The Gold Heart

WHEN the events occurred which I am about to narrate, I was ignorant of the superstitious veneration with which so many of the Northwestern Indians regard the symbol of the heart. A heart-shaped leaf or pebble is never held in the hand if it can be avoided. The rude figure of a heart traced in red ochre on a rock or tree-stump commemorates some event of peculiar solemnity, and commands the respectful obeisance of every Indian who sees it. The same form outlined with boulders, on the prairie or hillside, marks the scene of a great battle and victory or the death of some great chief. The area within the encircling stones is holy ground.

But, as I have said, I knew nothing of all this five years ago, when, in the first days of the Cœur d’Alene mining craze, I was working on my claim on Eagle Creek. Nor do I pretend to have any explanation to offer of the incidents which I am about to chronicle. I have no “ theory ” to advance, and know no more of the chain which connected the incidents than the reader will know after he has read what follows.

I was working alone in my “ drain ditch,” shoveling laboriously at the coarse gravel, which was obstructed here and there by large boulders, lying immediately above the bed-rock and some two feet below the surface of the ground. It was hard and discouraging work, for as yet there had been no indication that the claim was likely to be “ rich.” The boulders had been more than ordinarily frequent and ponderous that day, and I was correspondingly weary, when suddenly my shovel turned up the Gold Heart.

“ Turned up,” I say; but, as a matter of fact, the Heart was dislodged from the side of the ditch, and slipped down with a handful of pebbles to my feet.

My first sensation was that of one who sees a miracle happen. It was certainly some seconds, and I think fully a minute, before I moved, —before I could move, — as the yellow mass lay glistening in the trickling water at my feet. Then, slowly and cautiously, I laid my shovel on the ground beside the ditch, and stealthily took off my hat, like a small boy about to pounce upon a butterfly. Dropping on my knees, I clapped my hat over the golden lump, clutching the brim with my hands on either side, and grinding my knuckles into the wet gravel. My heart beat fiercely and my breath came quick and hard, as after great physical exertion. I was trembling and terrified at I knew not what. There was no human being within two miles of where I was, and I knew it. But as I kneeled I glanced fearfully around and behind me into the misty woods. Moments passed before I dared to lift one edge of my hat to see if the beautiful thing still lay beneath. Even when it lay uncovered and shining before me, it was long before I could bring myself to touch it or pick it up.

Experience in handling nuggets enabled me to guess shrewdly at the weight and value of any piece of rough gold. This, I estimated, was worth something more than six hundred dollars. But the precious metal as it comes out of the ground, new from nature’s minting, has a beauty and a fascination which it loses on passing into the assay office; and this was incomparably the finest nugget that I had ever seen.

I weighed it in my hands, — first in one, and then in the other. I rubbed it and polished it ; held it out at arm’slength to look at it; laid it down, and drew off a few paces to admire it. Then I kissed it. Finally I turned my attention to the place whence it had been dislodged, and made another discovery.

Together with the lump of gold, my shovel had uncovered something else, which had also slipped to the bottom of the ditch and had lain unnoticed. It was a small bone. Looking at the side of the ditch where my shovel had last struck, I saw another bone sticking out from among the gravel. The loosening of the pebbles with my fingers brought others to light, until I quickly saw that I had lighted upon the skeleton of a human hand.

Before dark I had unearthed the entire arm, —an unusually long one, it seemed, — and arrived at a rib. Next, day the exhumation was completed, and there lay exposed the skeleton of an Indian, evidently, buried who knows how many years before ? I had always understood that the Indians had never penetrated so far into the mountains. Eagle City, four miles distant, lay forty miles from the pass through which the Pend d’Oreilles on one side of the range and the Flatheads on the other used to exchange annual visits. Those forty miles were one stretch of dense forest, clothing steep hillsides ; and the Indian dislikes nothing so much as climbing hills. In those early days of Eagle City two or three red men were occasionally seen about the camp, as will hereafter appear ; but they were Spokanes, who had followed in the train of the white man from Spokane Falls, a few months before, and were not indigenous to the mountains.

Nevertheless, the skeleton was sufficient evidence that one Indian, at least, had been there years before ; and, moreover, somebody else had been there to bury him. The body was stretched at full length, parallel to the line of my ditch. The right arm was bent, the hand resting on the breast. The left arm had lain extended at right angles to the body, and it was on the fingers of this left hand that I had come so unexpectedly. The Gold Heart, I had no doubt, had been clasped in the dead man’s hand when he was buried.

Still, I believed it to be a natural nugget, and not to have been fashioned by man into the form in which I found it. In one place a small crystal of quartz was imbedded in the gold, which would probably have been taken out in any moulding or carving process. Besides, the heart-shape as known to the Indian is more the shape of the human organ, and not at all the conventional symmetrically bi-lobed form which we see on valentines and playing-cards. But the Gold Heart was of precisely this conventional form, perfectly smooth save for the roughness of the one jagged point of quartz, and symmetrically rounded.

The evening of the day following my discovery, my partner, Alfred Trask, returned from a three days’ trip to a claim on Trail Creek, twenty miles away, which he had some idea of purchasing. As my partner in the claim, he of course had a half-interest in the Gold Heart; and we sat late into the night looking at the nugget, caressing it in turn, and each endeavoring, though with poor success, to persuade the other that there was no connection between the gold and the Indian. If that were so, we might reasonably expect that the diggings which had produced such a nugget would turn out to be rich. But I doubt if either was much influenced by the arguments of the other, though all his sympathies were with the arguer. Before going to bed we decided to take the treasure into camp next day, and deposit it at the Pioneer bank. Before doing so, however, we had not a little work to finish about the claim, and it was after sundown and the bank was closed when we reached Eagle City.

For the entertainment of the homeless, Eagle City, in those early days, was provided with certain lodging-houses, large tents, which looked like hospital wards, with their row of small canvas cots on either side. We drew our two cots close together, that night, leaving only room for a hand to be thrust down between them, and immediately below this interstice we set the bag containing the Gold Heart. It was within arm’slength of both of us, therefore, and no one else could arrive at it without climbing over one or the other. The key of the bag was in the pocket of the clothes whieh I wore all night.

We awoke, apparently, almost simultaneously in the morning, and almost simultaneously we reached out to ascertain if the bag were still there. It was safe, and we at once proceeded to dress. Other occupants of the tent were soon astir in the dim, gray light, so it was with some circumspection that we drew the cots apart to reach the bag. I then stooped down, sitting on the edge of my cot, and unlocked the bag without lifting it from the ground. As soon as the jaws opened, Trask thrust his hand in, and I shall never forget the expression of utter blankness and bewilderment that came over his face.

The Gold Heart was gone ! There was no doubt of it. The bag, when lifted, was lighter by some three pounds than it had been the night before, and the nugget was certainly not there. There was nothing to be gained by making an uproar about it. If we had done so, we should have been likely to find ourselves involved in a quarrel with somebody,— the lodging-house keeper or one of his rough tenants, — which would probably not have been settled without the use of revolvers. We had no one to blame but ourselves, no one to suspect. There was no police in Eagle City then, and if the gold had been stolen we were more likely to catch the thief by saying nothing than if we raised a hue and cry in camp. So we said nothing. But although one or both of us stayed in camp for two weeks afterwards, not the smallest clue did we discover to lead us to the thief, — if thief there had been.

It was in the middle of August that I found and lost the Gold Heart. It was late in September when Trask and a certain Charles Chapman and I started up Eagle Creek on a hunting trip, carrying our blankets, provisions, and cooking utensils on our backs. The second night, we camped at a place some thirty-five miles above our claim, —forty, perhaps, from Eagle City, — where the gulch was wide enough to leave a hundred feet or so of level ground between the right bank of the stream and the steep pine-clad mountain-side. Before turning in for the night, Chapman and I made an excursion of a few hundred yards into the woods up stream, and there prepared a “ salt lick " for deer. In the morning, at daybreak, we visited the lick, but found no game nor any sign that the bait had been visited. We spent the day idling in camp, and catching a few of the small mountain trout with which the stream was meagrely supplied. At sundown we once more started out to visit the lick.

Among the mountains and under the shadow of the dense growth of pines and tamaracks and cedars, it grows rapidly dark, and as we made our way cautiously through the brush the outlines of objects about us became more indistinct each moment. We were still some distance from the lick, when a rustling in the brush ahead made us both stop suddenly and look to our rifles. Again the leaves rustled, and the branches of a bush scarcely twenty paces from us shook visibly. Then I caught a glimpse of a dark body moving through the foliage.

“Bear ! ” I whispered, straining my eyes to get such a sight as would justify a shot. Chapman, however, had apparently a better view than I, for he slowly raised his Winchester to his shoulder, while I was still craning my neck in vain endeavors to arrive at some idea of how the quarry stood. Once, after raising his rifle to his shoulder, Chapman lowered it, as if in uncertainty. Then he raised it again, aimed deliberately, and fired. There was a sudden swaying of branches, the crash of a heavy body falling, and, simultaneously, a cry which made our hearts stop beating. A moment later we were scrambling forward abreast as fast as we could move.

The cry which we had heard came from a human throat. A man was lying at full length among the brush, stone dead: an Indian, — one of the few of whom I spoke as being occasionally seen in camp, — stretched on his back, his right arm bent and the hand resting on his chest, his left arm extended down the slope, the hand and forearm hidden in the brush.

Chapman, who had practiced medicine, stooped and laid his hand on the dead man’s heart. But it was unnecessary. We had known that he was dead as soon as we saw him lying there. As Chapman moved the right hand away from the breast to reach the heart, the great wound in the right side was disclosed. When he spoke it was in an undertone: — “ Let us carry him back to camp, and bury him there.”

Stooping again, he placed a hand under each of the dead man ’s arms to raise him, while I lifted his legs. As we lifted him, his left arm came into view, and there, clasped tightly in the fingers, glistened, even in the gathering darkness, the Gold Heart.

And it came to me that this was how the other had lain, — on his back, with his legs out straight, his right arm bent on the breast and his left extended, and the hand clutching the nugget. There was no doubt as to its being the same heart, for there was the small protruding point of quartz, and on the other side some crosswise scratches made by Trask’s knife in our cabin before we had lost it.

What had brought the unfortunate Indian to the place where we had met him it was hard to guess. Certainly neither hunting nor prospecting; he was alone and unarmed. Nor could he have been traveling from point to point, for no path or trail leading anywhere lay through the region in which we then were. Nothing but aimless roving could have led him those forty miles into the heart of the mountains. Then, why should an Indian rove unarmed ? Nor was it less difficult to conjecture how he had come into possession of the Gold Heart. That he could have stolen it from under our cots seemed impossible ; for an Indian would never have attempted nor have been permitted to enter the lodging-house. Besides, the bag had been locked, and was locked when we found it in the morning.

It was utterly baffling. The red man held his secret, and we buried him there by the creek-side, under the overhanging bluff.

Our plans had already been made for leaving the mines immediately on our return from this hunting trip. The killing of the Indian and the recovery of the Gold Heart cut the expedition somewhat shorter than we had intended that it should be, and we started for camp next day. It was our intention to leave by way of the river, the Cœur d’Alene, of which Eagle Creek is a tributary, — or rather a tributary of another tributary known as Pritchard Creek. In the spring, several lives had been lost, of men endeavoring to float down the treacherous stream in small boats ; but in September, in spite of a rainy summer, the river was shrunken from the foaming torrent of the days of melting snow. We had bought in advance a boat large enough to hold us three, which had been brought up stream some weeks before, laden with supplies for the mines ; and two days after our return to camp, embarking at the junction of the North Fork and the South Fork of the Cœur d’Alene, we started down stream. We expected to arrive at Lake Cœur d’Alene, into which the river empties, on the third day, and then to row across to the fort, where now Cœur d’Alene city stands. From there alternative stage-coach routes lay to Spokane Falls and to Rathdrum, Idaho.

Though the river had dwindled to small proportions compared with its volume in the spring floods, we found its navigation still perilous enough. Sometimes for miles the current flowed smoothly through a broad channel between level banks, every pebble standing out clearly from the gravel bottom. Sometimes the channel narrowed, and the banks rose to steep hill-slopes on either hand. Through these gorges the stream poured in a noisy torrent, swirling into eddies over deep pools, and breaking in sudden foam against the heads of jagged rocks which thrust themselves up from the bottom to the surface, or, more dangerously, to within a few inches of the top of the water. At these times we took our station, each in his turn, in the very point of the narrow bows, and with an iron-shod boat-hook kept the boat from the rocks as we rushed past them. It was keenly exciting, and we understood why so many men had perished in the attempt to float down to the lake. While one was thus warding the boat from the rocks, a second handled a pair of oars, to steer with rather than to row, for the speed of the current alone carried us at times all too fast. The third member of the party, meanwhile, took his ease, lounging in the stern.

It was a fascinating voyage. On either side filed the endless procession of pines and cedars, with the dark hillslopes behind flecked and streaked with mist. From the woods came the constant tapping of woodpeckers and the monotonous cry of the myrtle robin. At almost every bend in the river, an osprey floated screaming from its watchtower on a pine top, and the kingfishers glided silently from the broken limbs or haunts of rock where they had sat so patiently. Now and then a flight of black and white wood-duck rose splashing from the water and circled away over the trees, while the dotterel went flitting and fluttering along the water’s edge.

We had fishing tackle with us, and in one of my turns of idleness I began lazily to cast for trout. After a few casts I saw a promising pool a short distance ahead, and, half rising in the boat, prepared to make a throw at it in passing. As we approached, it looked more and more promising. There could not fail to be a fish in that, I thought. Nor was I mistaken. Hardly had my fly touched the eddying water when a magnificent fish rose to it. But, as is the exasperating way with the finest fish, it either missed its aim or changed its mind at the last moment, and dropped into the stream again, leaving the fly floating on the surface. Immediately below the pool a point of rock thrust itself above the water. I bad seen it, and ought to have been prepared to avoid it; but in the excitement of missing my fish I suffered the fly to remain lying on the surface till it was swirled against the rock. In an instant the line was drawn taut. By some mischance the reel failed to do its duty. In a sudden effort to disengage the line I leaned over the boat’s side, and we were all struggling in the water.

Fortunately it was not deep, — barely above our waists. Trask, with the boathook in his hand, had caught the boat before it drifted out of reach. But it must have turned completely over in the water, and lighted again on the other side. There was not an article of all our belongings — camp utensils, provisions, rifles, clothes, or fishing tackle — left inside. And, with the other things, the bag containing the Gold Heart was gone.

The water was so transparent, however, that we soon found we could see our properties as they lay scattered on the river’s bottom. Undressing and hanging our clothes on the trees to dry, we waded out into the stream again, and commenced the work of salvage. One by one we found our several effects, — rifles and saucepans and axes, clothes and boots, even knives and spoons and flasks,—everything except the bag with the Gold Heart.

All the next day we spent in searching, and there was not a foot of the river bottom for a distance of more than a hundred yards which we did not pass over many times. While engaged in the hunt we were joined by a party of French Canadians, who, inheriting the instincts and skill of their old voyageur ancestors, had been engaged all the summer in carrying goods to the mines in a light “ dug-out ” bateau, which made the perilous trip down the stream easily enough in two days and a half, but which it took a week of hard poling and rowing and “ carrying over" to force up, loaded with freight, from the fort to the mines. This party came laboriously up stream as we stood in the water looking for the missing bag. The situation having been explained to them, they joined us in the search. But it was fruitless. Next morning we separated, — the Canadians resuming their toilsome progress up stream, and our party continuing its more rapid journey to the lake.

So for the second time the Gold Heart was lost.

I spent the greater part of the winter that followed on Puget Sound. I was in Portland, Oregon, at the time of the election of President Cleveland, going thence to Tacoma, where I passed Christmas and New Year’s Day. Late in January I came east as far as Spokane Falls, and after a stay there of ten days, or so, started again early in February for New York, intending to break my journey at Minneapolis.

It was to the train on which I was traveling that there occurred the only bad accident which has befallen the Northern Pacific Railroad. Just east of the town of Glendive, in Montana, the track, after running fora distance of some rods along the top of an embankment, crosses a narrow gully on a trestle bridge. An early thaw had loosened the road-bed, and a land-slide had carried away two rails on the south side with it. It was late at night when the crash came, and I was asleep. Of the whole train, the sleeping-car alone was not overturned, so that it was not for some minutes — until I had dressed and made my way out of the car — that I learned that there had been a serious accident. The engine had left the track just before reaching the trestle, and had plunged headlong into the ravine, followed by the baggage-car and one other. Two day coaches and the dining-car had rolled off the embankment just before reaching the trestle, and were lying on their sides below. The sleeping-car, though it had left the rail, stood upright by itself upon the ties. In all eight lives were lost, four of the dead being employees of the company. Of the other four, three were killed in the wreck ; and the manner of the death of the fourth will probably recall the accident to the minds of readers.

As I jumped from the platform of the sleeper, the flames were just breaking out from one of the overturned coaches, which had caught fire, presumably from a stove. Fortunately, the passengers had been extricated, so that the flames could at least do no damage to life. Approaching the burning coach, I saw a knot of people gathered about the next car. As I clambered towards them along the side of the embankment, that strange solemnity about their attitudes and movements told me that they were in the presence of death.

Edging through the by-standers, I came to where two persons lay, — a woman and her child, clasped in each other’s arms, pinned down by the heavy timbers, so that it might take an hour to extricate them, — dead. Even in the red light of the flames of the burning car, their faces looked strangely, piteously white, as they lay upturned to the sky. Close beside them kneeled, motionless, a man, whom I conjectured to be the woman’s husband. For some minutes he remained kneeling, with bowed head, when without a word he rose and walked slowly and mechanically away. Hidden for a space in shadow, he emerged again into the light, and, too quickly for any hope of interference, I saw it done. He raised his hand, placed a pistol to the side of his head, and fired. It was done decidedly and without a moment’s hesitation. Almost before he had fallen half a dozen men besides myself were at his side ; but he was too far gone to speak, and died a few minutes afterward where we had laid him, with his head resting against his child’s face, and his hand clasping the hand of his dead wife. By a curious coincidence, not only was I the only person who saw Schultz kill himself, but I was the first to find the body of the last of the eight who were killed. He was lying on the upper side of the same car, almost hidden beneath the timbers which crushed him against the side of the embankment. At my call the others came scrambling up to where I stood, and between us we lifted the heavy beams which lay across him. He also was already dead. We first uncovered his head and breast, on which his right hand lay doubled. Another timber was moved, and exposed his body to the waist and the left arm, which lay outstretched at right angles to the body. Once more, gleaming now in the red light of the flames, I saw, clenched in dead fingers, the Gold Heart.

The man was never identified, and I know no more how the nugget passed from the bottom of the Cœur d’Alene River to his hand than I know how it made its way from my bag to the Indian whom Chapman killed on the mountain-side.

The Heart, with the other properties saved from the wreck, of course passed into the custody of the Northern Pacific Railroad Company. Arriving in Minneapolis, I put in a formal claim to the nugget as being my property, less from any expectation of recovering it than from a hope of learning something of the dead man and of how it came into his possession. The correspondence with the company is before me as I write this. The first letter, dated “ St. Paul, Minn., February 16, 1885,” simply informs me that mine “of the 13th inst. is at hand, and will receive prompt consideration in company with the other claims growing out of the accident to this company’s train at Glendive, Mont., on the 7th of this month.” This is signed by the general claim agent of the Northern Pacific Railroad Company. There was an interval of two weeks before he wrote again, and I remember that this letter reached me at Willard’s Hotel, in Washington, whither I had gone to see the ceremonies of the inauguration. This second letter is dated “ March 2, 1885,” and notifies me curtly that “we are informed by counsel that you have no claim to the Gold Heart, for the handing over of which you make demand in yours of the 13th inst. (already replied to). Under these circumstances we must respectfully decline to entertain any application from you in regard to it. We would add, moreover, that other disposition has already been made of the property in question.”

Wondering what this “ other disposition ” could be, I wrote again on the 7th of March, and in reply received the following letter: —

Northern Pacific R. R. Co., General Claim Agent’s Office.

ST. PAUL, MINN., March 10, 1885.

DEAR, SIR, — Replying to yours of the 7th, would say that, as you have already been advised, this company does not recognize that you have any claim to the Gold Heart which was among the properties saved from the wreck on our line on the 7th ult.

The circumstances connected with the Heart, however, as stated in your letters to this company, and as I gather from other sources, are so curious that I am inclined to give you the explanation which you ask for as to the disposition which has been made of the same. If you will refer to mine of the 2d, you will find that you are in error in quoting me as saying that this company has made any disposition of the nugget. I wrote you that “ other disposition ” had been made of it.

Briefly, the Heart simply disappeared. After being recovered from the accident it was turned over to the custody of the company’s agent at Glendive, and on the 11th ult. was forwarded by him to this office. Our agent at Glendive, I may say, is a gentleman of whose probity we can entertain no question. As it happens, moreover, this Heart was placed by him in a sealed package, in the presence of more than one witness, and handed to the agent of the Express Company. Inclosed in the same package were certain other articles, namely, a woman’s bracelet, a piece of a watch-chain, two pocket-knives, a purse, seven dollars and twenty cents in coin, and two five-dollar bills, — all having been recovered from the same accident.

The package was duly delivered to this office on the 14th of February, with the seal unbroken. All the other articles specified in the invoice were found intact, but the Gold Heart was missing. The package had been in the Express Company’s safe, untouched, from Glendive to St. Paul, and it seems impossible that it can have been tampered with in any way. I am entirely at a loss to give any explanation of the occurrence.

In case any valid claim to the property was put in, presumably this company could hold the Express Company responsible for the loss. But, as you are aware, we do not recognize your claim as valid.

I am yours, etc., On a later visit to St. Paul I made inquiries at the company’s office, and saw all the documents pertaining to the case, with the letters of the agent at Glendive and the representatives of the Express Company. Doubtless they are still on file at the same place.

In the summer of the same year business took me again to the Pacific coast, and while in the West I made a series of expeditions, in the saddle, across the various unsettled sections of Washington Territory and Oregon, with Mr. Chapman once more for a companion. It was on one of these expeditions that I had the opportunity of witnessing that, to me, most interesting of the ceremonies now to be seen among the Northwestern Indians, the annual intertribal pony race of the Yakimas and Umatillas. The race-course was on the prairie, indistinguishable from any other piece of prairie except by the two small stakes driven into the ground, to serve for starting and winning post respectively. The race itself was a short dash of something less than a quarter of a mile.

It was a surprise to us to find ourselves the only white persons present, though by no means a disappointment. But there was Indian companionship in plenty, for the entire membership of both tribes, male and female, infant and adult, was assembled. We arrived late in the afternoon of a still, sultry day ; but the race would not take place until after sundown, so we had leisure enough to study the scene and be studied ourselves.

In the background on either hand, standing out from the hot, yellow plain, were the conical, smoke-stained teepees, each with its bunch of poles sticking out of the top like the crossed sticks of a gypsy’s tripod. Further off, in all directions, bands of ponies dotted the prairie, — white, and piebald, and “buckskin,” and bay. Among the teepees the squaws sat in groups, chatting, making bead-work, or engaged in camp preparations of various kinds. The bucks were mostly inside their tents, though here and there a party stood talking, or a solitary figure on pony-back moved slowly across the level ground. About the women, rolling on the ground or straying over the prairie, were children, of all ages ; and mixed with them, forming a constantly moving background to the whole picture, were the dogs, almost countless in number, long, and gaunt, and hungry, showing in every point and movement the strain of wild coyote blood.

As we rode up to one of the villages or clumps of teepees, — the camp of the Yakimas, it proved to be, — the whole canine population poured out to greet us, a yelling, snarling, howling pack, reminding me of Carlyle’s “universal dog-kennel ; ” snapping at our ponies’ heels, and circling round us just out of reach of our whips. As we approached, the children came to reinforce the dogs, the squaws gathered slowly into larger groups, and one by one the men appeared in the entrances to the teepees. Riding up to one of the bucks, we succeeded, by much improvised gesticulations, eked out with what little we knew of the Indian sign-language, in assuring ourselves that we should not be disappointed in our expectation of seeing the race that evening. Before we had managed to arrive at the information we wanted, the whole tribe had collected round us, while the dogs, which had relapsed or been beaten by the squaws into quietude, slunk away. Appearing as indifferent as we might to the hundred eyes that were upon us, we dismounted, slipped the nooses of our lariats over our ponies’ heads, and sat down in the shadow of a teepee to wait for the race, allowing our animals to stray as far as the length of the lariat would permit them, while we held the ends in our hands to guard against any attempt to stampede them. We had nearly two hours to wait for the race. The race itself — the short skurry of two seedy-looking ponies over a few hundred yards of prairie, each with a yellow Indian rider on its back — was not particularly interesting. But there was interest enough in the accompanying ceremonies.

The Indian is a born gambler, and at these races both tribes bet recklessly, so that one lives in poverty and the other in affluence for the next twelve months. The method of betting is delightful in its primitive simplicity. The bucks of both tribes being gathered near the winning - post, an old grayhaired chief, chosen by common consent, squatted upon his heels, with a long spear driven into the ground beside him. His duty it was to see that the betting was fairly done on either side. As soon as he had taken his station a tall Umatilla buck approached, and threw a Winchester rifle on the ground in front of the old man. It had not lain there ten seconds before a similar rifle, belonging to a Yakima, was by its side. Another Umatilla stepped up and deposited beside the rifles a necklace of elk teeth, to match which a Yakima deposited a large hunting - knife. So rifles were matched with rifles, skins with skins; necklaces, bracelets, and coins were flung down, and offset with other necklaces, bracelets, and coins, or with knives or bears’ claws, moccasins, powder-horns, or belts.

The pile grew steadily, till a wagonon-load of Indian valuables lay heaped up before the gray-haired judge. It was all done in almost total silence. Occasionally a discontented grunt would show that some bettor was not satisfied with the equivalent of his stake, when a few words from the old man would either silence him, or, as the case might be, make the party of the second part throw down a coin or a ring to piece out the value of his wager. For half an hour, perhaps, we had watched, when suddenly there was a movement of excitement among the stolid bucks. A tall Yakima, whom I had not noticed before, strode out, and, with a magnificent gesture, flung down upon the heap — the Gold Heart!

I could hardly trust my eyes, and scarcely noticed the murmur of grunts which ran through the crowd — grants of astonishment, of gratification, and of disgust — as the great lump of gold was thrown down. Stepping forward, after handing my lariat to Chapman,

I made it understood by gestures that I wished to be permitted to look at the Heart; whereupon he who had staked it picked it up and gave it to me. There was no doubt of its being the same Gold Heart. On one side the sharp point of crystal stuck out, and on the other, faint but still discernible, were the marks of Trask’s knife.

The gruntings and exclamations which had greeted the appearance of the nugget were suddenly silenced as an Umatilla stepped out, and, with a ring of defiance in his voice, made a short speech to the judge and the assembled crowd, at intervals waving his arm in the direction of a large band of ponies which were browsing on the prairie. Some haggling and bargaining followed, ending apparently satisfactorily, for the Umatilla and halt a dozen of his companions separated themselves from the crowd, and rode off toward the ponies. Watching, we could see them “cutting out ” certain animals from the band. Presently, having collected those that they wanted, they drove them leisurely to where we were standing. We counted the ponies as they were driven up, and there were just forty. They were brought close to the judge for his inspection. He was evidently satisfied, and the forty ponies were left standing huddled together, the stake matched against the Gold Heart.

Then came the race. It was very brief. Reversing the usage of civilization, the riders made a terrible uproar, while the on-lookers gazed in profound silence. The representative of the Umatillas won, in racing parlance, by half a head, and the Indians again clustered round the aged judge, who had not left his place.

Before a word was said, the Umatilla who had wagered the ponies pushed his way through the surrounding bucks, and, striding up to where the Gold Heart lay glittering on the pile of skins and Indian valuables, stooped and picked it up in his left hand. He looked at it a moment, and then exultingly raised it above his head. Suddenly another figure stepped up to him, the Yakima, with a look of rage upon his face. Flinging his blanket aside, he too raised one arm above his head. There was the flash of a long-bladed knife in the air, and without a groan the victorious Umatilla fell on the ground. Death must have been instantaneous, for he lay absolutely still. At full length he lay, with his legs out straight, his face turned up to the sky, his right arm bent across his breast, his left stretched out at right angles to his body, and the fingers clutched the Gold Heart.

Immediately an indescribable clamor arose, and Chapman and I, already in the saddle, disengaged ourselves from the throng as quickly as we could. In accordance, presumably, with established custom, all appeared to be unarmed, and while the babel of tongues was deafening, there was no sign of what we had expected to see, a hand-to-hand, roughand-tumble fight. But gradually the clump of men began to disintegrate, and, in two bodies, the members of the respective tribes hurried off in the direction of their several villages, the Umatillas taking with them the dead man and the heap of plunder won on the betting.

Chapman and I, fearing serious trouble, turned our horses’ heads for the Agency, twenty miles away. It was a long ride, and must have been hard on the animals we rode, but by ten o’clock we had reached the Agency, — “ Joris and I.”

Hurriedly telling the agent what had happened, we pushed on to the fort, two miles distant, leaving him to follow. Colonel Grace, a grizzled, soldierlike man, heard our story, and gave his orders without waste of time. Before eleven o’clock he had started for the race-course at the head of a company of cavalry. It was nearly noon when the party returned, bringing with them an Indian whom we recognized at once as the Yakima murderer. The affair had ended peaceably enough. The Indian nowadays — with the exception possibly of one or two tribes — is not a precipitate fighter. If the soldiers had not arrived, bloodshed would probably have followed, but both tribes seemed glad enough of the excuse of foregoing hostilities. The murderer, who, it appeared, was a turbulent fellow and little liked, had been surrendered willingly, to be dealt with by the white man’s laws; and the two tribes, instead of fostering a feud, had sensibly concluded to unite in a grand funeral celebration in honor of the dead man, whose relatives had been appeased with presents of ponies from the Yakima bands.

“And by the bye,” said the colonel, who had told us all this as we sat at luncheon in his quarters, “ when did you last see the Heart? ” glancing alternately at Chapman and me.

“ In his hand,” I said, — “ the dead man’s hand, as he lay outstretched on the ground.”

“ They think you stole it,” he remarked quietly.

“ Who ? I ? ”

“ One of you.”

“ Why, has it disappeared again ? ”

“Not ‘again’ that I know of,” said Colonel Grace, “ for I had not heard of its doing so before. But they claim that it has disappeared now. No one could be found who saw it after the dead man fell.”

But we had not stolen it. Nor have I heard of or seen it since.

Harry Robinson.