The Captain of the Gray-Horse Troop

"No. On reflection, I will not run; it would compromise my dignity. We will climb soberly, side by side, like Darby and Joan on the hill of life."

With a demure countenance she took his hand, and they scrambled briskly up the slope. When they reached the brow of the hill she was fairly done up, while he, breathing easily, showed little fatigue, although she had felt his powerful arm sustaining her many times on the steeper slopes. She could not speak, and he smilingly said, "I hope I haven't hurried you?"

"You – are – strong," she admitted, brokenly. "I'm not tired, but I can't get breath."

At length they reached the summit and looked about. "What is the meaning of those little towers of stone?" she asked, after a moment's rest.

"Oh, they have different meanings. Sometimes they locate the springs of water, sometimes they indicate the course of a trail. This one was put here by a young fellow to mark the spot from whence he saw a famous herd of buffalo – what time he made a wonderful killing."

"I suppose all this land has been the hunting-ground of these people for ages. Do you suppose they had names for hills like this, and were fond of them like white people?"

"Certainly. They had a geography of their own as complete in its way as ours, and they are wonderfully sure of direction even now. They seldom make a mistake in the correlative positions of streams or mountains, even when confused by a white man's map."

"It is wonderful, isn't it – that they should have lived here all those years without knowing or caring for the white man's world?"

"They don't care for it now – but I see Two Horns signalling that breakfast is ready, so we had better go."

"Let's run down!"

"Wait!" He caught her. "It will lame you frightfully, I warn you."

"Oh no, it won't."

"Very well, experience is a fine school. If you must run down, we'll go down the shadowed side. Now I'll let you get half-way down and beat you in, after all. One, two, three – go!"

With her skirt caught up in her hand, she started down the hill in reckless flight. She heard his shout and the thud of his prodigious leaps, and just as she reached the level he overtook her and relentlessly left her far behind. Discouraged and panting, she fell into a walk and waited for him to return, as she knew he would.

"Oh, these skirts!" she said, resentfully. "What chance has a woman with yards of cloth binding her? I nearly tumbled headlong."

He did not make her suffer for her defeat, and they returned to camp gay as a couple of children. Lawson smiled benevolently, like an aged uncle, while Elsie told him of their climb. Said he: "When you're as old as I am you will wait for wonders to come your way; you will not seek them."

The breakfast was made merry by Jennie, who waged gentle warfare on Parker, whose preconceived ideas of the people resident on an Indian reservation had been shaken.

"Why, you're very decent," he admitted at last.

"They are all like us – nit," replied Jennie. "We're marked 'special.'"

"Couldn't be any more like you, sis," said Curtis.

"You shouldn't say that."

"Well, it needed saying, and no one else seemed ready to do it. If Calvin had been here!"

"Who is Calvin?" asked Mrs. Parker.

"I know!" cried Elsie. "He's one of the handsomest young cowboys you ever saw. If you want to do a cow-puncher, Parker, he's your model."

"I certainly must see him. If I don't do a cowboy or a bucking bronco I'm a failure."

As they were ready to start, Elsie again took her place beside Curtis, but Lawson insisted on sitting behind with Jennie. "It's hard luck, Parker, to have to sit with your wife," he said, compassionately.

"Oh, well! I'm used to disappointments," Parker replied, in resigned calm.

Elsie felt the need of justifying herself. "Are you complaining? Am I the assistant driver, or am I not? If I am, here is where I belong."

"When I was coaching in Scotland once – " began Lawson.

"Oh, never mind Scotland!" interrupted Elsie. "See that chain of peaks? Aren't they gorgeous! Do we camp there?"

"Yes," replied Curtis. "Just where that fan-shaped belt of timber begins, I hope to set our tent. The agency is just between those dark ridges."

"It is strange," Elsie said, after a pause. "Last year I was wondering at everything; now I am looking for familiar things."

"That is the second stage," he answered. "The third will be sympathy."

"What will the fourth be?"

"Affection."

"And the fifth?"

"Devotion."

She laughed. "You place too high a value on your Western land."

"I admit there is to me great charm in these barren foot-hills and the great divide they lead up to," he soberly answered.

As they talked, the swift little horses drummed along the hard road, and by the time the agency flag-pole came in view they had passed over their main points of difference, and were chatting gayly on topics not controversial. Elsie was taking her turn with the reins, her face flushed with the joy and excitement of it, while Jennie and Mrs. Parker, shrieking with pretended fear, clung to their seats with frenzied clasp.

Curtis was as merry as a boy, and his people, seeing him come in smiling and alert, looked at each other in amazement, and Crow Wing said:

"Our Little Father has found a squaw at last."

Whereas, as her lover, Curtis had been careful to consider the effect of every word, he now went to Elsie's service as frankly as Lawson himself, and his thoughtfulness touched her deeply. Her old studio had been put in order, and contained all needful furniture, and her sleeping apartment looked very clean and very comfortable indeed.

Jennie apologized. "Of course, it's like camping compared to your own splendid home, but George said you wouldn't mind that, being an artist. He has an idea an artist can sleep in a palace one night and a pigsty the next, and rejoice."

"He isn't so very far wrong," Elsie valiantly replied. "Of course, the pigsty is a little bit extreme. This is good enough for any one. You are very kind," she added, softly. "It was good of him to take so much trouble."

"George is the best man I ever knew," replied Jennie. "That's why I've never been able to leave him for any other man." She smiled shrewdly. "I'll admit that eligible men have been scarce, and my chances have been few. Well, I must run across and look after dinner. You're to eat with us till you get settled. We insist on being hosts this time."

"Surely," said Curtis, as they rose from the table, "being Indian agent is not the grim, vexatious experience I once considered it. If the charm of such company should get reckoned in as one of the perquisites of the office, the crush of applicants would thicken into a riot. I find it hard to return to my work in the office."

"Don't be hasty; we may turn out to be nuisances," responded Elsie.

XVI

THE CAMP AMONG THE ROSES

During the remainder of the day the agent found office work most difficult. His mind wandered to other and pleasanter things, and at last he began to make out a list of the necessaries for the camping trip.

The next day, about four o'clock, Crow Wing and Crawling Elk came into his office bringing a young Tetong, who said he had been struck on the head by a sheep-herder.

Curtis was instantly alert. "Sit down – all of you!" he commanded. "Now, Yellow Hand, tell your story."

Yellow Hand, a tall and sinister-looking fellow, related his adventure sullenly. "I was riding the line of the reservation, as Crawling Elk had told me and as you commanded, when I came upon this sheep-man driving his flocks across the river. I hollered to him to keep away, but he kept on pushing the sheep into the river; then I tried to drive them back. This made him angry and he threw a rock at me, and struck me here." He touched his bandaged head. "I had no gun, so I came away."

"Did you throw rocks at him?" asked Curtis.

"No, I was on my horse."

"You rode among his sheep?"

"Yes."

"Well, that was wrong. You should have reported to me and I would have sent a policeman. You must not make trouble with these men. Come to me or report to Grayman, your head man over there. The ranchers are angry at Washington, and we must be careful not to make them angry at us. I will send Crow back with you and he will remove this man."

As they went out Curtis said to Wilson: "This is the second assault they have made on our boys. They seem determined to involve us in a shooting scrape, in order to influence Congress. We must be very careful. I am afraid I ought not to take this camping trip just now."

"Don't put too much importance on these little scraps, Major. Yellow Hand is always getting into trouble. He's quarrelsome."

"I'd disarm a few of these reckless young fellows if it would do any good."

"It wouldn't. They'd simply borrow a gun of some one, and it won't do to disarm the whole tribe, for if you do these cowboys will swarm in here and run us all out."

"Well, caution every one to be careful. I'm particularly anxious just now, on account of our visitors."

"I don't think you need to be, Major. You take your trip with your friends. I'll guarantee nothing serious happens down here. And as you are not to leave the reservation, I don't see as the department can have any roar coming."

Nevertheless, it was with some misgiving that Curtis made his final arrangements for the start. Crane's Voice and Two Horns had interested Elsie very much; therefore he filled their places with other men, and notified them to be in readiness to accompany the expedition, an order which pleased them mightily. Mary, the mother of Crane's Voice, was to go along as chief cook, under Jennie's direction, while Two Horns took general charge of the camp.

Elsie burdened herself with canvases. "I don't suppose I'll paint a picture while I'm gone, but I'm going to make a bluff at it on the start," she said, as she came out and took her place with the driver amid the mock lamentations of Lawson and Parker and Jennie.

"Can any of you drive – no!" replied Elsie, in German fashion. "Then I am here."

"I like her impudence," said Lawson.

As they drove up the valley, Curtis outlined his plan for using the water on a huge agency garden. "I would lay it out in lots and mark every lot with the name of a family, and require it to be planted and taken care of by that family. There are sites for three such gardens, enough to feed the entire tribe, but so long as a few white men are allowed to use up all the water nothing can be done but continue to feed the Tetongs in idleness, as we are now doing."

As they rose the grass grew greener, and at last Elsie began to discover wild roses growing low in damp places, and at noon, when they stopped for lunch, they were able to eat in the shade of a murmuring aspen, with wild flowers all about them. The stream was swift and cold and clear, hardly to be classed with the turbid, sluggish, discouraged current which seeped past the agency.

"It is a different world up here," Elsie said, again and again. "I can't believe we are only a half-day's drive from the agency. I never saw more delicious greens."

Mrs. Parker, being an amateur botanist, was filled with delight of the thickening flowers. "It is exactly as if we had begun in August and were moving backward towards spring. I feel as though violets were near. It is positively enchanting."

"You'll camp beside violets to-night," replied Curtis.

Lawson pretended to sleep. Parker smoked a pipe while striding along behind the wagon. Elsie drove, and of course Curtis could not leave her to guide the team alone. Necessarily, they talked freely on many topics, and all restraint, all reserve, were away at last. It is difficult to hold a formal and carefully considered conversation in a jolting buckboard climbing towards a great range of shining peaks, and every frank speech brought them into friendlier relation. Considered in this light, the afternoon assumed vast importance.

At last, just on the edge of a small lake entirely enclosed by sparse pines, they drew into camp. To the west the top of a snow mountain could be seen, low down, and against it a thin column of blue smoke was rising. The water, dark as topaz and smooth as oil, reflected the opposite shore, the yellow sky, and the peak with magic clearness, and Elsie was seized with a desire to do something.

"Where is my paint-box? Here is the background for some action – I don't know what – something primeval."

"An Indian in a canoe, à la Brush; or a bear coming down to drink, à la Bierstadt," suggested Parker.

"Don't mention that old fogy," cried Elsie.

Lawson interposed. "Well, now, those old chaps had something to say – and that's better than your modern Frenchmen do."

She was soon at work, with Lawson and Parker standing by her side, overlooking her panel and offering advice.

"There's no color in that," Parker said, finally. "It's a black-and-white merely. Its charm is in things you can't paint – the feel of the air, the smell of pine boughs."

"Go away – both of you," she commanded, curtly, and they retreated to the camp, where Curtis was setting the tents, and Jennie, old Mary, and Two Horns, with swift and harmonious action, were bringing appetizing odors out of various cans and boxes, what time the crackle of the fire increased to a gentle roar. There they sat immovably, shamelessly waiting till the call for supper came.

They were all hungry, and Jennie's cooking received such praise as comes from friends who speak and devour – Parker nearly devoured without speaking, so lank and empty was he by reason of his long walk. Elsie seemed to have forgotten her life of luxury, and was reverted to a primitive stage of culture wherein she found everything enjoyable. Her sketch, propped up against a basket by Curtis, was admired unreservedly. Altogether, the trouble and toil of civilized life were forgotten tyrants, so far as these few souls were concerned. They came close to the peace and the care-free tranquillity of the redman, whose ideals they had come to destroy.

As soon as supper was eaten and the men had lighted their cigars, the whole party walked out to the edge of the little pond and lounged about on blankets, and watched the light go out of the sky. Talk grew more subdued as the beauty and the mystery of the night deepened. Elsie listened to every sound, and asked innumerable questions of Curtis. She insisted on knowing the name of every bird or beast whose call could be heard. The young soldier's wood-craft both pleased and astonished her. Mrs. Parker, with her lap full of botanical specimens, was absorbed in the work of classifying them. Parker was a gentleman of leisure, with nothing to do but watch the peaceful coming of the dusk and comment largely on the universe.

It was natural that, as host, Curtis should enjoy a large part of Elsie's company, but neither of them seemed to realize that Lawson was being left quite unheeded in the background, but Jennie was aware of this neglect, and put forth skilful effort to break the force of it. Lawson himself seemed to be entirely unconscious of any loss or threatening disaster.

A little later, as they sat watching the fire grow in power in the deepening darkness, Curtis suddenly lifted his hand.

"Hark!"

All listened. Two Horns spoke first. "One man come, on horse."

"Some messenger for me, probably," said the Captain, composedly. "He is coming fast, too."

As the steady drumming of the horse's hoofs increased in power, Elsie felt something chill creep beneath the roots of her hair. Perhaps the Indians had broken out in war against the whites! Perhaps —

A tall young Tetong slipped from his tired horse and approached the Captain. In his extended hand lay an envelope, which gleamed in the firelight. As Curtis took this letter the messenger, squatting before him, began to roll a cigarette. His lean and powerful face was shadowed by a limp sombrero and his eyes were hidden, but his lips were grave and calm. A quirt dangled from his right wrist, and in the two braids of his hair green eagle-plumes were twisted. The star on the lapel of his embroidered vest showed him to be a police-officer. From the intensity of his attitude it was plain he was studying his agent's face in order to read thereon the character of the message he had brought.

Curtis turned the paper slowly and without excitement. With rapid signs he dismissed the courier. "I have read it. You will camp with Two Horns. Go get some food. Mary will give you meat."

Turning to his guests, he then said: "It is nothing special – merely some papers I forgot to sign before leaving."

"By George! what a picture the fellow made, sitting there!" said Parker. "It was like an illustration in a novel. Why don't you paint that kind of thing, Bee Bee?"

"Because I can't," she replied. "Don't you suppose I saw it? I'd need the skill of Zorn to do a thing as big and mysterious as that. Did you see the intensity of his pose? He expected Captain Curtis to show excitement or alarm. He was very curious to know what it was all about – don't you think so?"

Curtis was amused. "Yes, I suppose he thought the paper more important than it was. The settlers have kept the tribe guessing all the spring by threats of running them off the reservation. Of course they wouldn't openly resort to violence, but there are several irresponsibles who would strike in the dark if they found opportunity."

In spite of his reassuring tone, a vague fear fell over the camping party. Parker was frankly alarmed.

"If you think there is any danger, Captain, I want to get out o' here quick. I'm not here to study the Tetong with his war-paint on."

"If there had been any danger, Mr. Parker, I would not have left my office. I shall have a report similar to this every day while I am away, so please be composed."

The policeman came back, resumed his squatting position before the fire, and began a series of vigorous and dramatic gestures, to which the Captain replied in kind, absorbed, intent, with a face as inscrutable as that of the redman himself. The contrast between the resolute, handsome young white man and the roughhewn Tetong was superb. "There's nothing in it for me," said Parker, "but it's great business for a painter."

Elsie seized a block of paper, and with soft pencil began to sketch them both against the background of mysterious blackness, out of which a pine bole gleamed ashy white.

Suddenly, silently, as though one of the tree-trunks had taken on life, another Tetong appeared in the circle of the firelight and stood with deep-sunk eyes fastened on the Captain's face. Another followed, and still others, till two old men and four young fellows ranged themselves in a semicircle before their agent, with Crane's Voice and Two Horns at the left and a little behind. The old men smoked a long pipe, but the young men rolled cigarettes, taking no part in the council, listening the while with eyes as bright as those of foxes.

It was all sinister and menacing to the Parkers, and all wondered till Curtis turned to say: "They are my mill-hands – good, faithful boys, too."

"Mill-hands!" exclaimed Parker. "They looked uncommonly like a scalping party."

"That is what imagination can do. I thought your faces were extra solemn," remarked Curtis, dryly; but Lawson knew that the agent was not so untroubled as he pretended, for old Crow Killer had a bitter story to relate of the passage of a band of cowboys through his camp. They had stampeded his ponies and shot at him, one bullet passing so close to his ear that it burned the skin, and he was angry.

"They wish to kill us, these cattlemen," he said, sombrely, in conclusion. "If they come again we will fight."

Happily, his vehemence did not reach the comprehension of the women nor the understanding of Parker, and Lawson smoked on as calmly as if these tell-tale gestures were the flecking of shadows cast by the leaping flames. At last the red visitors rose and vanished as silently as they came. They seemed to pass through black curtains, so suddenly they disappeared.

In spite of all reassurance, the women were a little reluctant to go to bed – at least Mrs. Parker and Elsie were.

"I wish the men's tent were not so far off," Mrs. Parker said to Elsie, plaintively.

"I'll ask them to move it, if you wish," returned Elsie, and when Jennie came in she said: "Aren't you a little nervous to-night?"

Jennie looked surprised. "Why, no! Do you mean about sleeping in a tent?"

"Yes," replied Mrs. Parker. "Suppose a wolf or a redman should come?"

Jennie laughed. "You needn't worry – we have a powerful guard. I never am afraid with George."

"But the men are so far away! I wish their tent were close beside ours. I'm not standing on propriety," Mrs. Parker added, as Jennie hesitated. "I'm getting nervous, and I want Jerome where he can hear me if I call to him."

Perceiving that Elsie shared this feeling in no small degree, Jennie soberly conveyed their wish to Curtis.

"Very well, we'll move over. It will take but a moment."

As she heard the men driving the tent-pegs close beside her bed Mrs. Parker sighed peacefully.

"Now I can sleep. There is no comfort like a man in case of wolves, Indians, and burglars," and the fact that the men were laughing did not disturb her.

With a little shock, Elsie realized that Curtis and not Lawson was in her mind as her defender. Of course, he was in command; that accounted for it.

Nevertheless, as she listened to the murmur of their voices she detected herself waiting for Curtis's crisp, clear bass, and not for the nasal tenor of the man whose ring she wore. Her mind was filled, too, with the dramatic figure the young officer made as he sat in gesture-talk with his Tetong wards. In case of trouble the safest place on all the reservation would be by his side, for his people loved and trusted him. She did not go to sleep easily; the excitement, the strangeness of being in a tent, kept her alert long after Jennie and Mrs. Parker were breathing tranquilly on their cots.

One hears everything from a tent. It seems to stand in the midst of the world. It is like being in a diving-bell under water. Life goes on almost uninterruptedly. The girl heard a hundred obscure, singular, sibilant sounds, as of serpents conferring. Mysterious footsteps advanced, paused, retreated. Whispered colloquies arose among the leaves, giving her heart disquiet. Every unfamiliar sound was a threat. The voices of birds and beasts no longer interested her – they scared her; and, try as she would to banish these fancies, her nerves thrilled with every rush of the wind. It was deep night before she dropped asleep.

XVII

A FLUTE, A DRUM, AND A MESSAGE

Elsie dreamed she was at the theatre. The opera was "Il Trovatore," and at the moment when the prison song – that worn yet ever-mournful cry – should have pulsed forth; but in its stead another strain came floating from afar, a short phrase equally sad, which sank slowly, as a fragment of cloud descends from sky to earth to become tears of dew on the roses. Over and over again it was repeated, so sad, so sweet, so elemental, it seemed that the pain of all love's vain regret was in it, longing and sorrow and despair, without relief, without hope, defiant of death.

Slowly the walls of the theatre faded. The gray light of morning crept into the dreamer's eyes, and she was aware of the walls of her tent and knew she had been dreaming. But the sorrowful song went on, with occasional slight deviations of time and tone, but always the same. Beginning on a high key, it fell by degrees, hesitating, momentarily swooping upward, yet ever falling, till at last it melted in with the solemn moan of the pines stirring above her head. Then she drowsed again, and seemed to be listening to the wailing song with some one whose hand she held. As she turned to ask whence the music came a little shudder seized her, for the eyes looking into hers were not those of Lawson. Curtis faced her, grave and sweet.

With this shock she wakened, but the song had ceased. She waited in silence, hoping to hear it again. When fully aroused to her surroundings, she was convinced that she had dreamed the music as well as the hand-clasp, and a flush ran over her. "Why should I dream in that way of him?"