"But you"re wasting your life. Suppose you were offered a chance to go to--well, say West Point, as an instructor on a good salary?"
"I would decline the appointment."
"Why?"
"Because at this time I am needed where I am, and I have started on a plan of action which I have a pride in finishing."
Brisbane grew distinctively less urbane. "You are bent on fighting me, are you?"
"What do you mean?" asked Curtis, though he knew.
"You are dead set against the removal of the Tetongs?"
"Most certainly I am!"
Elsie re-entered the room during this rapid interchange of phrase, but neither of the men heard her, so intent were they upon each other.
"Young man, do you know who you are fighting?" asked Brisbane, bristling like a bear and showing his teeth a little. Curtis being silent, he went on: "You"re lined up against the whole State! Not only the cattlemen round about the reservation, but a majority of the citizens are determined to be rid of those vagabonds. Anybody that knows anything about "em knows they"re a public nuisance. Why should they be allowed to camp on land which they can"t use--graze their mangy ponies on lands rich in minerals--"
"Because they are human beings."
"Human beings!" sneered Brisbane. "They are nothing but a greasy lot of vermin--worthless from every point of view. Their rights can"t stand in the way of civilization."
"It is not a question of whether they are clean or dirty, it is a question of justice," Curtis replied, hotly. "They came into the world like the rest of us, without any choice in the matter, and so far as I can see have the same rights to the earth--at least, so much of it as they need to sustain life. The fact that they make a different use of the soil than you would do isn"t a sufficient reason for starving and robbing them."
"The quicker they die the better," replied Brisbane, flushing with sudden anger. "The only good Injun is a dead Injun."
At this familiar phrase Curtis took fire. "Yes, I expected that accursed sentence. Let me tell you, Mr. Brisbane, I never knew a redman savage enough to utter such a sentiment as that. The most ferocious utterance of Geronimo never touched the tigerish malignity of that saying. Sitting Bull was willing to live and let live. If your view represents civilization, I want none of it. The world of the savage is less cruel, less selfish."
Brisbane"s face writhed white, and a snarling curse choked his utterance for a moment. "If you weren"t my guest," he said, reaching a clutching hand towards Curtis, "I"d cut your throat."
Elsie, waiting in strained expectancy, cried out: "Father! What are you saying? Are you crazy?"
Curtis hastily rose, very white and very quiet. "I will take care not to put myself in your way as guest again, sir."
"You can"t leave too quick!" roared the old man, his face twitching with uncontrollable wrath. "You are a traitor to your race! You"d sacrifice the settlers to the interests of a greasy red vagabond!"
"Father, be quiet! You are making a scene," called Elsie, and added, sadly: "Don"t go, Captain Curtis; I shall be deeply mortified if you do.
Father will be sorry for this."
Brisbane also rose, shaking with a weakness pitiful to see. "Well, sir, you can go, for I know now the kind of sneak you are. Let me tell you this, young man: you"ll feel my hand before you are a year older. You can"t come into my house and insult me in the presence of my daughter.
Get out!" His hands were moving uncontrollably, and Elsie discovered with a curious pang that she was pitying him and admiring the stern young soldier who stood quietly waiting for an opportunity to speak. At last he said:
"Miss Brisbane, I beg your pardon; I should not have said what I did."
He turned to Brisbane. "I am sorry I spoke so harshly, sir. You are an older man than I, and--"
"Never mind my age," replied Brisbane, his heat beginning to cool into self-contained malice. "I desire no terms of friendship with you. It"s war now--to the knife, and the knife to the hilt. You think you are safe from me, but the man that lines up against me generally regrets it to the day of his death."
"Very well, sir, I am not one to waste words. I shall do my duty to the Tetongs regardless of you or your friends." He turned to Elsie. "Miss Brisbane, I ask you to remember that I honestly tried to avoid a controversy."
Six months before Elsie would have remained pa.s.sive while her father ordered Curtis from the door, but now she could not even attempt to justify his anger, and the tears glistened on her lashes as she said: "Father, why can"t you accept Captain Curtis"s hand? These ragam.u.f.fin redmen aren"t worth quarrelling about. No one ever went away from us like this, and it breaks my heart to have it so. Don"t go, Captain Curtis. Father, ask his pardon."
The old man turned towards her. "Go to your room. I will see that this young squirt finds the door!"
Elsie shrank from the glare of his eyes. "Father, you are brutal! You hurt me."
"Do as I say!" he snarled.
"I will _not_!" She faced him, tall and resolute. "I am not a child. I am the mistress of this house." She turned and walked towards the door.
"Captain Curtis, I beg _your_ pardon; my father has forgotten himself."
Brisbane took a step towards Curtis. "Get out! And you, girl, leave the room."
The girl"s face whitened. "Have you no sense of decency?" she said, and her voice cut deep down into his heart and he flinched. "Captain Curtis is my guest as well as yours." She extended her hand. "Please go! It is best."
"It is the most miserable moment of my life," he replied, as they moved down the hall, leaving Brisbane at the door of the study. "I will do any honorable thing to regain your good-will."
"You have not lost it," she replied. "I cannot blame you--as I should,"
she added, and the look on her face mystified him.
"May I see you again before I leave for the West?"
"Perhaps," she softly replied. "Remember he is old--and--"
"I will try not to bear anger," he replied.
And as he turned away it seemed that she had leagued herself with him against her own father, and this feeling deepened as she ran up the stairs heedless of the voice whose commands had hitherto been law to her.
The young officer walked down the sunny avenue towards the White House with a curious feeling of having just pa.s.sed through a bitter and degrading dream. He was numb and cold. Around him the little negro newsboys were calling the one-o"clock editions of the "_Styah_," and the pavements were swarming with public servants hastening to lunch, punctual as clocks, while he, having been ordered from the house of his host, was mechanically returning to his club.
There was something piercingly pathetic in the thought of the good cheer he had antic.i.p.ated, and the lost pleasure of sitting opposite Elsie made his heart ache. At the moment his feet stumbled in the path of duty. Surely he was a long way from the single-minded map-builder who had crossed the Sulphur Spring Divide.
XII
SPRING ON THE ELK
Spring came early in that lat.i.tude, and Curtis was profoundly thankful that his first winter had proven unusually short and mild, for it enabled him to provide for his people far better than he had dared to hope. The rations were insufficient at best, and for several days of each alternate week the grown people were hungry as well as cold, though no one actually perished from lack of food. Beyond the wood contract and the hauling of hides each month there was very little work to be done during the winter, not enough to buy the tobacco the men longed for.
They believed in Swift Eagle, however, for he visited every cl.u.s.ter of huts each month, and became acquainted with nearly every family during the winter. No agent had ever taken the like pains to shake the old women by the hand, or to speak as kindly to the old men who sat beside the fire, feeble and bent with rheumatism. The little children all ran to him when he came near, as if he were a friend, and that was a good sign, too. Some of the old chiefs complained, of course--there was so little else for them to do; but they did not blame the Little Father.
They were a.s.sured of his willingness to do whatever lay within his power to mitigate their poverty. Jennie, who was often at the beds of those who suffered, had won wide acceptance of her lotions by an amused tolerance of the medicine-men, whose mystic paraphernalia interested her exceedingly. The men of magic came at last to sing their curious songs and perform their feats of healing in her presence. "Together we will defeat the evil spirits," they said, and the health of the tribe continued to be very good, in spite of unsanitary housing and the evil influence of the medicine-men. When the missionaries came to have the native doctors suppressed Curtis said: "My policy is to supplant, not to suppress."
The bill which called for the removal of the Tetongs to another reservation was reported killed. The compromise measure for buying out the settlers was "hung up" in the committee-room, and this delay on the part of Congress exasperated the settlers beyond reason, and at a convention held early in April at Pinon City, Joseph Streeter brazenly shouted, "If the government does not remove these Injuns before the first of July we"ll make it hot for all concerned," and his threat was wildly cheered and largely quoted thereafter as the utterance of a man not afraid of Congress or anybody else.
Seed-time came without any promise of change, and the white settlers on the reservation went sullenly to their planting, and the cattlemen drove their herds across the boundaries upon the Tetong range as they had been doing for many years. "We are in for another season of it," they said, with the air of being martyrs in the cause of civilization.