sight of them. Edmund said to them in English, 
 "Guess you boys made a mistake, this ain t your 
 Sunday School class," followed by much giggling. 
 Somebody cocked an eye out of the window at the sun. 
 "It s way past Sunday school time ; I feel more like it 
 was dinner time." 
 
 The old woman laughed, taking the hint, got up 
 and began bustling around the stove. She was indeed 
 in an excellent humor, being mightily pleased with her 
 son, her youngest born, and his cleverness in out-wit 
 ting the nagging Agency. "It s all right to have him 
 go to school and learn something. I don t want him to 
 grow up to be just a buck. I want him to read and 
 write and know farming like his brothers ; but I won t 
 have him kept in that school as though it was a jail." 
 
 They all sat about on the floor enjoying the little 
 feast; fried bread, and meat served with that great 
 Indian delicacy "cherry gravy"; there was also weak 
 sweetened coffee. At the end Jack got to his feet and 
 remembering his manners, "We all ate good," he said 
 with sincerity, "Let s go out now and have some fun. 
 Get your horse, Edmund, and come along." They sad 
 dled up; Edmund s mother, throwing scraps to the 
 dogs, smiled at them from the doorway. 
 
 That they lacked in loyalty to their hosts in thus 
 
Teepee Neighbors 125 
 
 decoying the boy into a trap never could have occurred 
 to their minds. They were playing a game as was 
 Edmund. The only question was, who would win? 
 
 They lured their victim up the road; it was easy 
 enough to do so. In time, they rounded the point of 
 land there stood Rock. He had not deemed it even 
 necessary to take the six-shooter from its holster. The 
 star of authority gleamed upon his breast. The run 
 away took in the situation at a glance. They all drew 
 rein. 
 
 "Go on," said the old man, "I ve got you all now. 
 If you keep loping you ll be at school in time to report 
 at five o clock." He fell in behind them and rode 
 squarely in their dust all the ten miles to the school. 
 The boys preserved a neutral silence. The three who 
 really understood the situation felt it not incumbent on 
 them to explain ; the true captive was upbraiding him 
 self furiously, if silently, for the stupid ease with which 
 he had let himself be taken. Truth to tell the three 
 conspirators were feeling a little uncomfortable. For 
 many years Edmund had been the acknowledged leader 
 and "bad boy" of the school; it was only natural to 
 suppose that he would have his innings yet. The quick 
 lope of the little bare- footed ponies counted off the 
 miles. 
 
 The arrival at the school was without dramatic effect. 
 Mr. Knight was on the watch. Rock gave him his ver- 
 
126 Teepee Neighbors 
 
 sion of the affair. Mr. Knight, looking into the anxious 
 eyes of the three, gleefully understood. The victors 
 themselves said never a word, not even to him: were 
 they white men that they need make explanation with 
 words ? 
 
 "All right," said the disciplinarian. "Rock, go into 
 the office. You three put up your horses. Edmund, 
 come with me." 
 
 The boy took his thrashing stoically though he 
 winced under it, for of its kind it was a good one. 
 When it was over Mr. Knight left him in the dingy 
 lock-up of the school and went to fetch him his supper. 
 On his return as he opened the door the boy lifted his 
 head and searched with eager eyes the space behind the 
 man. 
 
 "Where s the others?" 
 "The others?" 
 
 "Yes, when are you going to lick them three?" 
 "Why, Edmund, don t you understand?" 
 It was clear that he did not. Mr. Knight set down 
 the supper tray and, as gently as might be, explained. 
 The boy stared at him. Incredulity was in his eyes and 
 a new expression, could it be it fear? He spoke no 
 word. He turned away from his jailor, the haunted 
 look deepened. Then as though suddenly suffocated 
 by its lack of space he strode across the little room. 
 
Teepee Neighbors 127 
 
 He wheeled about. For an instant the man half 
 thought that he was going to strike him. 
 
 "They made a plan?" He spoke between shut teeth. 
 "You let them go ?" Although he was plainly impatient 
 of the fact there was no doubt but what his voice was 
 trembling. He shook his head over the intolerable 
 realization. He frowned above his sharpened features. 
 
 "And Rock ? He was in that plan too ?" 
 
 "Oh no. They met him by chance and they fooled 
 him also. That was part of their fun, I guess." 
 
 "Their fun/ 
 
 The boy s face went grey, he put out a hand, groping 
 for the one chair in the room. Finding it he sank into 
 it, a huddled heap. 
 
 "Here s your supper, Edmund." 
 
 But he did not answer. Mr. Knight, a little uncer 
 tainly, went toward the door. "He didn t look like that 
 when I licked him." 
 
 The huddled figure hunched his shoulders, twisted a 
 little as he sat. Then not even waiting for the sound 
 of retreating steps, a great sob, that was half a cry, 
 wrenched him. 
 
 After all he was only a boy. 
 
 "Edmund..." 
 
 "Go way. Oh ! Go way." 
 
 And for very shame s sake the man went, tiptoeing 
 
128 Teepee Neighbors 
 
 out of the door. But the reign of Edmund was over. 
 The school s "bad boy" was in the dust. 
 
"IN THE KINGDOM OF THE BLIND" 
 
 HER "FOLKS," as she called them, looked at her pa 
 tiently, smiling a little. They said they had always 
 thought that her eyes looked queer. 
 
 The little half-breed girl smiled too, twisting a cor 
 ner of her blue spreading "hickory" apron, a dimple 
 in each smooth cheek, her mouth soft and warm as 
 though from her mother s recent kisses. But it was 
 only a memory that kept it so, for the mother was dead ; 
 and the eyes, with their oddly heavy lids, certainly did 
 look "queer." 
 
 "We are going to Denver soon," we said. "Might 
 we not take her there with us ? There are doctors there 
 who care only for eyes. Do you think she would be 
 too homesick?" 
 
 They lifted incredulous eyes to us. "Oh ! she 
 wouldn t be homesick." They stared at the object of 
 such strange fortune. 
 
 And the child stood, twisting her apron, the little 
 smile still awakening the dimples in her cheeks. 
 
 "You goin on the railroad?" 
 
 The railroad had but lately been built up into our 
 part of the country. 
 
 "Why, yes." 
 
 Then they arose to the occasion. "Sure ! Take her," 
 they said. "They don t look right, them eyes. Take 
 
 129 
 
130 Teepee Neighbors 
 
 her. She won t be no trouble. She s a good little thing. 
 Now, Ethel, mind you re good. Mind you don t make 
 no fuss. You ll yet a lickin when you get back if I 
 hear you do." 
 
 The little dimpled face and pretty eyes were lifted 
 sweetly. 
 
 "She ll be good." 
 
 "Yes," whispered the little girl. 
 
 The doctor in Denver agreed that her eyes were 
 "queer," even as queer as they looked. "Trachoma," 
 he threw at us over his glasses. "Better be careful 
 how your own child handles the things this one touches. 
 It s very contagious." 
 
 "But, is it curable?" 
 
 "Yes. She may need an operation, and anyway, a 
 year s treatment. The operation if I decide on it I 
 can manage here easily enough. But the treatment is 
 there anyone up there on the reservation who will 
 follow it up faithfully? That s her only salvation, 
 conscientious regularity in giving the treatment." 
 
 "There s a matron at the Government school where 
 this child is," we said. "And there s a doctor." 
 
 "A doctor? What kind of a one?" 
 
 His question embarrassed us a little. "Oh, an 
 Agency doctor; the usual kind." 
 
 "Well you can tell him what I say. I ll give you the 
 directions." 
 
Teepee Neighbors 131 
 
 But we knew better than this. "You d better write a 
 letter to him," we ventured. "Agency doctors don t 
 always like suggestions from the laity." 
 
 He laughed a little. "I ll write the letter," he said. 
 "Anyhow he probably knows enough to realize that 
 the case is a serious one." 
 
 But we felt that we must understand more fully than 
 this. "What if they should somehow neglect her and 
 she should not be cured?" 
 
 He shrugged his shoulders. "In that case," he said, 
 "she d go blind, that s all." 
 
 "So many do," we murmured. 
 
 "Didn t your doctor up there look at her eyes, ever 
 think they needed looking at, even?" 
 
 "No." 
 
 He glanced at us a trifle incredulously. 
 
 "There are lots of blind people on the reservation, 
 children even." 
 
 He stared long at the child. "I can easily believe it." 
 
 At the end of our visit, and fortified with our letter 
 to the Agency physician, we bore our little girl back to 
 the reservation. To the matron we unbosomed our 
 selves at length. 
 
 "He said that absolutely she must never use the 
 same towel as any body else, nor be allowed to sleep 
 in the same bed with another child. The trouble is 
 very contagious." 
 
I3 2 Teepee Neighbors 
 
 She listened to us politely but with unmistakable in 
 difference, perhaps incredulity. 
 
 "It s the same disease that makes those white eyes 
 so many of them have." 
 
 "Oh." 
 
 "And this stuff is to be used night and morning 
 according to the directions, and at least during the rest 
 of this school year." 
 
 "The doctor told me. What did you say they call 
 it?" 
 
 "Trachoma." 
 
 She spelled it after us. It was evidently a new word 
 to her. 
 
 "Trachoma?" 
 
 "Yes. And that s one of the diseases they shut 
 immigrants out for, you know. It s so contagious." 
 
 "But it s curable?" 
 
 "Yes, with the right treatment, and care." 
 
 "I see." 
 
 We felt that we had said enough. 
 
 "Well, Ethel dear, good-bye." 
 
 The child edged up close to me. 
 
 "Can t you thank her?" said the matron. 
 
 "Thank you," whispered the little girl. 
 
 "It sure was good of you to take her," vouchsafed 
 the matron. 
 
Teepee Neighbors 133 
 
 "Oh! She was no trouble. A dear little thing! If 
 it ll only cure her." 
 
 From that moment of course the child ceased being 
 under our control. But I made frequent enquiries of 
 her. 
 
 "Night and morning?" I asked. 
 
 " Most always." 
 
 "Not really always?" 
 
 "Sometimes she forgets, I guess." 
 
 "And you use only your own towel?" 
 
 "Yes, ma am." 
 
 "And you sleep by yourself?" 
 
 She hung her little head. "I sleeps with Mamie." 
 
 "But you know you shouldn t, dear." 
 
 "She bese cold at night." 
 
 "Who told you to sleep with her?" 
 
 "Miss Raney." 
 
 I went to the matron. 
 
 "But they want to sleep together," she said. "They 
 asked to. Beside that we re short of beds. And then 
 also it saves bedding. The laundry girls are awfully 
 over-worked." 
 
 I went to the doctor. 
 
 "I leave all that to the matron," he said. "I really 
 cannot interfere with matters pertaining entirely to her 
 own department." 
 
134 Teepee Neighbors 
 
 I even went to the agent, tentatively, and very hum 
 bly. 
 
 "You should see the doctor." He was both cordial 
 and solicitous. "He s the one to control those things." 
 
 "Then you don t think it best to speak to Miss Raney 
 yourself?" 
 
 "Frankly, no," he answered. "You see I should be 
 interfering in the doctor s province." 
 
 I thanked him rather vaguely. 
 
 But he checked me hastily. "Rather I thank you," 
 he cried. "It is more than good of you to take so much 
 interest in my little charges." 
 
 Long before the end of the year they were not giving 
 her the treatment at all. 
 
 "But why, Ethel?" 
 
 "I guess the bottle s empty," she said. 
 

 LITTLE THINGS 
 i 
 
 HE WAS a very small boy, and in September they had 
 brought him, reluctant, to the boarding school. There 
 the authorities had scrubbed and dressed him. He had 
 rather enjoyed the first of these novelties, though the 
 big boy who worked over him, incited by the matron, 
 had been none too gentle with him. And he had been 
 actually fascinated by his new and unfamiliar clothes ; 
 shirt and shoes he comprehended, though the mystery 
 of stockings and garters and trousers was deep. 
 
 That first day all went well enough with him. It was 
 the second, his first morning of awaking in the long 
 dormitory, that put his powers to the test. To begin 
 with, he felt as though his bed were out of doors ; no 
 brooding teepee walls hung just beyond the reach of 
 his short arms, muting so little the soft call of the 
 prairie wind. Here in th is strange place of space and 
 beds a great bell clanged ; then someone gruffly stirred 
 him to action. Slowly, puzzling, he applied his gar 
 ments. It helped a little that so many of them went in 
 pairs. His shirt he put on last, leaving it dangling 
 decently over his trousers, as in the camps his calico 
 home-made shirt-substitute had covered that part of 
 him left bare where his leggings ceased. When he 
 took his place in the line formed to go to the dining 
 
 135 
 
136 Teepee Neighbors 
 
 room he felt himself so successfully apparelled that 
 he really could not understand why the matron, 
 speaking very low and quick, pointed a finger at him, 
 just as a big boy seized him by the collar and yanked 
 him back into the dormitory. 
 
 Subsequently, during breakfast, he felt none too 
 comfortable with his shirt wadded thus tightly into the 
 top of his nether garment. 
 
 It is so hard to remember what you learned yester 
 day, and that even when they also spank you and send 
 you back a dozen times to the dormitory to readjust 
 your various, and apparently superfluous, ill-put parts ! 
 It always would seem illogical to him, he thought, to 
 have that shirt of his curtailed so waste fully. 
 
 After the lapse of a few weeks came a certain Satur 
 day when the matron, in rusty skirt and dressing jack 
 et, standing gingerly upon the lowest step of the stair 
 case directed the efforts of two big boys, armed with 
 buckets and mops. 
 
 In the nearby doorway appeared the little untidy 
 figure of a boy, one corner of the bottom of his shirt 
 protruded saucily above his trousers, his unlaced boots 
 flapped, his recently cut hair bristled. But his eyes 
 were fixed in fascinated incredulity upon the matron; 
 from rusty skirt they ranged to hanging dressing jack 
 et, fixed themselves, glared. Then in joyous, conscious 
 imitation he raised a stubby forefinger and levelled it 
 
Teepee Neighbors 137 
 
 at the matron s middle. His English came to him as 
 an inspiration. 
 
 "What s the matter you?" he cried. "Shirt-tail all 
 time hangin out !" 
 
 ii 
 
 The big girl wrapped a corner of her blue "hickory" 
 apron about her chilly hands and edged a little so that 
 her back would be more to the wind that forced itself 
 in at the door of the girls building, by which we were 
 standing. 
 
 "And when I was beading* them moccasins 
 for my little sister last summer," she continued, "that 
 little girl used to be beggin me to let her try them. on. 
 Just try them on/ she d say, cause nobody don t 
 never bead moccasins for me/ And then when we all 
 got our money last payment time, she was beggin her 
 grandma to buy her a little shawl, even one o them 
 sheets, she said. But you know her grandma, she 
 can t. Them folks, they so poor. My! she s awful 
 thin." 
 
 In the dormitory to the right a child s voice screamed 
 out suddenly. There followed the sound of a scuffle, of 
 two vigorous spanks; anl then the child s voice again 
 wailing angrily. 
 
138 Teepee Neighbors 
 
 Another big, blue-clad girl came, laughing, from the 
 dormitory. In her hand she held a pair of new, small, 
 clumsy government boots. These she lifted to my 
 view. 
 
 "Four times now I ve taken these away from that 
 kid." She laughed again, holding her hands over her 
 ears. "My! but can t she yell. Four times she be 
 takin these new boots to bed with her. You see when 
 she first come the matron she didn t have no new ones 
 to fit her so she have to have a worn pair left over from 
 last year. So she only just gettin her new ones this 
 week. Now every night she hide em in her bed. This 
 time she have em right on her feet laced up tight. The 
 girl that sleep with her she tole on her. My ! them little 
 kids. They do be such a bother." 
 
 in 
 
 By the headgate of the lateral of the great new irri 
 gating system of the reservation sat an old man wrap 
 ped in a sheet, his summer blanket. He was watching 
 with contemplative eye the water sluicing under the 
 raised gate. 
 
 A young mixed-blood, mounted on a pony, stood 
 beside him, watching also, but professionally, the in 
 flowing water. 
 
Teepee Neighbors 139 
 
 Said the mixed-blood, with signs, "This is a fine 
 ditch!" 
 
 The old man assented. 
 
 The horseman gazed across the valley, his eyes 
 following the straight course of the laterals which 
 carried the water at an apparently slightly rising grade 
 across the sage brush to the canal on the other side. 
 
 Straight and luminous as the flight of an arrow the 
 water gleamed in the ditches. Far up the stream which 
 fed this whole irrigating system, and out of sight, were 
 built the high masonry walls of the main intake. 
 
 The Indian followed the gaze of the younger man. 
 His old eyes rested on the emerald of alfalfa patches 
 across the valley, first season s fruit of this new ditch. 
 
 "Some day we ll have lots of hayfields down here/ 
 proclaimed the horseman. 
 
 Again the old man assented. Then he eyed the ditch- 
 rider curiously. "That ditch over there looks as though 
 it was higher than this creek." His old hands formed 
 the descriptive signs. 
 
 "Well, maybe it is," agreed the rider, condescend 
 ingly. 
 
 "A long time ago, when I was a young man," mused 
 the old hands, "water used always to run down hill." 
 A little malicious gleam crept into has eyes. "But the 
 white man, he s so smart he s changed all that. Now 
 he makes it run the other way." 
 
A MAN 
 
 HALF OF the tribe was starving that winter. I am 
 afraid there was no doubt of it. We heard it on every 
 hand. It was just at the time when the blind step 
 daughter of Goes-up-Hill died. They said that for 
 three days before her end she and her people had 
 nothing to eat but dog meat no flour, no coffee even. 
 The snow was deep and drifted. The family lived 
 far out in the reservation on a little tributary of the 
 river. They could not come to the Agency for help 
 nor could any of us have got down to them. In fact 
 we knew nothing of the case until everything was over. 
 Mercifully the girl was ill for only a few days. It was 
 Goes-up-Hill himself, his hair falling unkept over his 
 shoulders, his ragged blanket pinched about his lean 
 form covered, that is, with the Indian sack cloth and 
 ashes who told us about it. He spoke being one of 
 the old timers who knew no English in signs, meager, 
 but definite, even poetical. After he was done with 
 his story there was nothing for it at so late a day but 
 to shake his old hand, to look the sympathy we felt. 
 Then came a sudden thaw. With the sound of an 
 explosion the ice dam on another tributary went out. 
 It happened early in the night. There were some sheep 
 camps on the low meadows bordering the creek. The 
 sheep had been rounded up and brought in off the 
 
 140 
 
Teepee Neighbors 141 
 
 frozen range to wait the near coming of the lambs. 
 That gave a few of the Indians work in the lambing 
 pens, a very, very few. None of them as yet, however, 
 had received any pay. Ah ! the sheep that went down 
 that night. Right over the fences of their own corrals 
 the water carried them. And as sheep are poor-spir 
 ited creatures who make but little fight for life, for 
 only a few minutes did they struggle in the icy water, 
 then huddled and still, with boards and sacks and other 
 extraneous things, the tide flooded them down towari 
 the main river. 
 
 All the "upper" Indians those living close about 
 the Agency were laughing, though their laughing was 
 often wan, as the reports came to us. 
 
 "They say them people down there just stand on the 
 bank with long poles and fish in the drowned sheep. It s 
 all right with the sheep men. They don t mind how 
 many of them they take if they ll bring back the pelts." 
 
 Those above the forks on the main river did not of 
 course benefit by this freak of prodigality of awak 
 ening spring. 
 
 That was the time if you lived here you d remem 
 ber it as we do that the stage, on a piece of river 
 road, was overturned by the rush of the water. The 
 driver saw the danger coming and tried to get up into 
 the little hills above the road, but he was too late. His 
 horses, held down by the weight of the wrecked stage, 
 
142 Teepee Neighbors 
 
 were drowned. But he, upborne by some shred of 
 grim grit, extricated himself from ice and debris and 
 dragged himself somehow to the shelter of the shore. 
 But the mail sacks went down with the rush of the 
 water. Then the ice of the half-frozen river concealed 
 them, though many Indians there were who stood on 
 the banks, watching the flow of the oily water, hoping 
 for a glimpse of just one of them. You see immed 
 iately after the thing happened the Post-office Depart 
 ment offered a reward of five dollars for each sack that 
 should be recovered. The very day after the disaster, 
 a young man called Charley Good Woman found one 
 of them, half buried in the mud. With great difficulty 
 he secured it and bore it in dubious triumph to the 
 local post-office where he was immediately, and to his 
 own bewilderment, handed his five dollars. It was like 
 finding the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. 
 
 That event brought one man at least out of every 
 teepee in the neighborhood of the river, to sit long 
 hours on his horse, his lariat, its noose assuredly free, 
 grasped in a ready hand, his eyes fixed to the point of 
 hypnotism, upon the sweep of the current. 
 
 Among these equestrian statues, half clad, cold, 
 daring not quite to hope and yet capable of suffering 
 all the pangs of disappointment, there sat one oldish 
 man called Howling Wolf. Of all of that lean throng 
 there was perhaps none as poor as he. Ah ! do not pity 
 
Teepee Neighbors 143 
 
 him. His condition was brought about mainly through 
 his own fault. For he was a man who drank some 
 times, feeling as he did within his old body a craving, 
 which never, in all the days covered by the reach of his 
 memory, had been satisfied. And also he gambled. 
 You see that no apology can be offered for him. No 
 one could claim, even his most friendly excusers, that 
 any unsatisfied longing set him gambling. In fact by 
 every canon of morality his action must be condemn 
 ed. For was he not thereby taking food from the 
 very mouth of his wife, the clothes from her back? Of 
 children they had mercifully none. Those that had 
 been born to them had died little and long, long ago. 
 Even the memory of them had become confused, had 
 emerged itself into a sort of dull ache, which in turn 
 mingled itself with the pangs of his unsatisfied body. 
 Often in his teepee he would sit on the ground-made 
 bed, smoking tobacco, when he had it, chopped willow 
 bark, choking and bitter, when he had not the other 
 staring at the hard-packed dirt of the floor, at the 
 embers of the fire; going over eternally the past, the 
 days of youth, of austere young manhood, the courting 
 days when down in the bushes by the river he had 
 played on his flute to her, notes liquid and alluring. . . 
 At this point he would lift his old dreamy eyes to his 
 wife who sat, fat and huddled, on her side of the tent, 
 smoking too her short Indian pipe, staring also at the 
 
144 Teepee Neighbors 
 
 hard-packed floor. And during the long, long days 
 he would think of the vanished game; of the days of 
 achievement, gone also; and of the time when he as 
 well, would have slipped away, when to the hillside, 
 amid the wailing of the women they would carry his 
 body as he had followed many, many bodies, wrap 
 ped in new quilts, stark, insensate at last. He would 
 picture them lifting him from the old farm wagon the 
 borrowed wagon in which he was making this his last 
 trip, and laying him in his shallow bed. And then he 
 knew that they would cover him up tenderly away from 
 the sunlight that allured, away from his accustomed 
 aching. And he was aware that thence- forth his wife 
 would be homeless and poorer than ever, living out her 
 days on the carelessly given charity of her neighbors, 
 trying with less and less hope, but always patiently, to 
 pay the bills she had incurred at the store, even the bills 
 for the new quilts in which she had swathed him for his 
 burial. At this point he would get up suddenly and 
 striding out of his tent would go to where his last pony 
 was picking about amongst the brush, and he would 
 mount it bareback as it was and with an end of his 
 lariat about its neck for a bridle he would lope steadily 
 across the snow, across the ice of the river to that little 
 town where distraction and temporary oblivion might 
 be obtained. 
 
 At last of course he would be forced to come back ; 
 
Teepee Neighbors 145 
 
 at night, probably; his lariat gone perhaps, or his 
 blanket, or the handkerchief from about his neck, or 
 even his hat. For luck seemed never to come his way, 
 though his little bag of "medicine," suspended by its 
 dirty twisted string he always kept hidden securely 
 away inside his shirt. But the "medicine" was old, and 
 the white men of the little town those of them who 
 would play with him knew a trick or two of twice its 
 worth. The younger men of the tribe had indeed 
 learned from the whites defensive cheating at cards, 
 but not so he ; he was too unp regressive, too "Indian." 
 
 Thus just before the thaw he had come back to the 
 old teepee and the old wife, utterly depleted. Then 
 unexpectedly hope, that will-o -the-wisp, had lit for 
 him in his blindness a little trembling, enticing flame; 
 and so he too sat motionless by the river, watching for 
 the water to give up a lost mail sack, in his hands a 
 borrowed lariat. 
 
 And as he sat it was the fourth day now, yet only 
 the one sack had been found he saw a man on the 
 other shore, a white man mounted on a solid cow pony, 
 come slipping and sliding down the opposite bank, and 
 gingerly make his way out upon the rotten ice. But 
 after a moment his eyes old and smoke-dimmed grew 
 tired facing the ice-glare and he dropped them to the 
 open water close at his feet. He gasped, his old 
 heart swelled big within him. For there almost within 
 
146 Teepee Neighbors 
 
 reach of his hand he saw at last the object of his long 
 vigil. One corner of it projected above the tide. He 
 lifted his heels to force his horse down into the flood 
 then suddenly his ears were assailed by a great sound. 
 There came to him the crash of an explosion, and 
 mingled with it a terrible wild cry. Staring out across 
 the river he saw black water yawning where had been 
 the ice. Cowboy and horse had disappeared. But even 
 as he looked the man came to the surface. He floun 
 dered, groped, caught precariously a side of jagged ice. 
 The mail sack, ever at his side, sailed slowly by, the ice 
 crust below waiting to secrete it again. 
 
 With the swiftness of Nature herself Howling Wolf 
 had his lariat uncoiled and like a meteor flash sent its 
 sinuous length out over the oily water. It caught the 
 half -sub merged man fairly about the shoulders. 
 
 Fortunately the teepee was near. His thin old arm 
 supported and guided the staggering man. Arrived 
 there it was with the greatest difficulty that he and his 
 wife got off the man s already freezing clothes. They 
 put him in their bed, for they had no change of raiment 
 to offer him while his own things thawed and dried. 
 They covered him with all they had. They wiped his 
 streaming face and hair. Then they boiled coffee and 
 brought him some of it in a bowl. The smell of the 
 sage brush fire, of the coffee, and the steam from the 
 drying clothes, filled the tent. The white man, sick and 
 
Teepee Neighbors 147 
 
 faint, lay chattering between the quilts. Dinner time 
 came but brought with it no dinner; it went as it had 
 come. A little later they all partook of coffee. With 
 signs the old man made his apology, his face twisted 
 with distress for his inhospitality. 
 
 "There s only this," he seemed to say. "We have no 
 food." 
 
 He had gone twice to the river to look for signs of 
 the stranger s horse only to return and report that there 
 were none. 
 
 At last the white man, restored, dressed himself 
 again and got up to take his leave. He spoke to the old 
 couple in English, which neither could understand, 
 making what awkward explanatory signs he could re 
 collect. 
 
 "I remember you, all right. You re the old feller we 
 cleaned out the other day over at Slim s place. Gee! 
 They ve cleaned me out since. I haven t got enough in 
 my pockets to jingle and now my horse and saddle are 
 gone. I m afoot, I am, walkin for my livin , these 
 days! Say, bad luck s a rotten thing, ain t it? Well, 
 here s four bits, every cent I got on the earth. I want 
 your wife to take it. It ll buy you a little grub anyhow. 
 I ll walk over to the store at the Forks, I know the 
 feller that runs it. I guess he ll give me a hand-out 
 to eat and maybe a job " Then each in turn he shook 
 solemnly by the hand. "I m right grateful to you for 
 
148 Teepee Neighbors 
 
 what you done for me. I m expecting to go out of this 
 country, but if I should ever come back well, anyhow, 
 so long." 
 
 Standing outside the door of the teepee, the fifty 
 cent piece tied for safe keeping in a fold of the wife s 
 sleeve, the old couple stood, shading their eyes, watch 
 ing the man trudge cheerfully across the snowy waste. 
 
 From inside the tent came the smell of boiling coffee. 
 
LAZARUS 
 
 THEY STOPPED their wagon at our hitching post, tying 
 their narrow-built, bare-footed ponies to the rack. 
 Their skeleton dogs, curling themselves up into furry 
 cocoons, crouched down upon the frozen gravel away 
 from the wind. Then they came in, the young man 
 trailing in the wake of his father. It was one of those 
 bitter cold days that so often visit us in Wyoming, but 
 cold days that do not look cold; like smiles disguising 
 bitter words; like Death itself, visibly serene, yet the 
 very state of dissolution. The whole world, or at least 
 the wide stretch of it to be seen from our ranch win 
 dows, was gala with sunlight ; yet under cover of that 
 sunlight, intangible, the teeth of the cold, like manacles, 
 bit into the flesh of the unwary. 
 
 In Wyoming when we enter house or tent in winter 
 we go straight to the stove. So deep-rooted is this 
 habit that to do so has become almost a matter of 
 etiquette. Even in summer we congregate about our 
 empty stoves, smiling and talking to each other across 
 their idle blackness. 
 
 I drew up chairs for my guests. It was morning. 
 There was house-work still pending, so I moved about 
 near them, busying myself as I might, not wishing to 
 seem inattentive. They pulled their chairs close to the 
 stove. Stooping, the young man opened the drafts. 
 
 149 
 
150 Teepee Neighbors 
 
 They drew off their gloves and held toward the fire 
 their hands, cramped with the cold old gnarled hands 
 and young thin ones. Removing their hats they laid 
 them down upon the floor beside them. Their heads 
 were tied up, hood-fashion, in faded bandannas. They 
 were dressed in the heterogeneous vestments of border 
 civilization. A single pair of overalls formed the lower 
 garment of the son. A knitted muffler enveloped the 
 father s neck. Flimsy canvas moccasins shod them. 
 They wore no overcoats. 
 
 For our Indian guests we always kept on hand a 
 sack of tobacco. This with the book of papers I now 
 passed to them. They gave me smiles of acknow 
 ledgement. Then with hands still awkward from the 
 cold, they helped themselves sparingly, rolling their 
 economical cigarettes. 
 
 The young man, his shoulders bent heavily, his claw- 
 like hands extended, hollow of chest, spoke in a husky 
 voice. 
 
 "My Father he come here ask you find him a story 
 in the Bible." 
 
 "A story in the Bible?" 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 And watching us, in his native tongue the old man 
 spoke suddenly. His words sounded emphatically. 
 With his hands, one of which held the cigarette, he 
 enforced their meaning by accompanying them with 
 
Teepee Neighbors 151 
 
 the conventional gestures of the Indian language of 
 signs. His deep eyes were upon his son. 
 
 The soft odor of tobacco filled the room. The heat 
 from the open stove made the air heavy. The young 
 man, bending forward, his eyes upon the floor, slowly 
 inhaling and exhaling the smoke of his cigarette, lis 
 tened attentively. He coughed. 
 
 "My Father he say one time he go to the Indian 
 church and the minister he tell that story. Since then 
 he always thinkin bout it. He want to hear that story 
 gain. It s in the Bible, he says. You got lots o books, 
 he guess you know it." 
 
 "Can he tell me what it was about?" 
 
 The young man coughed again. He threw the 
 stump of his cigarette into the stove. 
 
 "It bout a man, a white man, a chief, a king, I guess 
 you call him. This man big man ; he have lots to eat, 
 lots o good clothes, plenty money. All time he just 
 sit in his house and everybody workin for him. He 
 smoke, he have good time." 
 
 From this beginning I felt dubious about eventually 
 recognizing the story. 
 
 "But one day a man come, sit down on the ground 
 by his door. He stay there all the time. This man he 
 awful poor. He just got rags on him for clothes; he 
 don t comb his hair and it hang down all wild ; he got 
 sores on his legs, on his body. The dogs they come 
 
152 Teepee Neighbors 
 
 close to him, they bother him good deal. He awful 
 hungry." He lifted his face to me. With one thin 
 yellow hand he formed the expressive sign which, 
 turned against the breast of the maker, says : Hunger 
 is killing me, Hunger has conquered me. 
 
 "I understand," I said. 
 
 The young man coughed, smiled apologetically. 
 
 "My Father, he say that sick man so hungry he for 
 get that chief got hard heart, one day he call out and 
 beg him for some scraps of food. But that big man 
 always laughin , talking havin* good time. He don t 
 hear him. He always lookin the other way. That 
 man wait long time but nobody give him nothin*. Then 
 that poor man he try steal the bones away from the 
 dogs. But he too weak. Them dogs they all time fight 
 him off. Then he sit down by the door again, and 
 he feel bad in his heart and his sores hurt him and he 
 awful hungry. At last by the door he see a swill bucket 
 and he reach out his hand and he pull things out of it 
 and he eat them; peelings, anything." He stopped, 
 coughing. 
 
 I got up suddenly and went over to the book shelves. 
 
 The old man straightened himself up. He looked 
 at his boy, he looked at me; he spoke vehemently. 
 Then he leaned back in his chair. The son lifted his 
 haggard face, his eyes glowed above hollow cheeks. 
 
 "My Father, he say, long ago when he young man, 
 
Teepee Neighbors 153 
 
 it s different, but today the Indians been like that sick 
 man, they so hungry all time they learn now to be glad 
 when white people let them eat just them thrown- 
 away things." 
 
 And, hollow of chest, he too sank back in his seat. 
 
AT THE END OF HIS ROPE 
 
 IT is not often that a man has to undergo two identical 
 and very hard experiences. Such however, was the 
 fate of Jerome Rising Elk. It seemed almost incredible 
 that twice the same bitter thing should happen to him. 
 But let me tell you this story. Soon after he left school, 
 as quite a young man he had married, in the Indian 
 way, and he had set up house keeping for himself and 
 his bride in a little white tent pitched close to her 
 father s home. In time there had come a baby, and 
 at its coming she had left him. 
 
 Who shall conceive the horror of her last day? The 
 young moaning mother lying on the floor amongst dingy 
 quilts, the gloom of the teepee, the helpless sympathe 
 tic, women- faces about her, the old weeping grand 
 mother, her mother, a baby at her breast, her own last 
 anguish fresh in her mind: the flies, the heat, the 
 sneaking dogs, the day-long agony; and then the 
 spent flesh breaking at last, the thread of life snapping, 
 even as the infant s cry proclaimed the birth. 
 
 The girl s mother had taken the child. For a few 
 months she nursed it with her own; then for who 
 shall starve one s own for the sake of an outsider? 
 then its wailing cry had ceased and they had laid its 
 little lean body in a grave hollowed out of the dry earth 
 near its mother s. 
 
 154 
 
Teepee Neighbors 155 
 
 Jerome and his wife did not live at our end of the 
 reservation. I scarcely knew either of them by sight, 
 but their story, the sad story of the manner of her 
 death, was told everywhere about the camps; the 
 women listened, wonderingly, holding close their own, 
 thinking in their hearts: "If it had been I!" 
 
 Two or three years passed. Like a homeless bird 
 the young man, a boy of some education for a reserva 
 tion Indian, drifted from camp to camp, made long 
 journeys and visits to neighboring tribes, in Oklahoma, 
 in the Dakotas. He had no one to do for him, to care 
 for his clothes, bead his moccasins. At her death all 
 her possessions and most of bis had gone in the Indian 
 way to her people. He lodged where he might, stretch 
 ed his welcome, the wide Indian welcome, to the 
 breaking point, flitted from home to home. At last, 
 as was inevitable, he married again. 
 
 The second wife was a girl from our school. I knew 
 her well. A lovely girl she was, a slender, strong, 
 lightfooted thing; eyes clear and starry. To see her 
 walk you were reminded of the figure in the Old 
 Testament "Light of foot as a wild roe." 
 
 Her name was Ada. They came down to our little 
 church to be married. I remember the day, my kitchen 
 apron on, my sleeves rolled up, right from my washing, 
 I ran over to the church to make the necessary second 
 
156 Teepee Neighbors 
 
 witness. Jerome was neatly dressed in store-bought 
 clothes and boots, a bright handkerchief tied cow-boy- 
 wise about his neck. She stood by him in her trim 
 "squaw dress." Its graceful lines, as those of the 
 shawl drooping from her shoulders, gave a lovely 
 almost classic look to her figure. Her pretty head was 
 bowed humbly. Frankly and without hesitation togeth 
 er they went through the binding service. Of all their 
 friends and relatives only her father had come with 
 them. He and I were their witnesses. I wrote my 
 name, he made his "thumb mark" on their certificate. 
 Then I hurried back to my washing. 
 
 It was next winter or early spring that we sat one 
 night in the living room of our ranch house, my hus 
 band and I, on either side of the lamp, reading. Sud 
 denly I heard a faint rattling noise as of a wagon 
 driven fast down the frozen road, distant from our 
 house nearly half a mile. Very distinctly there reached 
 us also another sound. The book dropped from my 
 fingers and I was on my feet in an instant. 
 
 That s crying," I said. "Somebody s dead. They re 
 wailing. Maybe it s May or Lottie s little boy." 
 
 I ran to the door and opened it on the frosty night. 
 The unseen wagon was clattering on down the road. 
 Several voices were crying, women s voices, raising 
 their weird despairing lament into the night. Then a 
 man s voice joined the strange chorus. We stood 
 
Teepee Neighbors 157 
 
 i 1 
 
 together listening to that sound, which, though * o>; i a 
 hundred times, can never lose its power to sha*eV to 
 pierce. t f 
 
 "Poor Indians ! Poor people ! Death everywhere 
 suffering without help and always death I suppose 
 we ll hear tomorrow who it is." ies * 
 
 We heard. Soon after breakfast some one came 
 riding fast toward the house from the lower gate. 
 When I hear anyone approaching at that rate of speed, 
 I have no need to look out of the window to know who 
 it is. There s a blind boy who always rides like that. 
 Seth, they call him in English. But his Indian name 
 is at once tragic and poetic: "He-sits-in-the-night." 
 The sand flew from beneath his little buck-skin s scam 
 pering feet. He stopped near the house door. I went 
 out. At the sound of the door he called to me. 
 
 "Where s that ole hitchin post?" 
 
 I laughed as I put a hand on the buck-skin s bridle 
 to lead him to it. 
 
 "Come on in," I said. He got down lightly and 
 followed the sound of my steps into the house. 
 
 "It s cold." 
 
 I pushed a chair for him close to the stove. "There," 
 I said. "Sit down and tell me all the news." 
 
 The boy, welcome everywhere for his kindly nature 
 and witty mind, his helpfulness, his pluck, acted as a 
 
158 Teepee Neighbors 
 
 *sr 
 -or; " walking newspaper for the tribe. From Seth 
 
 you ^ ^re always sure of getting the last bit of gossip. 
 
 "La. j night we hear bad news," he began. 
 
 " Who died?" I asked. "I heard them driving by 
 here and crying. I hope it wasn t May." 
 
 "\VV he said. "It s Jerome s wife. She die down 
 below at tfie Forks of the river. That s her mother 
 and father you hear cryin . They was campin at the 
 school and my father he go up to tell them bout it. 
 They drive way down to the Forks in the dark last 
 night." 
 
 "Oh! Seth" I cried. "Not Ada!" Pretty light- 
 footed Ada with her starry sweet eyes. 
 
 "She borned a baby," explained Sits-in-the-night. 
 "A girl, I think. It didn t die." 
 
 So it was all to begin over again ; the miserable busi 
 ness of trying to raise in the camps a motherless baby. 
 I had seen it attempted so many times, almost always 
 to end in failure. 
 
 "Who ll take the baby?" 
 
 "I never hear ; I guess the mother." 
 
 Poor Ada. Poor pretty young wife ! Poor mother 
 less, hungry little child! 
 
 It was almost summer time when I heard of the 
 baby again; they lived so far from us, forty or fifty 
 miles, and quite off in a direction by itself. Mollie, one 
 of Ada s school mates, told me about it. 
 
Teepee Neighbors 159 
 
 "No, it ain t doin well at all. They say it just cries 
 and cries. You know the grandmother, she don t want 
 to do nothin but play cards. She leaves it all alone in 
 her teepee and she goes off gamblin . The women 
 they hears it cryin when they passes her tent. Ada 
 used to be just crazy bout babies. My! I guess she d 
 feel bad if she knew how her little baby cries." 
 
 "Oh! Mollie!" I said, "OhlMollie!" The thought 
 of that miserable little one haunted me for days. 
 
 The end of the story came before long. Heaven 
 knows the facts were bald and bitter enough. 
 
 It seems that in the end the young father had not 
 been able to endure longer the child s neglect. If you 
 with your superior white man s way of settling every 
 one s difficulties for him out of hand, think he should 
 have interfered sooner you probably do not know that 
 with the Indians the child belongs exclusively to the 
 mother and her people, the father, indeed, having no 
 voice in its disposition. It was only because Jerome 
 was an old school boy, versed a little in the white 
 man s ways, that he undertook at all to manage the 
 affairs of his motherless little one. In doing so he had 
 to face public opinion and the opposition of both his 
 relatives and those of his wife. But at last he took 
 it away from the card-playing old grandmother; went 
 to her tent and got it bodily, its rags, its bottle, a can or 
 two of condensed milk. Horseback as he was he 
 
160 Teepee Neighbors 
 
 carried it down the valley a number of miles to the 
 cabin of a friend of his, Lee Hunting Wolf, an old 
 school boy like himself. 
 
 Lee and his wife made their guests welcome to the 
 little they possessed. The Indian way is always open- 
 handed even to impoverishment. The woman took 
 the baby in hand, washed a bit cleaner the murky, en 
 crusted bottle, changed its clothes, warmed the little 
 feet. For a while it was quiet, drowsy after the long 
 unwonted ride. Then it began to fret, to wail ; its cry 
 ing became incessant. From the can the woman put 
 milk into the bottle, added water, a little sugar, warmed 
 it, tried to make the child take hold of it, suck but 
 in vain. It wailed and cried ceaselessly, distressingly. 
 From a spoon they endeavored to feed it their weak 
 sweetened coffee, then even some of the soup in which 
 the meat of their supper had been boiled. Its distress 
 only increased. Bed time came and still it fretted, twist 
 ing its body, its arms writhing, its legs drawn up. The 
 woman as she lay in bed held it on her arm, changing 
 it about from one side to the other. Not one of them 
 was able to sleep. 
 
 At last her husband got up and taking a quilt with 
 him went outside and lay down on the ground under 
 the wagon, seeking a little rest. The woman continued 
 to hush the baby, patting it, talking patiently to it. 
 Its father, in the other bunk, lay rigid, motionless, 
 
Teepee Neighbors 161 
 
 covered even to the head with his striped blanket; a 
 long, sinister, despairing form. He made even no sign 
 of being aware of his little one s distress. 
 
 The long night wore on. At last the early dawn 
 of midsummer began to show faintly in the night sky, 
 over the distorted shapes of the Bad Lands to the east, 
 amongst the stars. The light wind of the morning 
 sprang up. Outside the house meadow-larks sang 
 loudly their sweet insistent tune. The baby had at 
 last fallen into an exhausted doze. The woman slipped 
 it cautiously from her arm, and getting up from the 
 bed stepped noiselessly out of the door into the sweet 
 morning sunlight. The man in the other bed still slept, 
 apparently. The woman went to the wagon and, stoop 
 ing down, woke her husband. Heavily and stupidly 
 after the weary night, they set about their morning 
 tasks. He gathered together his little band of horses, 
 and mounting bare-back on one, drove them before 
 him, down to the stream half a mile or more away. 
 The woman gathered chips of wood and made a fire in 
 the old cook-stove that stood on the ground, just out 
 side her door. She brought meat from the house and 
 set it on in a black kettle to boil. She put coffee, sugar 
 and water into an old smoky coffee pot and placed that 
 over another hole. Then she sat down on the ground 
 by the stove and began mixing a kind of dough, shaping 
 it with her hands, rounding it on a plate, slashing it in 
 
162 Teepee Neighbors 
 
 the centre four times with a knife, that it might fry, 
 doughnut-wise. While she worked the man in the 
 house came to the door and shut it. She heard the 
 key turn in the lock. If this seemed strange to her, she 
 in her stupid, sleepy condition, scarcely gave it a 
 thought. 
 
 The house was built on high, dry ground, well back 
 from the river where the pest of mosquitoes made sum 
 mer camping almost unendurable. Unconsciously, she 
 kept looking down the trail for the return of her hus 
 band. She felt shaken by the night. Her own last 
 baby had died two years ago, or it would be that long 
 come Sun Dance time, and the feeling of this little 
 ailing creature on her arm had moved her pitifully. A 
 band of loose horses, mares with their foals, fed near 
 the house, switching savagely with their tails at the 
 encroaching flies. The little colts scampered about, 
 whinnying shrilly. She wondered in her tired, hurt 
 mind at the ways of God. Here were babies at their 
 mothers sides, fat with their mothers milk, while that 
 human baby was deprived so utterly. Dexterously she 
 she turned the cake of fried-bread in the boiling grease. 
 Through the shimmering heat waves about the stove, 
 she saw her husband riding up the trail, the coiled end 
 of the lariat which served him for a bridle, in his hand. 
 The other horses trotted ahead of him. The animals 
 were switching their tails, her husband slashing about 
 
Teepee Neighbors 163 
 
 his head and hands with a willow branch. He slipped 
 off his horse near to her, throwing the coiled end of 
 the lariat on the ground. 
 
 "Wheel" he cried. "Mosquitoes!" He still beat 
 about with his branch. The sides of the horses were 
 black with the little pests, dancing in clouds in the sun 
 light above and around them. The woman smiled. 
 
 "The food s nearly ready," she said. 
 
 Then suddenly was shattered the peace of the morn 
 ing. A horrible sound of sinister import burst upon 
 their ears, the thunder of a gun fired at close range. . . . 
 The report could have come from nowhere but within 
 the house. The woman was on her feet in an instant. 
 They both ran to the door. 
 
 The woman seized the knob, rattled it ineffectually, 
 beat upon the boards with her bare hands; the man 
 thrust at it with his shoulder. It failed to yield. The 
 woman rushed around to the one window, but the man 
 inside had screened it with its calico curtain. Lee ran 
 for the axe, returned with it, in a couple of blows had 
 the door off its hinges, prone. After all the woman 
 cowered back to let her husband pass first into that 
 place of fear. She followed him however by a step or 
 two. Simultaneously they beheld Jerome Rising Elk. 
 He had got himself so propped in a corner that the shot 
 that had killed him had left him sitting upright as in 
 life. His hair was braided carefully, his face and head 
 
164 Teepee Neighbors 
 
 anointed with the red "medicine" paint ; he was dress 
 ed in his best, dressed indeed by his own hand for his 
 burial. His striped blanket was wrapped around him, 
 drawn close about his shoulders; his hand that had 
 fired the shot was beneath its folds so that the bodily 
 destruction was not visible. Only at his feet, as he 
 sat, was a dreadful thing, a red, red pool on the mud 
 of the floor, a pool that spread insidiously even as they 
 looked. 
 
 The man ran forward and pulled the blanket off one 
 shoulder but with a cry and eyes that in horror sought 
 those of his wife, he replaced it hastily. With the dis 
 arranging of his wrappings the man s limp hand, some 
 how entangled in the lock of the six-shooter, slipped 
 from his knee and fell toward the floor, dragged down 
 by its horrid burden. Above, the half-opened eyes, the 
 mysterious painted face, showed no change. 
 
 On the other bed, the nipple of the bottle still in her 
 little mouth, the baby lay sleeping. 
 
THE LOVE WOMAN 
 
 THEY CAME to me tentatively, their shawls wrapped 
 about their calico-clad forms. At my bidding they 
 sat by the stove, thrusting out their muddy moccasins 
 to the heat. They talked a little, but shyly, their eyes 
 searching me. Assuredly there was something they 
 strove to say. I bided my time knowing that in all 
 probability they would get it out at last. They turned 
 their rugged faces toward me, their eyes keen, though 
 always slightly veiled. 
 
 One of them spoke softly. "Pauline, she goin to 
 born a baby pretty soon." 
 
 "I know." 
 
 "Did you hear that?" 
 
 "Oh yes !" 
 
 "Her mother talk a lot about that baby. They don t 
 want it." 
 
 "I suppose not, poor little soul !" 
 
 I looked around the room which, as it sometimes 
 seemed to me, ached with its emptiness, the empty cor 
 ner, the empty pillow, the drawer full of empty little 
 clothes, and my hands in my lap, emptiest of all. 
 
 "She can t be much more than sixteen." 
 
 "She is sixteen." 
 
 "And of course he can t marry her because he has a 
 wife already." 
 
 165 
 
166 Teepee Neighbors 
 
 "The old folks always say when they was young, 
 girls didn t have babies that way." 
 
 "So I ve heard." 
 
 "Her mother talks awful bad to her about this one." 
 
 "It s too late now to talk." 
 
 "Yes, pretty soon she ll born it." 
 
 I sighed. 
 
 "Her mother she think may be they give it away. , . 
 She wonderin if perhaps you ll take it." 
 
 "I !" 
 
 "There s no one else," they faltered. 
 
 I stared and stared at nothing, my empty hands lying 
 in my lap. "Does Pauline want me to?" 
 
 "She say so." 
 
 "Ah ! But when it s once born she ll feel differently." 
 
 The girls looked pensively at the fire. 
 
 I got up suddenly and walked across the empty 
 room Then I came back. 
 
 "When you see them, Pauline or her mother, tell 
 them I ll take it. I m willing. If they don t want to 
 keep it, why shouldn t I ? I ve got clothes for it, I ve 
 got everything. Will it be soon?" 
 
 "Maybe next month." 
 
 "Oh!" There would be an infinity of weary days 
 stretching between this one and "next month." 
 
 We sat in silence listening, I suppose, each to the 
 beating of her own heart. 
 
Teepee Neighbors 167 
 
 They got up at length. "Well, I guess we go." And 
 shuffling and rustling faintly they crossed the room 
 and slipped out, a little side- ways, through the half- 
 opened door. 
 
 It was a couple of weeks after this that looking one 
 day out of the window over the valley, I saw some one 
 crossing our fields. It was an Indian woman, and she 
 was alone. This latter fact was so unusual that it in 
 vested her at once with a touch of mystery; in some 
 way set her apart. She sped over the little bridge, pass 
 ed the hitching rack, stepped delicately upon the 
 gravel surrounding the house. She walked rapidly 
 and in her stride there was something eager, even res 
 olute. As she advanced her garments fluttered about 
 her, the fringes of her shawl, her ribbon-trimmed 
 skirts, her wide, beaded leggins. Her blanket was 
 drawn up over her head. 
 
 Then came the sound of fingers, fluttering also 
 against my door. 
 
 "Come in," I called out. 
 
 She entered, bending a trifle forward. With a back- 
 reaching hand she closed the door, her eyes searching 
 the room. Then she slipped her blanket down from 
 off her head. Her sleek, very black hair, was brushed 
 to glossiness, beads encircled her neck. Her dress was 
 new and bright in color, ribbons and a small bag of 
 Indian scent were pinned on her breast. Her snug- 
 
i68 Teepee Neighbors 
 
 fitting moccasins were daintily beaded. Her cheeks 
 and the parting of her hair showed the faint tinting 
 of paint. It was Pauline. There was a child-like qual 
 ity about her, almost elfin. She was short, reaching 
 I should say barely to the shoulder of the gaunt women 
 of her tribe. In her smile, a little set in her soft, parted 
 lips, in her small piquant face and most of all in her 
 darting swift glances, there was something that recalled 
 the Japanese. 
 
 Holding her shawl carefully about her, she dropped 
 into a chair, laughing a little. One slim hand she drew 
 quickly from its hiding place beneath her shawl s folds. 
 Its delicate fingers, their nails a trifle long, were clasped 
 about a tiny btmch of violets. Then, her head cocked 
 a little to one side, she held them up to me. 
 
 "See, I find these. They re the very first ones." 
 
 Perforce I came near to admire them, but instead, 
 I looked at her. She suggested dimly a kitten, eyeing 
 a darting butterfly, I thought. 
 
 Perhaps because she was of a nature more direct 
 than that of most of the women, or because discretion 
 no longer tramelled her, or because she had formed a 
 habit of choosing and seizing suddenly, she did not 
 hesitate and secrete and essay, as do the Indians gen 
 erally, but turned to me at once with her errand. 
 
 "I wanted to ask if you could lend me some money." 
 Above the hand holding the violets she smiled at me. 
 
Teepee Neighbors 169 
 
 "You know I goin to need it soon and we ve not got 
 any, really." She laughed something both shy and 
 daring in the sound. "The Indians goin to have pay 
 ment in two months, that s what we hear, but that s 
 not soon enough for me. I can pay you back then. 
 Will you do it for me? I don t want to starve when 
 I m sick." Again a low laugh escaped her. The sleek 
 head was tilted a little, the soft lips parted in anticipa 
 tion, the questing eyes astir. 
 
 "How much did you think you d need?" I really 
 had no intention of lending the money to her. 
 
 "I suppose five dollars. Is that too much?" Her 
 smile was almost indulgent, as though from some plane 
 far removed from me she looked back upon me. 
 
 "Oh ! my dear, that s a good deal." 
 
 She made with her hands a deprecating gesture, 
 gazed at me, sighed. 
 
 "Yes, indeed it is." And all of a sudden something 
 plaintive came into her eyes, her mouth, pouting, 
 drooping at the corners. She stood up, the hand that 
 held the violets thrust suddenly out to steady her ; rib 
 bons, fringes, skirts fluttered about her. "Yes, I sup 
 pose I askin too much." 
 
 The opinion I held of her clamored in me for ut 
 terance. 
 
 "You re only sixteen, Pauline, aren t you? Just 
 think!" 
 
170 Teepee Neighbors 
 
 She looked at me sharply, in her face a quick ex 
 pression of unearthly wisdom. And then feeling 
 poignantly anew the emptiness of the room and made 
 a little reckless, a little tender by the consciousness 
 of it, I turned impulsively. "I ll let you have it," I said, 
 and wondered at hearing the words spoken by my own 
 voice. 
 
 A sudden dimple showed in the curve of her cheek 
 and seeing it you felt as though something which had 
 been lost was on the instant returned to its own place. 
 A sense of proportion came to you, a comfortable feel 
 ing of fitness. 
 
 She fluttered across the room to me holding out her 
 hand for the extended cheque. Then she stood by 
 me turning it in her fingers, her sleek head bowed, her 
 wandering eyes bent upon it, her face pensive, the 
 dimple fled. In a moment she raised her head quickly 
 and looked me straight in the eyes. She stiffened a 
 little, her lips parted as though she would have spoken. 
 But, although I waited, no word escaped her. Instead 
 a tremor passed over her face leaving it set and wan. 
 She drew her shawl carefully about her, stowing away 
 her cheque somewhere in the recesses of her clothes. 
 
 "I m thankhV you very much," she said. Her voice 
 was soft as are the voices of Indian women, but unlike 
 the majority of theirs it was keyed a trifle high. 
 
 She opened the door. "Goodbye." She smiled back 
 
Teepee Neighbors 171 
 
 to me over her shoulder, and, fluttering and eager, she 
 sped away across the field. 
 
 Then I heard that the baby was born. 
 
 "Have you seen it?" I asked one of the girls. 
 
 Her eyes were quickly averted. "No, ma am." 
 
 "Have you seen it?" 
 
 Again the hastily veiled eyes, "Why, no." 
 
 Yet in the Indian camps the advent of a baby is such 
 an event! There are smiles, hand-shakings, proud 
 exhibitions at the coming of each little new-born. Why 
 in Pauline s case was it different? I did not wish to 
 understand and yet seeing and hearing what I did 
 must needs do so. I would have gone myself to see 
 the baby only that I was constrained by a sense of 
 delicacy amounting almost to shyness. If they should 
 think I had come to take the baby, that I wanted to 
 deprive them of it ! Except on that one occasion there 
 had been no word said to me about it. But well I knew 
 they were aware of my message to them. Was it of 
 that the litt e evil mother had wanted to speak to me 
 over her drying cheque? 
 
 At last when she came out and began going about 
 with it, some of them looked at it. 
 
 "Such a fat baby!" they said. "Oh! a beautiful 
 baby. But so white." This last observation was always 
 
172 Teepee Neighbors 
 
 repeated of it. That meant that it was not the child of 
 the one they had named to me as its father, the Indian 
 who, having a wife already, might not marry the little 
 mother. 
 
 The girl and her mother lived in a big, conspicuous 
 teepee standing tall and stately on the flat, sage-covered 
 floor of the valley. But it had been erected not too far 
 from the trees and brush growing along the river. 
 From them anyone might reach it with discretion . . . 
 
 In a little while they began telling about the camps 
 that the baby was dead. There seemed no good to be 
 had from questioning them. More than the simple 
 statement of the fact could be got from no one. 
 
 "But was it sick?" 
 
 "I don t know, I never see it." 
 
 "Did she have the doctor for it?" 
 
 "Oh no!" 
 
 "The medicine man, I suppose." 
 
 "I never hear." The pleasant, inpenetrable faces 
 were averted a little from me. 
 
 "Where did she bury it?" 
 
 A comprehensive gesture was made with the head 
 and lips. "Up there in the hills, I suppose." 
 
 Then one day I caught a glimpse of the young 
 mother. She was speeding on foot up toward the 
 Agency, her hair, worn loose now in conventional 
 mourning, floated about her. She seemed to be a 
 
Teepee Neighbors 173 
 
 little less brightly dressed, her moccasins were plainer ; 
 but still she fluttered as she walked. Often after a 
 death when the hearts are still torn the Indians will 
 not look at you, fearing, I suppose, to meet the com 
 passion in your eyes, to show the pain in theirs. So I 
 was prepared to pass her unrecognizing. But coming 
 abreast of her, from under her hair, like the eyes of a 
 restless sprite, hers were lifted to mine. A smile parted 
 her soft lips, recalled the dimple. . . 
 
 I think I only stared at her. Once past her, over my 
 shoulder I looked back at her slight figure, eager, bend 
 ing forward, hurrying, furtive, noiseless, her hair and 
 shawl fluttering behind her, and on her face, I must 
 suppose, that little shining smile, that had gleamed 
 where, as it seemed to me, any light would have been 
 an intrusion. 
 
 Suddenly I carried a hand to my empty breast and 
 lifting my eyes to the hills that bordered the valley I 
 searched absently for that invisible place where lay the 
 little sleeping baby that had not been wanted. 
 
THE AGRICULTURALIST 
 
 HE CAME into our house and sank down into the first 
 chair that offered itself, the very picture of despair. 
 All the lines of his rugged, homely face were drawn 
 downward, his eyes were blurred and sunken, his body 
 drooped as though sustained by his will alone. Of 
 speech he seemed utterly bereft. 
 
 I greeted him guardedly. I dared not question him. 
 What could it be? Had some one of his household 
 died? What other explanation could account for such 
 dejection? In vain I searched my brain to recollect a 
 moribund member of his family. Something sudden 
 must have occurred. I looked at him; I dared not 
 speak, not knowing what to say or to leave unsaid. 
 
 But, understanding the Indians as I did I was 
 convinced that in his own time he would unbosom him 
 self. If I could have given him some refreshment it 
 might have loosened his tongue but it was the middle 
 of the morning, an awkward time for house-keepers, 
 and really I had nothing to offer him. 
 
 So I stirred about at my work making my presence 
 as inconspicuous as I might. 
 
 Then at last the explanation came, almost epic in its 
 naked despair. 
 
 "I been to the store. They won t trust me. At home 
 we got nothing nothin . And there s no work." His 
 
 174 
 
Teepee Neighbors 175 
 
 eyes turned miserably in the direction of his home. "My 
 children are cryin ." 
 
 I stood before him, filled with sympathy, listening. 
 
 "I work summer before last. I raise potatoes, a good 
 crop. But that cold time round Thanksgivin they all 
 freeze. We just throw them out in the road. Beside 
 that I raise oats. Then all through the winter I sell 
 oats, a sack at a time. That give us food. That last 
 till nearly summer. Then this summer I plow, I sow 
 oats again, I work hard. I irrigate. They grow fine, 
 them oats ; high, thick. Then I go up to the Agency 
 for the reaper. But it s broken. I ask the engineer fix 
 it for me. He s too busy. I go see the clerk. He 
 promise. I wait. Then I go see the agent. He promise 
 too. I wait some more. It s past time to harvest, my 
 crop it s spoilin . I try to borrow a reaper from the 
 school. They won t lend theirs. The other two Agency 
 ones, they gone. The men that got em they can t give 
 em to me, so many askin for them before me. I try 
 fix that machine myself, but I can t do it good. I ask 
 the engineer again. He still busy, he say . . . Then there 
 come a hail storm and cut my crop for me." A long 
 breath escaped him. "After that there wasn t nothin 
 to do but turn the stock in on it." 
 
 "Ah-ee!" I cried, Indian-way. Then I turned on 
 him suddenly. "It s nearly spring now. Has that 
 reaper ever been mended ?" 
 
176 Teepee Neighbors 
 
 "No. I guess that past mendin ." But his mind 
 wandered back to his lost crop. "Them oats they were 
 fine. I buy my own seed-oats from the Agency store. 
 Some them Agency seed-oats what they issue to the 
 Indians they got wild oats mixed in with them. Wild 
 oats they hurt the stock. You can t sell good oats with 
 them mixed in. But my crop ain t got none o that 
 kind." He ceased wearily, sunk back in his chair. 
 
 "I might lend you some money," I said. 
 
 He looked at me, but apathetically. "Then I could 
 buy my children somethin ." 
 
 I placed the money in his hand. "Cheer up," I said. 
 "You ll have better luck next year." 
 
 "I would hire a machine, pay for it from the crop, 
 but I can t find one nowhere. New they cost seventy- 
 five dollars. I can t buy one." 
 
 "No, no. The Government doesn t mean that you 
 shall have to. It intends to provide that for you." 
 
 "Yes," he said, "but that Government s in Washing 
 ton, a long way off. It can t make engineers work when 
 they busy way out here on the reservation." 
 
 "Where," I ventured, "are the two good reapers 
 now?" 
 
 "Layin out in the sage brush. Them folks they 
 don t bring em back to the Agency and the agent he 
 don t make em." 
 
 "Next year those will be broken too." 
 
Teepee Neighbors 177 
 
 He sighed. Then he looked at the money in his 
 hand. "I thank you," he said. 
 
THE INFORMERS 
 
 "Cheyenne, Wyo. 
 Nov. 6. 
 Dear Friend : 
 
 I want to ask you go see my wife. Indians they 
 write me she horned her baby and she don t get well. 
 I ask you go see. Give her money. I know them folks 
 they poor cause my oat crop fail. Nobody be there 
 to water it after I have to go way. When I come out 
 this place I work for you. I pay. Tell her me I be all 
 right. I ain t sorry here in prison. Three months I 
 guess it go quick. 
 
 Your friend 
 Henry Howling Crane. 
 
 I just like say to you I never did have no whiskey in 
 my tent. No more don t Arthur. He say so. That 
 Agency man must put in that coat pocket himself 
 make trouble for us. Arthur and me we thinking that. 
 
 Henry." 
 
 I turned the little, blue-lined sheet over and about. 
 I stared at its straggling, ill- formed words, at its fre 
 quent smudged thumb marks. Then I read its contents 
 again. 
 
 The Half-breed, through the blue of his cigarette 
 smoke, eyed me curiously. 
 
 "Do you know the whole story?" he asked. 
 178 
 
Teepee Neighbors 179 
 
 "About the finding of the whiskey? Why, yes." 
 "I said the whole story ; the first part especially." 
 "I didn t know there was a first part." 
 "I thought not, but there was. You never heard of 
 the great Agency graft case that happened before you 
 came here, five no, six years ago?" 
 
 "Of course I ve heard of it. You mean the time 
 that half the money appropriated by the Government 
 for the building of laterals from the main ditch was 
 said to have been stolen ? That time the Indians came 
 up to the Agency to be paid for their work on the 
 laterals and the cheques were passed to them backs up 
 ward, over the agent s counter? And the men were 
 directed how to endorse them and were made to do so 
 without turning them over? Then when the cheques 
 were signed they were at once withdrawn and the 
 Indians were handed out the amount in cash they 
 knew to be due them.. Each man receiving his full pay 
 was consequently satisfied. It was a simple enough 
 trick and it would have worked all right if some of 
 the younger men had not become curious. They never 
 gave us our pay that way before, they said. Then two 
 or three of them snatched their cheques and turned 
 them- over . . . The sums written on the faces amounted 
 to double and more what the men were receiving." 
 
 "And were you told which men turned the cheques 
 over and what they did then?" 
 
i8o Teepee Neighbors 
 
 "I heard there were three of them who signed that 
 letter to the commissioner in Washington, the letter 
 that exposed the whole graft and asked that an inves 
 tigation be made. And then an inspector came, and he 
 made it pretty hot for the whole Agency. And finally 
 after the findings had been sent to Washington and an 
 answer received, an employee and a trader were sum 
 marily ejected from the reservation. The agent and 
 the other trader, who were said to have been involved, 
 saved their official necks by no more than a hair s 
 breadth. And now the only reason or so most people 
 seem to think that the lot of them aren t putting in 
 a few well earned years in the Rawlins pen/ is be 
 cause the affair took place in a year of important 
 elections just before them, in fact and the votes and 
 influence of the gang were needed by the senator and 
 the others, who stood behind the grafters." 
 
 The cynical eyes narrowed. "Ah ! I see you ve 
 got us here put up pretty pat... And the names of 
 the three informers, do you happen to know them?" 
 
 I shook my head. 
 
 The Half-breed got up and so suddenly that it might 
 almost have been said that he leapt to his feet; with 
 nervous, soundless steps he crossed over to the stove 
 and cast into it the butt of his cigarette. 
 
 "One was James Badger he s dead." He wheeled 
 about, fixing me with his eye. "The other two were 
 
Teepee Neighbors 181 
 
 Arthur Broken Horn and " his hand waived airily 
 toward my letter, "your correspondent." 
 
 "How strange, " I began, not knowing just how 
 much of the implication I was expected to understand. 
 
 "You think so?" 
 
 I folded the letter primly and inserted it in its 
 envelope. 
 
 "Do sit down. You make me fidgetty when you 
 prance." 
 
 He stopped, looked at me, laughed and sat down. 
 
 "I will," he said. 
 
 Then ensued a half-minute s silence. 
 
 "May I smoke again?" 
 
 "Of course." 
 
 He selected a cigarette from his case, twisted it in 
 his lean, yellow fingers, lit it, carried it to his lips. 
 Then he flung himself about in his chair, settling the 
 length of him at some sort of ease. There was some 
 thing lithe and yet lazy in the pose of the man, alert 
 though somnolent. 
 
 "Well, what do you think of my theory ?" 
 
 "As a matter of fact you haven t got to the theory 
 yet." 
 
 "Oh! haven t I?" The mocking eyes searched the 
 depths of mine. 
 
 "Of course Arthur and Henry are the last ones 
 anyone would have suspected of caching whiskey, or of 
 
182 Teepee Neighbors 
 
 giving it to the school boys. That last was the charge 
 they were sent up on, was it not?" 
 
 He nodded. "Do you remember how the whiskey 
 was found?" 
 
 "Yes. An Agency employee who had no ostensible 
 business in the Indian camp suddenly burst into their 
 tent Arthur and Henry were camping together. 
 They are great friends, you know " 
 
 "I do. And I know also that the stars were in felici 
 tous conjunction that day and that the Agency white 
 man is a great watcher of the Heavens " He puffed 
 out a thick cloud of smoke. 
 
 " the employee offered no word of explanation 
 but began to rummage furiously. Before the astonish 
 ed inmates of the tent could make a move to stop him 
 he had burst into their grub-box, even stripped their 
 beds of the covers. At last he unearthed an old 
 slicker and from its pockets produced two bottles partly 
 filled with whiskey. Then he cried out his accusation 
 to the two still bewildered men, and with his booty, 
 disappeared. In a little while the Indian police came 
 and arrested the fellows." 
 
 "Correct. And did you know that before the police 
 men came the wives, and some of the steadiest of the 
 old men, wanted those two to skip off and hide ; prom 
 ised, in fact, to see and keep them safely cached . . . ?" 
 
 "And they wouldn t go?" 
 
Teepee Neighbors 183 
 
 "They wouldn t go." 
 
 "...I have always felt Henry was such a good 
 man. He takes care of that blind boy, you know, and 
 that old woman, neither of them any relation to him. 
 I understand " 
 
 "Ah, goodV Ambiguous term! Kind, if you like, 
 but not necessarily. . . " 
 
 "I know. I know," I interrupted. "I know what 
 you are going to say, all of it, but must you condemn 
 too?" 
 
 He straightened himself in his chair, composed his 
 face as by an effort. He shook his head. "There s 
 been condemnation enough. I ll cast no stones " he 
 dropped his eyes, "for your sake." 
 
 "Rather, for Henry s." 
 
 "Rather for Henry s. I m sorry. He is good. You 
 see I make amends. Yes, good, as the patient ox be 
 fore the butcher s axe ; good, but maddening." 
 
 "But the odds against him! What could he have 
 done?" 
 
 "Nothing. No more than could the ox. But he 
 maddens me just the same." 
 
 I sighed. 
 
 "But he is good. Especially just now by compar 
 ison." 
 
 "He is." I spoke severely. "Of course the Indians 
 
1 84 Teepee Neighbors 
 
 do smuggle lots of liquor into the reservation, but 
 Henry is not one of those who do it habitually at any 
 rate. Beside that he would hardly have been so foolish 
 as to have risked such facile discovery " 
 
 "Exactly," said the smooth, cynical voice. The 
 black eyes twinkled. 
 
 I picked up the letter from my lap. "He writes me 
 that his wife s sick now. It seems that there s a new 
 baby Do you know anything about it?" 
 
 Again the Half-breed flung himself out of his chair 
 and up and down the room on nervous feet; for all 
 the world, I thought, like a caged thing. 
 
 "I do," he said. "The baby died. He ll never see it, 
 Henry won t that is, not this side of Jordan." His 
 steely eyes almost leered at me, his mouth twisted 
 scornfully. Then he got himself together again. "But 
 I moist be going. I ve stayed gossiping too long... 
 Goodbye." 
 
 Just perceptibly he hesitated, then he did, for him, a 
 most unusual thing. In striding past me he checked 
 his dash for the door, and stopped, almost wavering, 
 before me. Then he held out his hand. He did not 
 look at me. 
 
 I took the hand. "I ll go down to the camp to 
 morrow," I said. 
 
 He lifted his gaze to my face, and suddenly I saw 
 
Teepee Neighbors 185 
 
 that his eyes had grown soft, even pleading, like a 
 dog s. 
 
 "Do." He no more than whispered the word, and 
 turning on his hurried, soundless feet he quit the room. 
 
A MATTER OF CUSTOM 
 
 HE WAS a small man for an Indian, with a face that 
 bore a look at once baffled and yearning, like a child 
 who though repulsed, returns. His skin was very pale, 
 with that sallow, shadowless look that denotes with 
 Indians sickness or disturbance of soul. He sat in the 
 stale and dingy railroad car, crowded close to the win 
 dow ledge, slumped low in his seat, his eyes fixed 
 blindly upon the fugitive landscape. Beside him was 
 the sheriff, in heavy coat and wide hat, his elbows and 
 shoulders filling the major part of the seat. The young 
 Indian himself was in clothes as thin as they were 
 threadbare, though brushed to an irreproachable neat 
 ness, and adjusted with nicety. He sat at a sort of 
 numbed ease, except that the muscles about his jaw 
 twitched and trembled spasmodically. 
 
 As I entered the car and remarked him, I went 
 at once to him. When, Heaven knows with conscious 
 gentleness I called his name, a look so startled that it 
 was almost one of agony, convulsed his face. It was 
 instantly suppressed. He took my proffered hand, 
 lifted his eyes to mine eyes large, and gentle for one 
 of his keen race. We did not speak. There was indeed 
 nothing to be said. The thing from every point of 
 view was past words of ours. 
 
 Then I let go his hand and quickly he withdrew it, 
 186 
 
Teepee Neighbors 187 
 
 tucking it out of sight at his side, as though he were 
 thankful that he might conceal that much of himself. 
 
 A voice called me by name. I turned. An oldish 
 man, also in overcoat and wide hat, and seated a little 
 way behind the young Indian s place, was beckoning 
 to me. I did not recognize him but the look of his face 
 was so urgent that I went at once at his call. He 
 crowded over toward the window, making room for me 
 beside him. 
 
 "You know him?" he asked, and eagerly. 
 
 "Oh, yes! Well/ 
 
 "Then tell me about the case. Tell me everything 
 you can." 
 
 I looked at him helplessly. The charge on which the 
 young Indian was arrested was indeed to me an un- 
 namable one. It bore a strange, mediaeval appellation, 
 which I myself had never heard in use until I came 
 to live among Agency-governed Indians. 
 
 The man continued. "I m called on the jury. It s 
 a United States case, you know, to be tried down in 
 Cheyenne; not locally. It s a serious charge, you 
 realize that. It ll mean five years for him, the way 
 things appear. Maybe more." 
 
 I looked at him. "There are two men now," I said, 
 "in Leavenworth serving five year sentences, on that 
 same charge." 
 
 "You see." There was no mistaking the earnestness 
 
i88 Teepee Neighbors 
 
 of the man. His eyes looked as grave even as I felt 
 mine to be. 
 
 "It s a horrid charge and I don t know much about 
 Indians. I ve always understood though that they 
 were decent, at least decent. Tell me, is he that other 
 kind of a man?" 
 
 "Oh, no! I know him well. His first wife, she 
 lived only a little while was one of the girls I was 
 fondest of. He was a good husband to her. I believe 
 him to be steady and self-respecting, even high-minded. 
 This affair has been going on a long time, you know, 
 though it is only just now that the agent is taking 
 action." 
 
 "Why?" his eyes as well as his voice demanded. 
 
 "I don t just know." 
 
 "Do you think it s spite work?" 
 
 "No I don t. I ll give the devil his due. It s not all 
 that at any rate." 
 
 "How much?" 
 
 "You see this Indian and his wife are both rather 
 prominent young people, and they have had certain 
 advantages, in the matter of schooling; and I sup 
 pose what they did was more of a disappointment to 
 the agent than the same thing would have been in 
 others. She s not over school age yet, not past 
 eighteen." 
 
Teepee Neighbors 189 
 
 "They re obliged to stay in school till they re 
 eighteen?" 
 
 "Yes. But as long ago as the summer before last 
 these two lived together, were married, you understand, 
 in the Indian way. And when it came time for her to 
 go back to school they went to the agent together and 
 asked him for a marriage license. This he refused 
 them on the ground of her being under age. She then 
 returned to school, and quietly enough. And she 
 stayed there faithfully throughout the entire year, 
 though in the Christmas holidays she went back to 
 this man, her husband. Her mother was living then; 
 they all occupied one tent together. He even gave her 
 family presents for her, I understand. Some of the 
 girls told me so. There was not the slightest secrecy 
 or effort at concealment in the whole affair. They 
 shared one tent. She cooked for him and waited on 
 him. He paid her bills and her mother s at the store. 
 They were seen everywhere together, she sitting on 
 the seat of the wagon beside him, with Indians the 
 wife s place. Then when school was over that year 
 they again asked for a license. She is all but eighteen. 
 Frequently, of course, when there is a reason, the age 
 limit is waived, and the girls are allowed to marry. 
 But there was no reason, in this case. Once more the 
 license was refused and the girl was told that she must 
 again in the fall go back to school. But when she went 
 
Teepee Neighbors 
 
 back and the agent understood at last how things were r 
 he was furious. 
 
 "And now they are trying him as though she were 
 a child and he a man who had taken base advantage 
 of her." 
 
 "Hell !" said the man "I beg your pardon." 
 
 "You needn t." 
 
 "Well, if he hasn t done what they charge him with, 
 what has he done ? There seems to be at least a mod 
 icum of fault." 
 
 "He has disobeyed the agent." 
 
 "But that s no criminal offense." 
 
 "No, though I understand there exists a ruling of 
 not so very recent date that Indians must be married 
 legally." 
 
 "That, then, is wherein he has offended." 
 
 "Yes. He did what his father and grandfather and 
 all his people had done before him. He wooed and 
 won according to the custom of his own people, and 
 then at the demand of his dominant neighbors he would 
 have married in their way, had he been allowed. He 
 tried to, twice. Of course even in trying he was guilty 
 of forcing things. . ." 
 
 "I ll swear again if you re not careful." 
 
 "But oh! they shouldn t try him on that dreadful 
 charge ; that bitter, insulting accusation that hits him in 
 his manhood and her in her motherhood." 
 
Teepee Neighbors 191 
 
 A sudden movement ahead of us drew our attention. 
 The young Indian was leaning forward, half rising to 
 his feet, peering across the aisle and through the oppo 
 site window. The train was just passing over the last 
 corner of the reservation. To one side, on a hill top, 
 silhouetted against the pale, remote sky of the plains, 
 stood a rapt and immobile figure; man or woman we 
 could not tell which. Then the train shot into a cut 
 and out again, taking thence a new direction. The 
 young man slumped back into his seat, again hastily 
 thrusting out of sight his hands. His chin dropped to 
 the level of his breast. 
 
 The Half-breed knocked, opening my door almost 
 simultaneously. From a pocket of his canvas jacket 
 protruded a newspaper which I recognized as being a 
 Cheyenne one. 
 
 "Nannie s back/ he said. 
 
 "Ah ! Nannie s back, and safely. And Jared?" 
 
 "Jared is to cool his heels for six months at Raw- 
 lins." 
 
 "They convicted him !" 
 
 "But, my dear lady," and the narrow, cynical eyes 
 opened suddenly wide, "you didn t expect they d let him 
 off? He may be thankful it s six months instead of 
 as many years. He ll see his son before it can walk at 
 any rate." 
 
192 Teepee Neighbors 
 
 "His son?" 
 
 "I understand there s a son/ 
 
 "But why must they always convict them? I never 
 heard of an Indian on trial being exonerated. Stop 
 being horrid and tell me the reason." 
 
 "The reason? Really you ought to know it. It s 
 because when we Indians aren t dead we re considered 
 next safest behind bars. So it s rather a matter of race 
 pride on the part of the whites to see us safely there, 
 I fancy." 
 
 I pushed a chair toward him. "Considering me," 
 I said, "you re rude. Beside which cynicism is not 
 always an ornament." 
 
 He pulled the paper from his pocket and held it 
 out to me. "No, my friend," he said, "but it s a 
 refuge." 
 
THE DAY DREAM 
 
 IT WAS before she left me that day that I told her of 
 my dream. For a long time I had wished, vaguely, that 
 she might know of it. And yet before the child had 
 died I never had had courage enough to relate it to her. 
 But today, almost before I realized what I was doing I 
 began telling her of it. 
 
 "There is something I have wanted to say to you/ 
 I said. "It is a very strange thing. I I want to tell 
 you of a dream I had, oh! long ago, before indeed you 
 sent me that note asking me to get the doctor for your 
 little Millicent, you know." 
 
 "Yes, I wrote you that." 
 
 "I could scarcely believe my eyes when I read the 
 letter Sits-in-the-Night brought it to me and still 
 less when I found your name at the end of it. It was 
 the very night before, the morning before to be exact, 
 that I had had my dream, about you about her." 
 
 She looked at me strangely. "You dreamt of her?" 
 
 "I thought I was there, in the kitchen, and I heard 
 wheels driving up to our hitching rack and stopping; 
 then voices, then steps. Finally people came women 
 crossing in front of the kitchen window. They 
 seemed to be passing around toward the back where 
 the door opens. I recognized Sadie, she had Hannah 
 
 193 
 
194 Teepee Neighbors 
 
 on her back, high up on her shoulders. You know the 
 way she always packs her babies." 
 
 "Yevl know." 
 
 "And Lottie was with them, and Amy. They wore 
 old shawls, their leggings were failing about their 
 ankles, they looked draggled and torn and their hair 
 was hanging wild and loose about them " 
 
 "Ah-eef 
 
 "And they were crying. Sadie opened the door and 
 came in. Tears were running down her face. The 
 other women stood outside and wailed softly, but 
 bitterly, oh! bitterly. Then Sadie explained. She 
 said your baby was dead. Mollie s baby is dead. 
 Millicent is dead. We goin to bury her. We want 
 you to come. She is out there in the wagon, all wrap 
 ped in the quilts and Mollie is there too. We goin 
 to dig the grave. Won t you come ? And all the time 
 those two out there kept wailing, wailing. I had never 
 heard them so near before, crying that bitter way, nor 
 such young women. It is generally the old grand 
 mothers and far off to one side at the burial that you 
 hear." 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 "Then I began reaching out my hands every way; 
 putting things to rights in the kitchen, getting my 
 wraps on, preparing to go with them. I fumbled and 
 blundered. Everything was confused as so often it 
 
Teepee Neighbors 195 
 
 is in dreams. This seemed to go on for a long while. 
 And all the time those two outside " 
 
 "Ah-ee!" 
 
 "And beside their crying a sort of chorus sounded ; 
 far off, very faint but very penetrating, a surge of 
 voices; as though all the crying of all the mothers 
 bereft throughout the ages was audible to me ... Then 
 I woke up and I was crying too. My face was all wet 
 with tears." 
 
 She still stared at me strangely, her eyes searching 
 the depths of mine. Once she shifted her glance but 
 quickly looked back at me again. A white woman 
 would have been upon her feet, torturing her fingers ; 
 but she was Indian, and upon her lay, to her almost 
 tangibly, the weight of the hopeless ages past and to 
 come. So she only looked at me, in her eyes the res 
 ignation of one to whom hope has been ever deferred. 
 
 "That was before I received the letter. I had not 
 heard the slightest whisper of Millicent being ill." 
 
 Then she leaned toward me, something acute and 
 desirous in the action, the pose. With who could say 
 what of poignancy, of anxiety, of mysticism, she put 
 me a question which to this day I have never under 
 stood. 
 
 Her eyes blazed into mine. "Did you dream that in 
 the day time?" she cried. 
 
THE UNBORN 
 
 HER FEET were upon the flying treadle of my machine, 
 her fingers poised over the creeping material; above 
 her watching eyes her brows frowned a little, as in her 
 scant calico and close-wrapped shawl she bent above 
 her work. Her hair was parted sedately in the middle, 
 one long delicate line drawn from forehead to neck. 
 Its dark meshes hung unbraided, but gathered close and 
 pressed against her head, disclosing its gentle curves, 
 and although falling loose was restrained by her en 
 folding shawl. She worked swiftly, and with that 
 despatch which denotes skill; yet also with an air un 
 hurried, leisurely, after the manner of her people, who 
 work, but ever, at the call of friendliness or need, feel 
 free to lay down the burden and check the pace. So 
 ever and anon she paused, pressing her fingers upon 
 the flying upper wheel, restraining its progress; and 
 across the intervening machine lifting her eyes to mine. 
 With her she had brought her sewing ready cut and 
 folded together. On the floor at one side of her lay 
 the heap of fitted pieces, on the other the finished fruit 
 of her accomplishment. Now she was busy laying 
 together two squares of brightly flowered calico, turn 
 ing in their meeting edges, stitching them securely. 
 "You ll not make any little clothes for it?" 
 "No little first clothes, we don t never dress them in 
 the beginning, you know." Her eyes dropped to the 
 squares under her hands. "We just wrap them up." 
 
 196 
 
Teepee Neighbors 197 
 
 "I feel glad that you are going to have another." 
 
 She sighed, still eyeing and fingering her sewing. 
 "I should like to have a lot of children, and my husband 
 would like it too." 
 
 "You are young. You will have them." 
 
 "But when they die " 
 
 "Ah you needn t tell me of that!" 
 
 She began turning the treadle slowly, guiding the 
 work with her slim, brown fingers. 
 
 "I always feel sorry that your sister does not have 
 any more." 
 
 She stayed the wheel, looking up at me strangely. 
 "She don t want no more." 
 
 "Doesn t want them? But I thought all Indians 
 loved children so much." 
 
 "You know she has buried her three." 
 
 "And now she is afraid." 
 
 "I guess that s it she takes something. . ." 
 
 "What ! Do Indian women do that ? But then they 
 are as bad as the whites." 
 
 "Whites, they do that too? With us the old women 
 they know a root. They dig it up and pound it fine 
 and tie it up in little bags and the women that don t 
 want no babies, they take it." 
 
 She regarded me long with her mirthful, strange 
 gaze. "I think," she said, her eyes although still upon 
 
198 Teepee Neighbors 
 
 me giving me the effect of not remarking me, "I think 
 it is better to want children. After all God made us 
 women " 
 
 "And a woman who isn t a mother " I interrupted. 
 
 "Oh !" cried she. "That s the hardest of all. The 
 women cry and cut their hair and gash their legs and 
 go in rags when their babies die, but it s better to be a 
 mother of dead children than not to be a mother at all." 
 
 Again her eyes and fingers took cognizance of the 
 work waiting beneath her hands. 
 
 I got up suddenly and crossed over to my treasure 
 trunk. From it I brought forth a little yellowed gar 
 ment. I held it out to her. Our eyes rested upon it ; 
 not upon each other. Then I spoke. 
 
 "Do you mind," I said, "because he died?" 
 
 She reached out and took it, folded it slowly, and laid 
 it upon the heap of her finished work. 
 
 "Oh no!" she said. "I don t mind. Mine mine 
 died too." 
 
THE MAN S PART 
 
 THE BIG, square, barren, rude room which in its exist 
 ence had progressed from store to school-room and on 
 to council hall, was filled to overflowing with a throng 
 of anachronous humanity, rank on rank, tier behind 
 tier. There was the sound of moccasins slipping grit- 
 tily over the knotty floor, of the dull, rhythmic thudding 
 of a mother s foot as she trotted her fretful baby, the 
 rustling of soft garments, the stirring of unhurried 
 bodies, the hissing of stealthy whispers. Here and 
 there two Indians might be seen conversing in the 
 sign language ; their hands, shielded from sight by en 
 circling backs, were lifted scarcely above the level of 
 their laps. 
 
 The people were massed one might say ethnolog- 
 ically. The main part of the crowd was Indian, squat 
 ting, seated on benches, or standing leaning against 
 the walls. The two tribes sat separately, as did also 
 the sexes of each. To right and left at the tapering 
 ends of the rows were the mixed-bloods, dressed 
 mainly like the whites except that their garments 
 looked more home-made, more patternless, more illy 
 put. Then quite at one end of the room and grouped 
 about the chairman s table sat the whites; school and 
 Agency employees, traders, soldiers, ranch neighbors; 
 an indifferent, self -seeking, heterogeneous group. In 
 
 199 
 
2OO Teepee Neighbors 
 
 the midst of these last, dapper, conspicuously well- 
 dressed, and well-groomed, presided the inspector from 
 Washington. His old, dignified face, slightly pompous, 
 was crowned with grey hair brushed back from his 
 brow. His hands rested squarely upon his knees. By 
 his side, taking notes, sat his stenographer, his glance 
 half curious and half supercilious playing constantly 
 over the faces of the throng. At either end of the little 
 table behind which sat the inspector, were stationed the 
 interpreters, one for each tribe. The eyes of these men 
 were searching, though their lips seemed to mock 
 slightly, and when they spoke, rising to interpret, even 
 though they passed on the phrases with a certain 
 guarded vehemence, they seemed consciously to pre 
 serve a detached attitude, as do those who speak but 
 will not be held accountable for what they say. 
 
 Perhaps the arrangement that caused the mixed- 
 bloods and the other younger Indians to be the first 
 to deliver their speeches was intentional on the part of 
 someone. At any rate one by one they arose, in over 
 alls, in spurs, in bright neckerchiefs, differing from 
 each other in type and temperament, as differed also 
 those two tribes, and indeed, the two races, represented 
 there within the council room. 
 
 Occasionally after some speech the inspector would 
 get up and pronounce in continuance a few elucidating 
 words. He gesticulated slightly and conventionally. 
 
Teepee Neighbors 201 
 
 He bent a little toward the interpreters, each in turn. 
 His words came slowly and with unction. 
 
 The subject of the council was the desire of the 
 Indian Bureau to throw open to white settlement a 
 half of the reservation. The mixed-bloods and the 
 younger Indians were, though they spoke but briefly, 
 in accord in favoring the execution of the plan. 
 Their words, however, from some lack in themselves 
 of knowledge or of conviction, were not uttered in a 
 manner calculated to tip the scale greatly their way. 
 
 "It s a question of water rights," they said. "We 
 must have money to buy those rights and how else can 
 we obtain it ? It s an obligation to our children." 
 
 Again and again the same note was struck. One by 
 one the young men arose, and one by one sat down 
 again. The interpreters mopped their tired brows. 
 The inspector sipped frequently from a glass of water 
 upon his table. 
 
 The air was full of the odor of people, pungent with 
 the herb perfume worn by the Indians in little sacks 
 sewed to the clothing, acrid with the smell of sage 
 clinging to shawls and dresses, with the flavor of 
 smoke-tanned buckskin. A half -open window let in 
 a little fitful breeze that played wantonly with the dust 
 showing in the sunlight of the upper reaches of the 
 room, flirting and whisking about the heads of the 
 throng. 
 
2O2 Teepee Neighbors 
 
 At last it came time for the weightier speeches, for 
 those of the councilmen, of the chiefs, of indeed the 
 older men of the two tribes, the patriarchs of this 
 patriarchal people. 
 
 "Sell our land?" they cried. "Retreat? Give up? 
 Be forced into contact with intermingling whites? 
 Take money in place of our land? What, money for 
 the good of these traders who will get it all from us 
 in the end?" Their old faces hardened; their eyes 
 flamed. "Give up? Retreat? Move on? Abrogate 
 the old promises, the old treaties? What, again?" 
 Their lips twisted bitterly. "Do you not know, does 
 not the Great Father at Washington know, that all we 
 ask now of life is a little land, a little peace, a little 
 place wherein to live quietly our quiet life, and in the 
 end a little ground for our narrow bed? Move on! 
 That we think was the first word the whites " the 
 outsiders/ the aliens/ was the name they in the Indian 
 tongue gave this other race "said to us. It seems 
 they are saying it yet/ The soft bitter voices ceased ; 
 the old men sank into their seats, the interpreters too 
 relaxed, wiping their faces. 
 
 The inspector stood up cautiously, apologetically 
 even. "But these old men, the chiefs, do not seem to 
 have caught the point. The whole question of selling 
 or not selling turns on the matter of their water rights ; 
 on theirs and their childen s as has been said. Land 
 
Teepee Neighbors 203 
 
 even in this beautiful Wyoming valley is a mockery 
 without water. They can I am sure understand that ; 
 water they must have." 
 
 An old chief rose solemnly, turned deep, scornful 
 eyes upon the inspector. "Let the white man from 
 Washington go but a mile yonder," his extended arm 
 pointed that way, "and he will see the river that flows 
 down our valley and waters our land. It is there. It 
 is ours. It is born in these mountains above us. God 
 made them, I suppose as he made it. It is ours." 
 
 Along the packed rows there was a slight stirring. 
 
 Patiently again the inspector arose. "I know that it 
 is hard for the old people to understand that having 
 water does not necessarily mean having rights to that 
 water. There exist hundreds of white men below you, 
 beyond the border of your reservation, who have taken 
 up claims along this same stream and who have filed 
 on its water prior to any Indian having done so. The 
 State must recognize this priority. The whites have 
 filed on the water and have paid the dues. Beside 
 that as the law stands now the Indians cannot individ 
 ually take out water rights. I know that you will say 
 that when this reservation was given to these two 
 tribes, a matter of a generation and a half ago, the 
 water was included with the land, to the center of the 
 streams bordering the reservation/ as your old treaty 
 reads. But times and conditions have changed since 
 
2O4 Teepee Neighbors 
 
 then. At that period the Federal Government control 
 led the water of Wyoming, now its disposition has 
 been turned over to the State, Where the Indians 
 stand in this matter has never been decided by law." 
 
 The mixed-bloods who understood at least partially, 
 shifted uneasily. 
 
 "But now although the question of priority has still 
 not been decided the Indian Bureau which I repre 
 sent says that you as a tribe may buy your water 
 rights. For this you must have money." He named a 
 sum reaching far into the thousands. "The sale of 
 your land will bring you this amount of money, at 
 least. This thing is intricate and impossible I believe 
 to elucidate to the older people, your leaders. They 
 must, I fear, just hear my statements and, if they can, 
 believe." With his hands he made a deprecating little 
 gesture. Then he sat down. 
 
 There was silence in the room, complete save for a 
 slight stirring, the sound of deep breathing, and the 
 fretting, here and there, of a hungry child. 
 
 Finally at the back of the room, by some shifting of 
 his pose, by thrusting himself forward beyond the 
 relief of his line, an Indian made his presence known. 
 He was a man of powerful build, of nobly moulded 
 head ; his hair instead of having been braided, had been 
 gathered forward into two loosely twisted strands ; his 
 
Teepee Neighbors 205 
 
 eyes showed speculative yet keen, his mouth was 
 sharply chiseled though withal soft in its lines, and 
 there was a kindly look on his face which gave some 
 how the impression of the morning light seen upon the 
 rugged side of a great mountain. In age he seemed to 
 be between the young and the old. 
 
 As he made his presence known there was a slow 
 turning of the heads in his direction, a slight tensing 
 of the crowd. The old chiefs appeared suddenly eager 
 and filled with hope ; as for the younger men and the 
 mixed-bloods they glanced at him and looked away 
 again, as if, sighing they said : "Another on the wrong 
 side. Ah, the blind old men !" 
 
 Then he spoke. His voice was deep, very virile, 
 carefully subdued as something held in leash, and yet 
 through it there seemed to run a tremor, a quaver 
 almost, that gave an impression of strange intensity. 
 
 I repeat his words with elision. 
 
 "I am not one of the old men," he said, "and yet I 
 can easily remember the time when this valley, these 
 mountains, were ours ; not because someone had given 
 them to us, but because we had taken them for our 
 selves, because our arrows flew straightest, our spears 
 reached furthest, our horsemen rode fastest, our hearts 
 were bravest." 
 
 Here several of the old men grunted sympathet- 
 
2o6 Teepee Neighbors 
 
 ically. More and more the faces of the throng were 
 turned toward the speaker. 
 
 "Then everything was changed. The strangers came 
 like a flood, like our rivers in the spring: they surged 
 over us and they left us as we are. Perhaps this was 
 the will of the Stranger-on-High, we cannot tell... 
 But these strangers on earth were not altogether un 
 kind to us. For what they took they gave a sort of 
 compensation. It was as though they carried away 
 from us fat buffaloes and then handed to us in ex 
 change each a little slice of their meat. They deprived 
 us of our valley and our mountains but instead they 
 gave us each eighty acres of the land. Then they sent 
 more strangers with chains and three-legged toys to 
 measure these off correctly for us. They gave us wire 
 for our fences but only enough so that we must spend 
 much money for more. They gave us seed, but also 
 so little that we were driven to buy more. We worked 
 some of us with the chains and three-legged toys 
 some at the ditches, every way we could, for now we 
 needed a new thing something of which we had 
 before known nothing, money. We received it 
 and then we spent it." 
 
 Again faint grunts and groans encouraged him. 
 
 "For we cannot keep money long. We are children. 
 This the Great Father in Washington understands, 
 and also that our ears are dull, that our eyes cannot 
 
Teepee Neighbors 207 
 
 read his written words. Therefore, in his kindness, 
 he sends to us this man to speak to us face to face." 
 He turned his slow gaze upon the inspector. In his 
 eyes was the look of mockery. "We have listened to 
 his words. But what has he said to us? Give up the 
 eighty acres, for your children to be born, give up the 
 money you earned and spent, give up your homes ; as 
 you gave up this valley and these mountains. The 
 white men need them. Your day is past. But I am 
 not unkind. Without compensation I will not deprive 
 you. See, I will give you even a little more money 
 He stopped abruptly. His eyes drooped, his shoulders, 
 his hands, the whole man. 
 
 A strained silence had fallen upon the room, smother 
 ed it. From it escaped the faint sighing of the younger 
 men. The chiefs stiffened as they sat. 
 
 By an effort the speaker seemed to rouse himself. 
 He stared strangely about the room. "There was a 
 little boy once," he said, and his voice had grown 
 dreamy, slightly high in pitch, "and this little boy held 
 his hand out toward the flames, nearer, I saw it 
 the fire was so pretty, so warm, it danced, purred, 
 sparkled. His hand crept nearer, nearer. His father 
 watched him. At the last moment he caught him and 
 pulled him away. The child cried then, he struggled 
 in his father s arms, he pushed away from him, he 
 fought. Again he reached out toward the flame. But 
 
2o8 Teepee Neighbors 
 
 finally he looked up into the man s face and suddenly 
 it seemed to dawn on him that, although he could not 
 understand, this was indeed his father, old and wise 
 and loving; and that he, by comparison, was only a 
 little misguided child . . . " The strange, vibrant 
 voice dwindled, broke. The speaker made a wide ges 
 ture toward the attentive inspector, held it while the 
 interpreters got forth in English his last sentence. 
 Then he sank back into his old place against the wall ; 
 with one bent hand he wiped the sweat from his brow. 
 
 A faint sound of muttering passed over the room; 
 old fierce eyes were \eiled, young keen ones peered in 
 credulously. But the insector was on his feet on the 
 instant, his hand outstretched to grasp the golden 
 moment. 
 
 "There is no more to be said," he cried. "Our ears 
 are ringing with words. Our hearts are full. I have 
 here, prepared, a paper. Let those who for their own 
 good and the good of their children, are of a mind to 
 sell, now sign it." 
 
 Slowly, amidst moving and murmuring, the long 
 paper, in the hands of one of the interpreters, made its 
 deliberate rounds. Difficult signatures were inscribed 
 in slow succession. Ancient, unaccustomed hands, 
 deft enough with spear or bow, grasped awkwardly the 
 pen and with it made their wavering "mark." 
 
 Some there were of the old men, indeed the majority 
 
Teepee Neighbors 209 
 
 of them, who wrapping their blankets about them 
 arose, and shambling, withdrew, aloof and soundless. 
 
 Like a shaken kaleidoscope the council broke up. 
 
 The inspector leaned back in his chair, a hand 
 shielding the working of his mouth. His eyes searched 
 the variegated, dissolving throng. The stenographer, 
 still seated and playing with his idle pencil, shot him 
 an understanding glance. 
 
 Later the Half-breed, standing on the board walk 
 outside the trading store, a box of crackers in one hand, 
 a paper containing pickles in the other, was lunching 
 heartily. Suddenly he shifted everything into his left 
 hand and strode down into the road. For in company 
 with his wife and a young son the last of the speakers 
 was passing. 
 
 The Half -breed s extended hand grasped the 
 Indian s. 
 
 "I thank you for what you said," he cried. "It was 
 a noble thing to have done. You faced them all; the 
 old timers, the chiefs, public opinion, prejudice. And 
 you won. It was a brave act." 
 
 The rugged, illuminated face was turned to him, the 
 deep eyes rested squarely upon his. "You have perhaps 
 forgotten," he said. "You are younger than I am and 
 too you have been for a long time with the whites but 
 I remember well the time when we were boys and our 
 great head-chief Black Star used to sit and talk with 
 
2io Teepee Neighbors 
 
 us. Yes, you have perhaps forgotten/* he repeated, 
 and his look, just touched with yearning, rested upon 
 the younger man. "But I remember I have never 
 forgotten what he used to say to us. Be brave, he 
 would tell us. That is the chief thing to learn ; to do 
 what each one believes is right, to speak for the right, 
 everywhere, always. To be fearless of tongues, of 
 persecution, to take counsel with our own minds and 
 being sure to speak out surely. That/ he always said 
 to us, and that only, is the man s part/ " 
 
TIT FOR TAT 
 
 THIS WHOLE affair was one that seemed so un 
 speakable, that was whispered with such pale lips, such 
 starting eyes, from camp to camp, from man to man, 
 from woman to woman, that only its merest exterior 
 was ever known to us who were outsiders. But the 
 end of it was open enough, and told and hopeless and 
 final. 
 
 At what we call our Sub-agency there was the usual 
 trading store and in it worked as clerk and general 
 assistant an Indian. He was a man, I should judge, of 
 about forty, a little too old to have ever been a Govern 
 ment school boy ; a man of steady, almost stately bear 
 ing, of fine head held proudly upon powerful shoulders, 
 of keen level glance, and personal appearance most 
 fastidious. 
 
 At first he had been employed in the store as a sort 
 of janitor, a man to sweep floors, fill lamps, tend 
 stoves, open freight boxes. He had worked steadily, 
 silently, observantly; and then at the end of one un 
 interrupted year he had sought out the trader. He 
 spoke in Indian, which his employer understood. 
 
 "I can read," he said, "and I can write a little, and I 
 can figure. I have been learning." He picked up book 
 and pencil lying to hand and made good his claims. 
 
 The trader regarded him with astonishment. When 
 211 
 
212 Teepee Neighbors 
 
 the man had first come to him to work he had been 
 able to speak but few and hesitating words in English. 
 "How in the world ?" 
 
 The steady, imperturbable eyes smiled wisely. "My 
 little girl goes to school, and my wife s brother " 
 
 "I see." The trader regarded the man measuringly. 
 Then he took a turn up and down the store. He stop 
 ped in front of the Indian. "George," he said. "I need 
 another clerk. Will you take the job?" 
 
 So in my day George Smoke was the chief clerk in 
 the Sub-agency store, often in entire charge of it and 
 of its little postoffice. He was the trusted right hand 
 of the trader. There was no Indian on the reservation 
 more respected than he. 
 
 He was a married man, living in a little two-room 
 cabin which the trader provided and which was close 
 to the store. His wife was a youngish, rather light- 
 minded woman; the mother of several children; a little 
 addicted to gambling. We thought that her ways were 
 not always approved of by her husband. 
 
 Then the crash came, unforeseen, unattended. Of 
 course, as the girls said, Jasper Blue Bird was fre 
 quently seen hanging about Smoke s wife s house, but 
 then, he did not seem to be secret about it he bore 
 some distant relationship to Smoke and the husband 
 was just a stone s throw away, often on his duties pass- 
 
Teepee Neighbors 213 
 
 ing in and out of the store and in full view of his 
 home. 
 
 At length a day came when Smoke, his head as high 
 as ever, his eyes level and imperturbable, went to the 
 trader. 
 
 "Long Neck," he said it was the Indian name for 
 the man "I want to quit." 
 
 The trader stared. "To quit? To quit the store?" 
 
 "Yes. I want my pay." 
 
 "But youVe been with me three years, over three 
 years. I can t run the store without you, George. And 
 there s that fall shipment of freight just coming in I 
 was thinking you could begin tomorrow unpacking and 
 listing it. I thought " 
 
 "I got to quit." 
 
 The trader might as well have appealed for leniency 
 to the smiling sky as to the serene, implacable face 
 confronting him. 
 
 "You ll you ll be coming back?" 
 
 "1 don t know." 
 
 For a long time the trader fumbled over his accounts 
 and the contents of the cash drawer before he found 
 the right pay for his clerk. He was confounded. 
 Silent, pleasant, impenetrable before him, stood Smoke. 
 At last the money was counted out, the receipt signed. 
 The Indian took his pay without a word, turned on his 
 
214 Teepee Neighbors 
 
 moccasin-shod feet, and strode out of the store, his 
 sleek head a little lowered. 
 
 Then for two months Smoke did nothing. He 
 moved his family out of the cabin which belonged to 
 the trader and into a tent also in the vicinity of the 
 store. There he might frequently be seen as might 
 also his wife. Their four children were in the board 
 ing school. 
 
 The very observant said that Jasper Blue Bird had 
 ceased going to Smoke s wife s tent. 
 
 Jasper himself was also a married man, with a mild 
 timid little Mission girl for his wife. Although three 
 years had gone by since the day of their marriage there 
 had as yet been no children born to them, only she 
 plaintive of face, was in the teepee to welcome him, or 
 to speed him. But often there were also with her her 
 women relations, her mother, her aunts, her grand 
 mother. Their presence, frequent, chattering, irked her 
 husband. She knew this, vaguely, and yet seemed 
 never able to find the courage to send them away but 
 stood plaintive and wistful between the antipathetic 
 factions of her house. 
 
 Then suddenly at night with a terrible sound of 
 sobbing this little wife had flung herself upon the door 
 step of the Mission, clutching and scratching at the 
 locked door. The sisters within, wild-eyed and 
 scared, had opened to the sound of her distress. She 
 
Teepee Neighbors 215 
 
 lay torn, bruised, and disheveled in a frenzy of fright, 
 incoherent, almost speechless. 
 
 Her mother was sent for. Then her husband. 
 
 The woman came wide-eyed, loud-voiced, fearful, 
 aghast. They waited for the husband, but it was two 
 days before he arrived, slinking in after dark, abashed 
 and furtive. 
 
 The doctor also came and there followed with him 
 a fearful scene of humiliation. Then his evidence was 
 reported to the agent. 
 
 Her own story ran like this : She had been coming 
 home from her mother s tent to her own, just a little 
 way. It was dark. Yes, and cold. She had her blan 
 ket up over her head and had been walking fast. She 
 had not heard so much as a step until here she always 
 stopped, choking, and sobbed spasmodically. 
 
 "Yes, it was George Smoke." 
 
 They regarded her gravely. "You are quite sure it 
 was George Smoke?" 
 
 Beside little Mrs. Blue Bird there was one other 
 person who was "quite sure," and that was George 
 Smoke s wife. Her attitude was singular. For she 
 went to the agent s office, alone, and there standing 
 before him, her shawl drooping and trailing about her, 
 she denounced her own husband. She was very 
 specific. "It was revenge," she said. They stared at 
 her, not understanding. 
 
216 Teepee Neighbors 
 
 "Explain!" 
 
 This of course she could not do. 
 
 Then came out the stories of the frequent visits of 
 Jasper Blue Bird to Smoke s wife s tent. Finally a 
 charge was brought against Jasper. 
 
 Both men were tried at the next term of court. 
 
 Jasper appeared cowed, cringing; he stepped lightly, 
 veiled his eyes, even bowed himself a little. 
 
 George Smoke however was his constant, haughty, 
 imperturbable self. Even the sight of the plaintive 
 little wife, his pitiful victim, did not visibly shake 
 him. When asked for his explanation, excuse, if 
 excuse there was, he only laughed, staring insolently 
 at the judge. 
 
 Considering the delicate nature of the case had the 
 trial been a "white" one, it would have been carried on 
 behind closed doors. But as it was, the populace, ugly, 
 scandalous, foul, of the little county seat was admitted, 
 and freely. The two women were stared at, appraised ; 
 the men eyed sullenly, with indeed an occasional gleam 
 of sinister mirth. That the wife of Smoke would soon 
 bear another child was only too apparent. 
 
 The sentences of the two men were similar, five years 
 at hard labor in the "pen" at Rawlins. And in a 
 few days, hand-cuffed and side by side, the two were 
 led away. 
 
 But all the time in the eyes of George Smoke, wheth- 
 
Teepee Neighbors 217 
 
 er he looked at his own hard-eyed wife or at the 
 stooping, cringing man toward whom her eyes so 
 frequently turned, or at the little weeping childless 
 wife of Jasper Blue Bird, was visible a gleam of 
 triumphant satisfaction, of hunger glutted. 
 
 So we saw him at the last, the steady, exultant look 
 in his eyes, his bearing calm, relentless, assured, un 
 shaken. 
 
THE OTHER MAD MAN 
 
 THEY CALLED him Crooked Hand. He had another 
 name, two, in fact ; an English one and a proper Indian 
 one. But because his hand and arm were crooked 
 withered, twisted they called him Crooked Hand, 
 making a descriptive sign for him in their language 
 of signs. His leg was also crooked, also withered and 
 twisted, and beside that he was an epileptic. A strange 
 disheveled looking creature he was; a rough shock of 
 stiff, short hair crowned him, ill assorted ragged clothes 
 covered him, he wore any odd shoes that came his way ; 
 in short he was neither prepossessing nor clean. His 
 great eyes that seemed startled, even hurt, in their ex 
 pression, were soft, unlike the steely sharpness of most 
 Indian eyes, but withal shallow, as are the eyes of 
 animals; eyes that indeed seemed hardly the windows 
 of a soul. 
 
 His conversation, in English at least, was decidedly 
 limited, was in fact restricted almost to one single 
 sentence. 
 
 "How do you do, George?" 
 
 "Hello ! hello !" 
 
 "Well, what s the news in the camps?" 
 
 Then he would look at you with his strange, pathetic, 
 almost animal eyes and smiling his wistful bewildered 
 smile he would gently reply, "Dam-fi-no." Often I 
 had heard him thus innocently answer many innocent 
 
 218 
 
Teepee Neighbors 219 
 
 questions, and yet each time that the incongruous 
 phrase was hurled at me I would have to hold my face 
 steadily to keep it seemly. 
 
 "And your step-mother, what is she doing today?"" 
 
 Again the wistful, bewildered smile would light the 
 sombre eyes, again in the soft, hoarse voice: "Dam 
 n-no." 
 
 Sometimes he would arrive looking more directly 
 gloomy than usual. 
 
 "What is it?" I would cry. 
 
 And he, struggling with the elusive English would 
 manage : "Hungry, heap hungry. No bread. No 
 meat. Children cry." And he would saw his hand 
 across his middle in the "hungry" sign. 
 
 As we all know it is good when we are a little stirred 
 to be able to do something immediate and definite. So 
 I would spring up, fly to my refrigerator for scraps; 
 meat, bread, cold potatoes, cold pancakes, seasoned or 
 unseasoned, any way, any thing; and I would heap a 
 great plateful and set it on his uneven knees. He 
 would stare at it with famished eyes ; and he would eat 
 of it, but only a little, a taste of this, a taste of that. 
 And then he would ask me for a bit of paper all the 
 time with his starving eyes upon the food and, with 
 a certain dexterity despite his crooked hand he would 
 empty the scraps into the spread paper, and wrapping 
 
22O Teepee Neighbors 
 
 all together he would rise to his uncertain feet, a smile 
 upon his face, hunger in his eyes. 
 
 "You re not going to eat any more?" 
 
 "No. Them children, heap hungry. I take." 
 
 "Oh! all right." Not for worlds would I have 
 tarnished with so much as a finger-touch, his altruism. 
 "But you ll have a cigarette before you go, won t you?" 
 
 At that he would lay down his bundle and, seating 
 himself securely, he would smile up at me from his 
 crazy, shallow eyes, and, as he smiled, help himself to 
 my proffered tobacco and paper. 
 
 "I savvy roll em. You ever see me?" 
 
 "No," I always said as I stood before him to admire. 
 Upon his knee he would flatten out the little oblong of 
 paper, pour into it the requisite amount of tobacco, 
 manage, not unskilfully with his one hand, to roll his 
 cigarette. 
 
 "That s fine," said I. "How did you learn to do it?" 
 
 And "Dam-fi-no," would answer George, pleasantly. 
 Then resuming his bundle he would arise and lurch 
 painfully away. 
 
 "Of course you might send him away," I suggested. 
 "There s a place an asylum you know for Indians 
 who are not are not well, you understand. But 
 he s alright except when he has those spells/ as you 
 call them, isn t he?" 
 
 "He has em often now." 
 
Teepee Neighbors 221 
 
 "It s pretty hard on all of you." 
 
 "The children they bese fraid o him." 
 
 "Then why not send him away?" 
 
 "You see he s awful kind, and good. When we 
 short o grub he just don t eat nothin , most. Gives it 
 all to them kids. 
 
 "Then why are they afraid of him?" 
 
 "He he took the axe once " 
 
 "The axe!" 
 
 "Yes. You mind the time that blind boy, Sits-in- 
 the-Night, come here to see you? His head was 
 bleedin you remember? And you drove him up to 
 the Agency to the doctor." 
 
 "Certainly I do. He told me his horse had thrown 
 him." 
 
 "I know he told you that. He didn t want to make 
 no trouble for for George." Involuntarily the fin 
 gers of his right hand tapped upon the wrist of his 
 bent left. "But, really it was Crooked Hand done it, 
 he took the axe " 
 
 "Oh, my goodness !" 
 
 "Afterward when the spell was over he feelin so 
 bad he cryin about it." 
 
 Another day soon after this, Crooked Hand came, 
 stumbling and lurching, to my door. His face worked ; 
 tears streamed from his shallow eyes. 
 
 "Why, George! What s the matter? What is it?" 
 
222 Teepee Neighbors 
 
 He found a chair. "They take my gun/ he mtmv 
 bled. I want it. I want shoot. Poom\" His good 
 hand made a suggestive sign against his own breast. 
 "I die." 
 
 "Oh, George, no, no !" 
 
 He glowered at me. "I take my gun. I shoot/ 
 He repeated the words doggedly. 
 
 "What s happened now. What s so much the mat 
 ter?" 
 
 He stared at me vacantly. "Dam-n-no," he said. 
 
 All day he sat in that same chair, glowering, mum 
 bling, eating when I gave him food, talking in his un 
 intelligible English, whenever I would listen. It was 
 to me a distressing and a very long day. About sun 
 down his step-mother with one of her children came 
 for him. He left me much as he had come, muttering, 
 crying a little, half reluctant and altogether bewildered. 
 
 Then I heard that he had gone ; that they had taken 
 him to that place of mysterious location and tenantry, 
 that vestibule of the realms of death; that bourne 
 whence, in common with death, no traveler, or almost 
 none, returns. It seemed that what had brought the 
 thing to an issue had happened at the Sun Dance. 
 When every one was inside the lodge, absorbed by its 
 thrilling spectacle, Crooked Hand, outside, had been 
 attacked by one of his "spells." His evil spirit rode 
 and goaded him. An old inoffensive Indian lay asleep 
 
Teepee Neighbors 223 
 
 in the shade of some nearby bushes. The possessed 
 man came upon him. A broken bottle which presented 
 itself to him opportunely served for his weapon. He fell 
 upon the old man viciously. The commotion was 
 heard even in the dance lodge. Men rushed out. The 
 victim was quickly rescued, the mad-man bound. But 
 the affair, having happened in that crowded public 
 place, got noised about, came at last even to the agent s 
 ears. 
 
 "He must go. There is an asylum in South Dakota 
 to which he must be sent." 
 
 So an employee of the government was delegated 
 to take him to that unknown place. To reach it they 
 must make a journey of nearly twenty- four hours, and 
 by train. 
 
 Of his parting with his people I know nothing. No 
 one ever spoke of it to me and I never asked of it. 
 Some things are better left mercifully covered. But of 
 the journey I heard later from the employee who had 
 accompanied him. 
 
 "No, he didn t give me any trouble. He slept all 
 right, and he ate all right. But he seemed uneasy. At 
 every little noise he would start and glance quickly over 
 his shoulder. And he insisted on sitting faced the 
 wrong way and staring and staring back in the direction 
 from which we had come. He would not talk. I 
 could not get even his famous phrase out of him. And 
 
224 Teepee Neighbors 
 
 once he cried a little. I could see the tears running 
 unheeded down his cheeks. And after all, in a way, he 
 is a man . . . When we had nearly reached Canton we 
 were obliged to pass from one car to another quite at 
 the other end of the train. He walked ahead of me; I 
 followed at his heels guiding and encouraging him. In 
 the lurching of the train it seemed an endless journey. 
 At last we passed into a sleeping car to be confronted 
 by a full-length mirror. Crooked Hand saw it, or 
 rather what it reflected. He stopped dead; then he 
 strode up close to it, halted again, stared. I laid my 
 hand on his arm. Go on! Go on! I said. But he 
 heeded me not at all. In the mirror, over his shoulder, 
 I saw his face. It was transfigured, beatific. His lips 
 moved; he was speaking brokenly in Indian. He 
 stretched out a shaking hand. The man in the glass 
 of course did likewise. I have never seen on a human 
 face such an expression of trembling yearning, of in 
 credible joy. 
 
 "Every one was staring at us ; as you can imagine 
 every face in that car was turned toward us. I shook 
 him a little. Come, George, come ! You must, really/ 
 But he was still oblivious, standing staring, staring 
 Then he lurched and made as though he would sink 
 down upon the floor. I caught him by his arm to 
 check him. George, come on, come on! what is it? 
 What s the matter? 
 
Teepee Neighbors 225 
 
 "For an instant he rested his vacant eyes on mine, 
 then eagerly sought again the reflection in the mirror. 
 Suddenly a terrible sob broke from him and he seemed 
 to collapse and shrink together against my arm. 
 
 " Come on, boy, come on ! 
 
 "He lifted a trembling, grimy hand and pointed it 
 toward the creature confronting him. He seemed to 
 be struggling for speech. Did he imagine, I wondered, 
 that the man before him was another Indian, come to 
 him in his loneliness? Or had he, rather, an inkling 
 that that wild-eyed, disheveled creature was indeed 
 the ghost of his poor self ? At any rate all this emotion 
 was proving too much for his shallow wits. His head 
 sank limp upon his breast. 
 
 "I shook his arm. The scene, with everybody staring 
 at us, was growing unbearable. 
 
 " George, what is it? 
 
 "Then, his chin upon his breast, his vacant eyes on 
 the floor, he mumbled a reply. Dam-fi-no/ he said." 
 
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