There was a brief silence, then a direct, straight look from the small Cree eyes, and the words, "I like you--me."
Mr. Enderby smiled. "That"s good; I like you, too, Little Wolf-Willow.
Now tell me, do you like your new clothes?"
"No good," said the boy.
Mr. Enderby looked grave. "But, my boy, that is what you must wear if you are to be educated. Do you know what the word "education" means?
Have you ever heard the teachers or boys here use it?"
"White man, English," came the quick reply.
"That"s it; you have described it exactly. To become educated you must try and wear and do what the white people do--like the English, as you say," Mr. Enderby went on. "Now what about your hair? White men don"t wear long hair, and you see all the Cree boys in the school have let me cut their hair. Wouldn"t you like to be like them?"
"No; hair good," said the boy.
"Well, how about a "white" name?" asked Mr. Enderby. "The other boys have taken them. Wouldn"t you like me to call you John? I"d like to."
"Me Wolf-Willow, same grandfather," came in tones of p.r.o.nounced decision.
"Very well, Little Wolf-Willow, you must do as you like, you know; but you said when you came in that you liked me, and I like you very much.
Perhaps some day you will do these things to please me." Then Mr.
Enderby added softly to himself, "It will all come in time. It is pretty hard to ask any boy to give up his language, his clothes, his customs, his old-time way of living, his name, even the church of his fathers.
I must have patience, patience?"
"You speak?" asked the boy.
"Just to myself," said Mr. Enderby.
"I speak," said the little Indian, standing up and looking fearlessly into the superintendent"s face. "I speak. I keep hair, good. I keep name Wolf-Willow, good. I keep skin Indian color. I not white man"s skin.
English skin no good. My skin best, good."
Mr. Enderby laughed. "No, no, Little Wolf-Willow, we won"t try to change the color of your skin," he said.
"No good try. I keep skin, better skin than white man. I keep skin, me."
And the next instant he was gone.
Miss Watson, the matron, appeared at the door. "What have you done to Little Wolf-Willow?" she asked in surprise. "Why, he is careering down the hall at a breakneck speed."
"I believe the child thought I was going to skin him, to make a white boy out of him," laughed Mr. Enderby.
"Poor little chap! I expect you wanted to cut off his hair," said Miss Watson, "and perhaps call him Tom, d.i.c.k, Harry, or some such name."
"I did," answered the superintendent. "The other boys have all come to it."
"Yes, I know they have," agreed Miss Watson, "but there is something about that boy that makes me think that you"ll never get his hair or his name away from him."
And she was right. They never did.
It was six years before Little Wolf-Willow again entered the door of his father"s tepee. He returned to the Crooked Lakes speaking English fluently, and with the excellent appointment of interpreter for the Government Indian Agent. The instant his father saw him, the alert Cree eye noted the uncut hair. Nothing could have so pleased old Beaver-Tail.
He had held for years a fear in his heart that the school would utterly rob him of his boy. Little Wolf-Willow"s mother arose from preparing an antelope stew for supper. She looked up into her son"s face. When he left he had not been as high as her ear tips. With the wonderful intuition of mothers the world over, she knew at the first glance that they had not made him into a white man. Years seemed to roll from her face. She had been so fearful lest he should not come back to their old prairie life.
"Rest here," she said, in the gentle Cree tongue. "Rest here, Little Wolf-Willow; it is your home."
The boy himself had been almost afraid to come. He had grown accustomed to sleeping in a house, in a bed, to wearing shoes, to eating the white man"s food; but the blood of the prairies leaped in his veins at the sight of the great tepee, with its dry sod floor spread with wolf-skins and ancient buffalo hides. He flung himself on to the furs and the gra.s.s, his fingers threading themselves through the buckskin fringes that adorned old Beaver-Tail"s leggings.
"Father," he cried out, in the quaint Cree tongue, "father, sire of my own, I have learned the best the white man had to give, but they have not changed me, or my heart, any more than they could change the copper tint of my skin."
Old Beaver-Tail fairly chuckled, then replied, between pipe puffs, "Some of our Cree boys go to school. They learn the white man"s ways, and they are of no more use to their people. They cannot trap for furs, nor scout, nor hunt, nor find a prairie trail. You are wiser than that, Little Wolf-Willow. You are smarter than when you left us, but you return to us, the old people of your tribe, just the same--just the same as your father and grandfather."
"Not quite the same," replied the boy, cautiously, "for, father, I do not now hate the North-West Mounted Police."
For answer, old Beaver-Tail snarled like a husky dog. "You"ll hate them again when you live here long enough!" he muttered. "And if you have any friends among them, keep those friends distant, beyond the rim of the horizon. I will not have their scarlet coats showing here."
Wisely, the boy did not reply, and that night, rolled in coyote skins, he slept like a little child once more on the floor of his father"s tepee.
For many months after that he travelled about the great prairies, visiting with the Government Indian Agent many distant camps and Cree lodges. He always rode astride a st.u.r.dy little buckskin-colored cayuse.
Like most Indian boys, he was a splendid horseman, steady in his seat, swift of eye, and sure of every prairie trail in all Saskatchewan. He always wore a strange mixture of civilized and savage clothes--fringed buckskin "chaps," beaded moccasins, a blue flannel shirt, a scarlet silk handkerchief knotted around his throat, a wide-brimmed cowboy hat with a rattlesnake skin as a hatband, and two magnificent bracelets of ivory elks" teeth. His braided hair, his young, clean, thin, dark face, his fearless riding, began to be known far and wide. The men of the Hudson"s Bay Company trusted him. The North-West Mounted Police loved him. The white traders admired him. But, most of all, he stood fast in the affection of his own Indian people. They never forgot the fact that, had he wished, he could have stayed with the white people altogether, that he was equal to them in English education, but he did not choose to do so--he was one of their own for all time.
But one dreadful night Corporal Manan of the North-West Mounted Police rode into barracks at Regina with a serious, worried face. He reported immediately to his captain. "A bad business, captain," he said, coming to attention, "a very bad business, sir. I have reports from old "Scotty" McIntyre"s ranch up north that young Wolf-Willow, that we all know so well, has been caught rustling cattle--cut out two calves, sir, and--well, he"s stolen them, sir, and old Scotty is after him with a shot-gun."
"Too bad, too bad!" said the captain, with genuine concern. "Young Wolf-Willow gone wrong! I can hardly believe it. How old is he, Corporal?"
"About sixteen or seventeen, I should say, sir."
"Too bad!" again said the captain. "Well educated; fine boy, too. What good has it done him? It seems these Indians _will_ cut up. Education seems to only make them worse, Corporal. He"ll feel arrest less from you than most of us. You"ll have to go. Start early, at daylight, and bring him in to prison when you return."
"_I_?" fairly shouted Corporal Manan. "_I_ arrest young Wolf-Willow?
No, sir! You"ll have to get another policeman."
"You"ll do as you receive orders," blurted the captain, then added more graciously, "Why, Manan, don"t you see how much better it is to arrest him? Scotty is after him with a shotgun, and he"ll kill the boy on sight. Wolf-Willow is safest here. You leave at daylight, and bring him in, if you have to handcuff him to do it."
Corporal Manan spent a miserable night. Never had a task been so odious to him. He loved the bright, handsome Cree boy, and his heart was sore that he had gone wrong, after giving such promise of a fine, useful manhood. But the white settlers" cattle must be protected, and orders were orders--a soldier must obey his superior officer. So, at daybreak, the fastest horse in the service was saddled, and Corporal Manan was hard on the trail of the young Cree thief.
But Little Wolf-Willow knew nothing of all this. Far away up the northern plains a terrible bit of news had come to him. At the Hudson"s Bay post he had been told that his old grandfather had been caught stealing cattle, that the North-West Mounted Police were after him, that they would surely capture him and put him in Regina jail. The boy was horrified. His own old grandfather a thief! He knew that old warrior well enough--knew that he was innocent of intentional crime; knew that, should the scarlet-coated police give chase, the old Indian would never understand, but would probably fire and kill the man who attempted to arrest him. The boy knew that with his own perfect knowledge of English, he could explain everything away if only he could be at his grandfather"s in time, or else intercept the police before they should arrest him. His grandfather would shoot; the boy knew it.
Then there would be bloodshed added to theft. But Big Wolf-Willow"s lodge was ninety miles distant, and it was the middle of a long, severe winter. What was to be done? One thing only--he, Little Wolf-Willow, must ride, ride, ride! He must not waste an hour, or the prison at Regina would have his grandfather, and perhaps a gallant soldier of the king would meet his death doing his duty.
Thrusting a pouch of pemmican into his shirt front, and fastening his buckskin coat tightly across his chest, he flung himself on to his wiry little cayuse, faced about to the north-east, and struck the trail for the lodges of his own people. Then began the longest, most terrible ride of his life. Afterwards, when he became a man, he often felt that he lived through years and years during that ninety-mile journey. On all sides of him stretched the blinding white, snow-covered prairie. Not a tree, not an object to mark the trail. The wind blew straight and level directly down from the Arctic zone, icy, cutting, numbing. It whistled past his ears, p.r.i.c.king and stinging his face like a whiplash. The cold, yellow sunlight on the snow blinded him, like a light flashed from a mirror. Not a human habitation, not a living thing, lay in his path.
Night came, with countless stars and a joyous crescent of Northern Lights hanging low in the sky, and the intense, still cold that haunts the prairie country. He grudged the hours of rest he must give his horse, pitying the poor beast for its lack of food and water, but compelled to urge it on and on. After what seemed a lifetime of hardship, both boy and beast began to weaken. The irresistible sleepiness that forebodes freezing began to overcome Little Wolf-Willow.
Utter exhaustion was sapping the strength of the cayuse. But they blundered on, mile after mile, both with the pluck of the prairies in their red blood; colder, slower, wearier, they became. Little Wolf-Willow"s head was whirling, his brain thickening, his fingers clutching aimlessly. The bridle reins slipped from his hands. Hunger, thirst, cold, exhaustion, overpowered both horse and rider. The animal stumbled once, twice, then fell like a dead weight.
At daybreak, Corporal Manan, hot on the pursuit of the supposed young cattle thief, rode up the freezing trail, headed for the north-east.
A mile ahead of him he saw what he thought was a dead steer which the coyotes had probably killed and were eating. As he galloped nearer he saw it was a horse. An exclamation escaped his lips. Then, slipping from his own mount, stiff and half frozen himself, he bent pityingly above the dead animal that lay with the slender body of an Indian hugging up to it for warmth.
"Poor little chap!" choked the Corporal. "Poor Little Wolf-Willow!
Death"s got him now, I"m afraid, and that"s worse than the Mounted Police."
Then the soldier knelt down, and for two long hours rubbed with snow and his own fur cap the thin, frozen face and hands of the almost lifeless boy. He rolled the lithe young body about, pounding it and beating it, until consciousness returned, and the boy opened his eyes dully.