Two Insurgents

I

‘YES,’ said Mrs. Branders, acridly, ‘it’s all right for me to do the washing, but you! Oh my — you! You’re too good to put the boiler on the stove and fill it with water! That’s all right for me, just like it’s all right for me to board Sadie Harris. Nobody round here can stand the sight of her, but I’ve got to have her in my own house. Now you go put that boiler on the stove!’

The door slammed, and for a moment it looked very much as if Mrs. Branders might die of apoplexy. Then she jerked herself out of her chair and started noisily for the kitchen, jerked again and turned into the bedroom. There she lifted a quart bottle from a case of alcohol — stored there because Mr. Branders professed himself too cautious to entrust it to the vault in the office, or to the school hospital, where it rightfully belonged — and carried it to the kitchen, first assuring herself, however, that there was no small nick in the cork, because such a mark would indicate that the bottle already had been emptied and then refilled with water. She poured a liberal quantity of the alcohol into a capacious glass, added sundry concoctions which she kept in her pantry for just such emergencies, and, having partaken of this potation, instantly became more cheerful, and went out and got the boiler. But when she went to lift it to the top of the stove she suddenly remembered she was the wife of the superintendent of the Park River Indian Agency, and was n’t it a fine thing when the superintendent’s wife could not get one single Indian woman out of an entire reservation to come and wash for her! She let the boiler fall with a bang and went to the telephone.

Mr. Henty, the chief clerk, was not in the office, and Sadie Harris was in the waiting room scolding an Indian. Sadie made a dash for the main office when she heard the telephone ring, but Miss Lane was already answering it.

‘No, Mrs. Branders, your husband has n’t come in yet,’ Miss Lane was saying. ’No, Mr. Henty is in Traymore. To fill your boiler? Oh! . . . Well, I’m awfully sorry, Mrs. Branders, but the policemen are all busy this morning.’

‘I answer the telephone when the chief clerk is out,’ Mrs, Harris said angrily.

Miss Lane hung up the receiver and turned serenely to the property clerk. ‘Teddy, you’d better hurry with that cleaning you’re supposed to do in the warehouse. Those two policemen have been waiting for you all morning.’ The property clerk went out grinning. ’I believe I ’ve got an infected tooth,’ Miss Lane informed the staff. ‘I did n’t sleep all night. How, Chief! ’ she caroled, as a tall, lean, very straight old Indian came in.

‘How!’ said Chief Bear Ghost, his dazzling seventy-year-old teeth flashing a rebuke to Miss Lane’s aching young jaw.

‘Look at that head! Is n’t he the most beautiful thing you ever saw? I’m just crazy about him,’ Miss Lane confided to little Elaine Somers, who had the desk next to hers.

Superintendent Branders came in and, seeing the Indian, called January Skunk, the interpreter. ‘January, ask Bear Ghost here if his wife will come and wash for Mrs. Branders.’

January Skunk’s eyebrows wriggled nervously. ‘Bear Ghost won’t speak to anybody that wears a police uniform,’ he said. ‘He hates ’em.’

Miss Lane spoke in Sioux, then translated Bear Ghost’s answer: ‘He says his wife is too old to go out and work.’

‘Too old.’ Mr. Branders pondered. ‘Say, has n’t he got two wives? Sure! Tell him to send the young one.’

‘Bear Ghost says his young wife is not strong enough,’ Miss Lane again translated.

The superintendent’s face grew red. ‘One wife is too old and the other is too weak. Yeh. And he himself is too lazy. But he don’t mind coming here to beg for money. I’ll bet anything he’s here to ask for money.’

‘This is the day when we usually pay him his allowance,’said Miss Lane.

‘Well, he’s not going to get it,’ said Mr. Branders, curtly. Miss Lane told Bear Ghost Mr. Branders was sorry, but that he could pay him no money just then.

Going out, Bear Ghost almost collided with a little man who appeared to be in a great hurry.

‘My name’s Gensler, an’ I want to see the what-you-may-call-him superintendent,’ the little man told everybody the moment he stepped inside the door. Sadie Harris led him ceremoniously to the door of Mr. Branders’s office. ‘My name’s Gensler, an’ I want to buy some beadwork,’ repeated the little man. Mr. Branders said he did not sell beadwork. ‘Yeh, I know,’ said Mr. Gensler. ‘I been buyin’ from the Indians, but now they say I got to come here to the office. I want to buy some watch fobs.’

The ubiquitous Miss Lane came forward. ‘I dare say Bear Ghost’s wife sent him here. I told her I would attend to — ’

‘I want three dozen, perhaps six, maybe just one. It depends. How much are they?’ said Mr. Gensler.

‘One dollar each,’ said Miss Lane.

Mr. Gensler clutched at his breast as if he had been stabbed. ‘Oh, my God!’ he moaned. ‘I been buyin’ ’em for thirty-five cents! ’

‘That does n’t pay for the beads,’ said Miss Lane, severely.

‘Well, I can’t buy watch fobs at a dollar apiece.’

Miss Lane said she was so glad, because all the watch fobs were sold and Mrs. Bear Ghost had all the orders she could take care of for the next six months at least. Mr. Gensler looked nonplused. ‘Maybe you have somebody else that makes watch fobs, eh?' he ventured tentatively.

When she had taken his order and speeded him on his way, Miss Lane turned to Mr. Branders excitedly. ‘ Do you know, Mr. Branders, I have the most marvelous scheme! The Indian women are crazy to earn a little money. Suppose we were to get a room somewhere, a sort of showroom, you know, and I was to direct the women’s activities and get a market for their goods. Oh, not on government time! I’d do it after office hours. I’ve talked it over with the women, and they’re just wild to begin work. Say what you will about the men, but certainly the women are anything but lazy. Why, they’re just crazy to work!’

‘Yah,’ said Mr. Branders, bitterly, ‘I noticed it when I asked Bear Ghost if his wife would come and work for us. Now let me tell you something, Miss Lane — you’re paid to work in the office, see? And you do that. And don’t go butting into anything else.

I ’ve got enough troubles without getting all mixed up with social welfare work.’

‘ But I ’ll take care of it. They’re so darn poor, and the Indian Office says we should —’ Mr. Branders wheeled on her. ‘Um,’ she groaned, holding her jaw. ‘Mr. Branders, would it be all right for me to go to Traymore and get this tooth attended to? It’s killing me.’

A few hours later she stood on the sidewalk in front of a dentist’s office in Traymore looking up and down the street for a taxi, and fighting an almost irresistible impulse to lie down on the curb. After all, she reflected, there was another bus to the Indian agency in two hours. She hurried to the hotel on the corner and took a room.

As she stepped out of the elevator on the seventh floor a door across the hall opened and Mr. Snitz, the agency farmer, and Mrs. Felkesen, the school principal’s wife, came out. Mr. Snitz carried two suitcases. ‘Oh, dear,’thought Miss Lane, weaving dizzily down the hall after the bell boy, ’here is something I should n’t have seen. I must be sure to forget it.’

‘ Helga,’ said Mr. Snitz to Mrs. Felkesen in the taxi, ‘did you see that man who was waiting in the hall when we came out?’ Mrs. Felkesen said there had n’t been anybody in the hall. ‘There was,’ said Mr. Snitz, definitely. ‘It was Jack Henty.’

‘August! You’re crazy!’ said Mrs. Felkesen. ‘There was n’t anybody there, I tell you! I know, because I looked before I stepped out o’ the room.’ She lowered her voice: ‘D’y’ s’pose Betsey Lane saw us?’

‘She ain’t blind that I know of,’ said Mr. Snitz, dryly.

Mrs. Felkesen said, ‘Oh, August! and got out her handkerchief.

‘Don’t worry, sweetheart,’ Mr. Snitz comforted her. ‘I can fix it. Miss Lane was there to meet Jack Henty, see?’

Mrs. Felkesen stared, round-eyed: ‘Miss Lane? Why, August Snitz, you oughta be ashamed o’ yourself!’

‘Don’t be a sap,’ Mr. Snitz recommended affectionately. ‘I’m gonna make a hit with Branders. Y’ see, if Henty should have to be fired, then Branders could make Sadie Harris his chief clerk maybe. See?’

Mrs. Felkesen considered this somewhat bewilderedly at first, then with growing appreciation. Suddenly she giggled, exclaiming in a crescendo of admiration, ‘Well, August Snitz! Well, if you are n’t the worst!’

‘That’s just in case I got to defend us,’ Mr. Snitz told her.

In the meantime Mrs. Branders brooded over her grievances. She had a great many, but Mr. Branders’s failure to procure a washerwoman for her — at twenty cents an hour with time off without pay while the water got hot — was her favorite, and every time Mr. Branders came into the house she reminded him of it. They quarreled indefatigably, except in the evening, when, after the second or third glass of Mrs. Branders’s potent beverage in the pantry, they usually became reconciled.

Knowing well that outside the service he would find no one willing to employ him in any capacity whatever, Mr. Branders appreciated the importance of keeping Mrs. Branders at least reasonably satisfied, for as long as Mrs. Branders could be induced to keep Sadie Harris in her house the Indians and employees might talk as much as they wanted, and what they said would have little weight as evidence should the situation ever come to the attention of an inspector. But keeping Mrs. Branders thus placated was a strain on Mr. Branders, and by and by he took to visiting the pantry during the day.

‘You’d better go easy on that stuff,’ Mrs. Sadie Harris warned astutely. ’Jack Henty’s always had his eye on your job, remember.’

It was that most unpropitious of days which Bear Ghost chose for his second call at the office about his allowance.

‘And what’re you doin’, talkin’ for this Indian?’ Mr. Branders snarled at Miss Lane, who, as usual, was laboriously interpreting for Bear Ghost.

‘ We ’ve got an interpreter, have n’t we? January Skunk, come here!’ January Skunk came rolling in on his bowed legs. ‘You tell Bear Ghost he can’t have any money this month,’ Mr. Branders said. January’s eyebrows scrambled about distractedly. ‘Go on, tell him!’

The chief clerk came forward. ‘Mr. Branders, I’m sorry I was n’t here the other day when Bear Ghost called. I could have told you we had not yet paid him his money for this month. But I have the check ready.’

The telephone rang. ‘Hello!’ Mr. Branders shouted into it. Mrs. Branders wanted a washwoman. Mr. Branders swore and slammed the receiver down. ‘ Bear Ghost’s got two wives,’ he said vindictively. ‘He knows that’s against the law. When he’s sent one of ’em away he can come an’ get his check.’

‘Why is it,’ Bear Ghost asked, ‘that when I come for the money which the government says it owes me I have to do something for the superintendent before I can get it? Maybe my wife has to come and work for his wife. Maybe I have to work. One time I had to vote for a man the superintendent liked before I could get my check. And my brother had to do the same thing to get a blanket. That does not look honest.’

Miss Lane dived into a drawer in her desk, only to bob up in a panic when she heard January Skunk actually beginning a literal translation of Bear Ghost’s speech. ' He says his wife is very sick,’ she interposed breathlessly.

Mr. Branders fixed a pair of congested eyes on January. ‘Go on, you.’

January went on.

‘Has that Indian got the nerve to stand there and tell me to my face that I tried to buy his vote?’ Mr. Branders asked in a squeaky voice.

‘Not you,’ January interpreted unctuously. ‘There ain’t been no election since you come.’

A suppressed titter went around the room; Jack Henty laughed outright. But Miss Lane, who was watching Mr. Branders’s face, turned somewhat sick. ‘He’s just joking!’ she explained weakly.

‘He’ll get his money when he’s sent one wife away and been legally married to the other,’ said Mr. Branders, and went into his office and closed the door.

‘One of my wives is very old. The other has children. She coughs. What can I do?’ said Bear Ghost.

‘January,’ Mr. Branders shouted through the door, ‘you go to my house ’n’ take that case of alcohol to the doctor at the hospital.’

II

Mr. Snitz was continuing his visits to Traymore. Sometimes he went to see about selling some pigs, sometimes to see about selling some cows, but most often he went to see the veterinary. Indeed he went so often to see the veterinary that it amused Mrs. Snitz. ‘Those cows must have every disease in the world,’ she told the dairyman’s wife.

The dairyman’s wife was concerned, and that night she asked her husband about it. ‘Yah,’ said the dairyman, ‘sure. Every time Mrs. Felkesen goes to Traymore to see her sick aunt the cows get the pip or something. Funny, is n’t it?’

His wife thought it so funny that she repeated the joke all around, and Mr. Snitz judged the moment opportune for some information of his own. Walking home from the post office one evening with Mrs. Sadie Harris, he jerked his head in the direction of Betsey Lane and Jack Henty, who were on their way to the store, and said he thought they were going too far. Mrs. Harris naturally asked too far with what? And Mr. Snitz told her.

A few days later Mr. Felkesen tiptoed into Mr. Branders’s office and closed the door carefully behind him. ‘Mr. Branders,’ he said in a cautious undertone, ‘I haf some bad news for you.’

‘Don’t tell it,’ Mr. Branders growled. ‘I’ve got enough troubles.’

‘It is about my vife,’ Mr. Felkesen said encouragingly. ‘She vas alvays going to town vit your farmer, dat Snitz.’

‘I don’t care,’ said Mr. Branders.

Mr. Felkesen brought his pale, thin face close to Mr. Branders’s fleshy deep red countenance and whispered earnestly, then sat back. ‘Vat do you tink of dat? ’ he asked with satisfaction.

‘Me?’ asked Mr. Branders.

‘Sure. Dat vas your farmer, eh?’

‘Yes, and that was your wife. How about that?’

Mr. Felkesen frowned; in his excitement he had overlooked this disquieting angle of his problem. ‘I vill write to Vashington!’ he announced triumphantly.

‘You’ll do nothing of the kind!’ said Mr. Branders. ‘I’m not going to have any nitwit inspector snooping around my business.’

‘I vill write to Vashington,’ said Mr. Felkesen, and went out.

‘Hey, wait a minute!’ Mr. Branders hollered. But Mr. Felkesen kept on going. Mr. Branders was a large man, not much given to running, but he had about decided to make an exception of this occasion when the door of his office opened again and the doctor stalked in. ‘Say! What d’ y’ mean,’ the doctor asked truculently, ‘sending me a case of alcohol that turns out to be all water?’

Mr. Branders dropped back in his chair, apparently overcome. The doctor looked unimpressed. Mr. Branders clenched his hands and rapped his head with his knuckles. What could he have been thinking about, trusting an Indian with a whole case of alcohol? ‘January Skunk,’ he shouted, ‘come here! I’ll fire the damn thief!’ He rocked with despair. ‘As if that would bring back our stuff! ’

That evening January Skunk, sitting on the counter in the trader’s store, related the incident to the other Indians who were loafing away the evening there. ‘An’ there I was a-pushin’ that ol’ wheelbarrow like it carried a load of eggs or something. I bet I never hit a stone that was bigger ’n a bean all the way to the hospital.’

The Indians laughed, and one of them explained the joke to Bear Ghost, who was asking the trader to charge a can of peaches for his sick wife on his already overdue account.

‘All day I’ve been looking for somebody that might a seen me goin’ from the superintendent’s house to the hospital so I could prove I did n’t stop anywhere long enough to drink twelve quarts of alcohol, but it looks like everybody stayed in bed all day to-day,’ January recounted with relish, and this second joke also was reported to Bear Ghost.

‘If you had ten witnesses,’ Bear Ghost said, ‘it would not help you.’

One day Mr. Branders received a letter from the Indian Office, enclosing a communication from Mr. Axel Felkesen, ‘the principal at your agency,’ and instructing Mr. Branders to make a report on the same. Mr. Branders did, — after consulting with Mr. Snitz, — and Mr. John B. Henty and Miss Elizabeth B. Lane were immediately transferred to different jurisdictions.

‘ What’s the row? ’ queried Miss Lane of Mr. Henty. ‘I’ve been working like a horse ever since I came here. Besides, do they think I’m going to abandon my Indian women just when they’re beginning to get somewhere? They come to my room in the evening and I teach them how to make hooked rugs, using Indian designs. We sold two this morning for thirty-three dollars and fifty cents each. And the materials for both cost twenty-one dollars. The women are hysterical. They thought when they made something and then sold it they were supposed to lose money on it!’

‘You have too many enthusiasms, Betsey,’ said Henty. ‘That’s why you’re in trouble.’

‘How about you? M’m. Suppose we look around, eh?’

They looked around, and the next day Henty went out and thrashed Mr. Snitz soundly, then resigned in disgust. Miss Lane wrote to Washington, protesting vehemently. Her transfer was suspended until an investigation could be made.

When Mr. Branders heard an investigation was due, he took to his bed and remained there three days. ‘An’ all this time,’ January Skunk commented from his perch on the counter, ’I been wondering how two people could a got away with all that alcohol! Just like as if you could n’t take something from some bottles and pour it in some other bottles and save it for the next time when you don’t feel good.’

Sadie Harris was temporarily placed in the chief clerk’s position, pending the permanent appointment which Mr. Branders recommended. The Indians met in council and talked. The employees met at each other’s houses and not only talked, but quarreled. Mr. Ulysses S. Grant McIntosh, the inspector, arrived. The charges multiplied and bred countercharges. When Miss Lane was made to testify about what she had seen at the hotel in Traymore, Mr. Snitz retaliated by accusing her of fabricating the whole story in order to discredit his statement that he had seen her and Henty there. Whereupon the Indians stepped into the fray to assure the inspector that Miss Lane was ‘a fine lady’ and that Mr. Henty was ‘all right,’ but that Superintendent Branders and Mrs. Sadie Harris were ‘all wrong.’ Then, of course, Mr. Branders wanted to kill all the Indians on the reservation and as many of the employees as agreed with them, which was practically everybody at the agency except Mr. Snitz, Sadie Harris, and her friend the nurse, who came forward to testify that Mr. Henty had always coveted Mr. Branders’s position. This so upset little Elaine Somers that she broke down and said everybody in the office knew Mr. Branders wanted Mr. Henty’s position for Sadie Harris. And they all knew Mrs. Harris was not a — well, not a nice person. And yet there were Sadie Harris and Mrs. Branders taking long walks every evening with their arms affectionately around each other.

Mr. Branders, between letters to Senators and Congressmen and governors, and to friends who also had Senators, Congressmen, and governors to appeal to, enlivened matters still further by dashing about the reservation in the government car, compelling the Indians to farm. Resentfully, bewilderedly, derisively, as the case might be, the Indians took off their bead necklaces and, with the paint from the last powwow still fresh on their faces, hitched their piebald ponies to their rusty ploughs, looped up their braids, manfully grasped the plough handles, and went careering jerkily up and down the hills, marking zigzag scratches between the rocks. And thus with his own eyes Inspector McIntosh saw Mr. Branders’s Indians being self-supporting. That Inspector McIntosh might also have the opportunity of observing Mr. Branders’s extreme abhorrence of any deviation from the very strict code of morals laid down by Mr. Branders himself for the conduct of his subjects, Mr. Branders sent for Bear Ghost.

A policeman went out to Bear Ghost’s home, a small mud-plastered log house beneath a cottonwood tree beside the river. The two wives sat under another tree making watch fobs. The old wife was talking in a low voice, and now and then the young wife laughed. When she laughed she coughed. The old wife picked up a little tin pail from the ground beside her, poured some of its contents into a tin cup, and gave the cup to the young wife, who drank it between fits of coughing. ‘Branders wants him,’ the policeman told the old wife, pointing to Bear Ghost, who sat near the cabin.

An hour later Bear Ghost walked into the office. ‘Tell him,’ Mr. Branders said to the policeman, ‘he’s got to send one of his wives away and get decently married to the other.’

‘He says he don’t—’ began the policeman.

Miss Lane had risen. ‘He says his wife is very old.’

‘Miss Lane!’ The superintendent’s face was unpleasantly mottled. ‘Now, Charlie, you tell me word for word what that old scoundrel said.’

‘Well,’ said Charlie, unhappily, ‘he says — I guess people’s been talkin’ or something, an’ he says — well, he says he don’t—’ Charlie put his hands in his pockets and looked at the floor.

Miss Lane took a step forward. ‘He says — ’

Mr. Branders swore. Charlie took his hands from his pockets, tossed his hair back with a jerk of his head, and looked at the ceiling. ‘ He says — well, he says he don’t understand the white man’s way. He says here you tell him it’s wrong to have two wives, then you go take two wives yourself, he says.’

Mrs. Harris stood up. Miss Lane backed to her chair and sat down.

‘Put him in jail and keep him there until he has sent away one wife!’ Mr. Branders ordered the policeman, forgetting, in his fury, Inspector McIntosh and the exhibition planned for his edification.

Miss Lane jumped to her feet. ‘Mr. Branders, you can’t do that! You can’t put an Indian in jail for a thing like that! He’s one of the old-time Indians; we’re supposed to be lenient with them. He’ll die if you put him in jail! He simply can’t stand jails and policemen and things like that! You know—’

Mr. Branders swore.

‘Oh, Mr. McIntosh,’ Miss Lane gasped, grinning idiotically at the space over Mr. Branders’s shoulder, ‘come and meet one of the chiefs of the tribe.’ Bear Ghost and the inspector shook hands. ‘The chief’s been wanting to see you, Mr. McIntosh,’ Miss Lane rattled on, ‘privately. I’ll interpret for him because he does n’t like policemen and we have no other interpreter just now.’

Mr. Branders swallowed. ‘Tell Bear Ghost to come some other day. I have business with Mr. McIntosh myself now.’

Miss Lane clung to her set grin. ‘Well, I suppose that will be all right. Bear Ghost really came to get his allowance, and if he can have that, why, I dare say he won’t mind coming again to see the inspector.’

Mr. Branders became coy. ‘Now, now, now! Listen, Miss Lane — let him take his old wife to some relative where she will be properly cared for, get decently married to the other one, and then come back for his check.’ He turned to the inspector, gently harried. ‘I’m trying to get these Indians civilized, and so far the results have been really gratifying. Bear Ghost remains my one insurgent. Unless,’ an indulgent smile caressed the girl and the old Indian, ‘I include Miss Lane here.’ He drew the inspector aside and murmured confidentially, ‘I’m going to try holding back Bear Ghost’s allowance for a few days and see what effect that has.’

Miss Lane and Bear Ghost talked it over. ‘He says he will take his old wife to a son she has by a former marriage,’ Miss Lane interpreted at last. ‘ Can he have his money right away? His young wife is sick.’

‘Now, now, now,’ said Mr. Branders, still playful, ‘you know very well, Miss Lane, that would never do. Bear Ghost would forget his promise and keep both the money and the old lady. I know these Indians. Let him first get rid of his wife.’

III

When, in addition to all these activities, Mr. Branders took to lying around in the ditches at night, shooting at passing vehicles in an excess of zeal against the liquor traffic, what had been turmoil became chaos. And Mr. Ulysses S. Grant McIntosh was not mentally organized to cope with chaos. Moreover, he was a cautious man, mindful of the political ramifications upon which even unimportant appointments may rest. So he inspected the herd and the laundry, and then went away on another assignment. Once more the piebald ponies roamed the prairie at will; the ploughs, abandoned in the middle of their last furrows, gathered more rust; the Indians loafed around the agency and the store, and Mr. Branders slept. Mr. Felkesen had long since lost all interest in the matter, Mrs. Felkesen having thoughtfully pointed out to him that, were a new superintendent to replace Mr. Branders, the government supplies stored in their basement would undoubtedly be removed to the warehouse where they belonged. ‘And, Axel, lookit what that would do to our grocery bill.’

Only Mr. Snitz remained active, skulking about, peeking through windows, listening at keyholes. One day he walked into Mr. Branders’s office, and ten minutes later Mr. Branders came out and told Charlie to go and get Bear Ghost. Half an hour after that the door of the waiting room opened about two inches and Charlie’s face appeared in the crack. Miss Lane went out. 'Aie!’ said Charlie. ‘I went to Bear Ghost’s place, an’ he was sittin’ there with his gun in his lap. I know him; he’ll never budge again for no policeman. You go, huh?’

Miss Lane walked to Bear Ghost’s home. The door of the cabin was closed and a quilt hung over the one small window. Bear Ghost sat on the ground before a tepee he had set up beside the cabin, his gun across his knees. His young wife sat under her tree, busy with her watch fobs. Miss Lane sat down beside the old man.

She returned to the agency unobserved, and shortly afterward Bear Ghost presented himself before the superintendent. His gun rested in the crook of his arm.

‘Tell him I don’t like the idea of his comin’ in here with that gun,’ Mr. Branders said to Charlie. Bear Ghost remained silent. Everybody became acutely conscious of the large revolver ostentatiously strapped to Mr. Branders’s waist. Mr. Branders lost his temper. ‘He’s an old crook! He promised to send his wife away, but he just kept her away long enough to collect his money, then brought her back again. Charlie, take his gun from him and put him in jail.’

January Skunk lounged in from the porch where he had been sunning himself, and leaned comfortably against the door jamb. ‘His old wife is too sick to be moved,’ he said.

Bear Ghost spoke. Miss Lane shook her head warningly at January. Mr. Branders caught the signal. ‘January, you tell me what that old crook said.’

‘Well, he says that he never broke one of his own Indian laws, and if your white laws are any good you won’t break ’em yourself. He says if you’ll give up one o’ your wives, why, he’ll give up one o’ his.’

Miss Lane closed her eyes. ‘No dirty Indian can talk about me like that,’ she heard Sadie Harris say. ‘Take him to the jail,’ said Mr. Branders. There was the sound of shuffling feet, the butt of Bear Ghost’s gun rattled on the floor. Miss Lane’s eyes flew open; she was on her feet.

‘Wait a minute! You don’t understand! Bear Ghost does n’t mean—’ Her voice rose shrilly. ‘Well, his old wife got sick and her daughter-inlaw would n’t take care of her, so she came home. What else could she do?’

‘Miss Lane,’ said Mrs. Harris, ‘you go back to your work!’

‘Well, then, you leave him alone!’ Miss Lane cried childishly. ‘You just leave him alone!’

‘Take him away,’ said Mr. Branders.

‘Listen,’ said Miss Lane. ‘It’s this way. Bear Ghost does n’t mean — Mr. Branders, you can’t put an Indian in jail for a thing like that! The Indian Office won’t stand for it! Why, when they hear you’ve jailed an old and sick Indian —He is sick! You don’t know what all this is doing to him! You leave him alone! He can’t help being a gentleman and wanting to protect his women! ’

‘Charlie,’ said Mrs. Harris, ‘you heard Mr. Branders’s orders.’

‘Don’t move, Charlie!’ shrieked Miss Lane. ‘Bear Ghost’ll shoot!’

‘I ain’t movin’,’ said Charlie.

January Skunk was also speaking. ‘Why, he’d have the whole lot of you laid out in a row on the floor before you could pick that gun from your belt. Catch him some other time when he ain’t got his gun with him,’ advised January.

IV

Elaine Somers, carrying a saucer under a napkin, slipped into Miss Lane’s room at the mess building. ‘I told them you had a headache and would n’t be down for supper,’ she said.

‘I never cried so much in my life,’ Miss Lane informed her. ‘Usually I can stop after a while, but this time I just seem to go on and on.’

‘Was n’t it awful?’ whispered Miss Somers.

‘I — I lost my head! ’ gasped Miss Lane. ‘And I do such terrible things when I lose my head. You’ve no idea! January spoke just in time.’

‘My, you were mad, were n’t you!’

Miss Lane shuddered. ‘I ’ve just got to hang on to my senses until the Indian Office does something about Mr. Branders.’ Miss Somers opened her mouth. ‘Of course he’ll be removed!’ Miss Somers again opened her mouth. ‘Oh, I know. Branders’ll try to get Bear Ghost on some real charge; he had n’t a leg to stand on to-day, but in the meantime the Indian Office will have received Mr. McIntosh’s report.’

She had actually stopped crying. Miss Somers uncovered the saucer. ‘I brought you your pie.’

Miss Lane burst into a fresh storm of tears. ‘It’s awful! Pie! Take it away! I know — it was sweet of you to bring it, but — Bear Ghost was hungry! ’

Miss Somers rose. ‘Maybe I can find him.’

‘I gave him a dollar.’

‘Well, then, for heaven’s sake stop crying! That’ll buy them all a nice supper.’

‘Yes,’ wept Miss Lane, bitterly, ‘they like bread.’

But Bear Ghost had bought more than bread with his dollar; he had bought a can of baked beans, and while Miss Lane lay crying in her room his young wife sat on the floor trying to feed them to the old wife, who lay on a blanket in a corner of the cabin. Bear Ghost himself sat before the door of the cabin, which was open, — no need for concealment now, — watching the sun set. He had eaten nothing all day, but though his head felt queer and the earth seemed not quite steady, he was no longer hungry, only proud. He was a warrior again. A chief. He had a gun. Never again would he trot at the heels of poor creatures who were neither Indian nor white, and who hid their insignificance, and often their cowardice, behind a foolish government suit and a gun which some of them did not know how to use.

He sat for a long time, his eyes on the hills that rose from the bank of the river. The sun was behind them now and they undulated in the shade, smoothly dark — except in his eyes. There they were bright, moment by moment growing brighter, until at last they stood gilded with the light of a sweet June day. He felt the numbed stillness that follows the tumult of a great battle, and, narrowing his eyes, saw the dead on the sunny slope. In their midst was a soldier with yellow hair, he alone of all the fallen unmutilated, unmarred — tribute to the valor and honor of a worthy enemy. The air stirred, leaned to whisper to the blooddrenched earth, and here and there on the outskirts of the quiet field a feather lifted, quivered a tremulous response to its faint breath, then lay once more against the long black hair that bound it. On the crest of the hill, a part of the great silence, the painted chiefs were coming, marching in single procession, the feathers in their trailing war bonnets brushing the dead faces where they passed. The line swerved, each figure dipped to touch with a coup stick the stark body of the soldier with the yellow hair, then, stalwart, raised the stick aloft in the golden light; a great warrior, Yellow Hair, but the chiefs who saluted his daring and their own prowess were greater — they had defeated him. And Bear Ghost’s father was among them. He himself was too young; he could only look on. His eyes yearned over the perfection he could not share.

His young wife came out and called to him. Her voice was low, but in that transcendent silence it brought the universe crashing about his ears. He stumbled to his feet and started dazedly toward the river. ‘Not that way,’ his wife said, and pointed to the tepee beside the house. But even then he could not find his way, and she had to take his arm and lead him inside.

He lay in the dark gazing at a star caught in the crossed poles of the tepee. He knew where he was now, and what — a chief holding no trophies, ruling no tribe, his coup stick ungraced by contact with the body of a vanquished foe; forever inglorious in a world that for him had had no wars. He had no honorable enemies, only policemen who would herd him as if he were a cow at the behest of white men who despised the policemen and whom they should have hated.

V

One day Mr. Snitz reported to Mr. Branders that Bear Ghost had liquor in his cabin. Now it might not be quite wise to incarcerate an Indian for possessing two wives, but certainly no one could cavil at his being jailed for bringing intoxicating liquors on the reservation. Mr. Branders sent three policemen after Bear Ghost. But Bear Ghost was not at home. The old wife lay on the floor in a corner; the young wife sat beside her, coughing and sewing beads in the half-light. In a tin can on a shelf was a small bottle half filled with a cloudy liquid.

Fifteen minutes before the office closed that evening Bear Ghost walked in; he had come to give himself up. ‘Oh, the poor old darling!’ Miss Lane groaned under her breath.

Yes, Bear Ghost said, that liquor was his. He kept it for his old wife, who complained of being cold all the time. Yes, he had drunk some of it himself. No, a friend had given it to him. No, he would not give his friend’s name. ‘I don’t understand the white man’s way,’ he said bewilderedly. ‘I have two wives, you have two wives; I have liquor in my house, you have liquor in your house; why is it wrong only for me?’ He went docilely to the agency jail.

A week later an Indian came in to ask that Bear Ghost be allowed to go home for a few days; his old wife was very ill. Mr. Branders directed that she be taken to her son’s home. But the reservation physician said that Mrs. Bear Ghost was too ill to be moved.

At three o’clock in the morning Miss Lane awoke. ‘Can I stay with you?’ Elaine Somers whispered in the dark. ‘I’m scared to death. What is that awful wailing?’

Miss Lane sat up. ‘It’s the death song,’ she whispered back after a while. ‘Someone has died.’

Elaine Somers sat up in the bed beside her. The song rose, despairing, quavered throatily. A coyote on a near-by hill caught its desolation, raised it two tones, and joined his own dismal howl to the woeful dirge. Elaine Somers shivered. ‘There was a woman in the office to-day; she was nursing three children because she had no food to give them.’

‘Did n’t I buy over a hundred horses this afternoon so that everybody might have rations of nice fresh meat?’ Miss Lane rebuked her harshly.

Elaine Somers lay down and pulled the pillows over her ears. ‘I can’t stand it,’ she whimpered.

In the morning Charlie reported that the door of the jail had been opened from the outside and Bear Ghost was gone. ‘Go get him!’ Mr. Branders commanded. ‘Take five men. If he resists arrest, you know what your duty is.’

But Bear Ghost had fled. Miss Lane went to the cabin. The old wife lay in her corner wearing her best dress and all her beads and trinkets — still, her hands folded on her breast. The young wife bent above the clothes she was packing for her old companion’s long journey over the path that is made of the sunset’s rays.

‘No Indian can stay away from a funeral,’ Mr. Branders reminded the police. ‘You can get Bear Ghost then.’

But Bear Ghost was not at the funeral. And his own wife, too! It was incredible! For certainly Bear Ghost was not afraid of policemen. It must be that he had died somewhere!

But no, Bear Ghost had been seen. There was a strip of bad land just around the bend in the river, all gullies and deep ravines and craggy, charred hills. He was hiding there. Bear Ghost hiding?

Just before dinner Mr. Branders walked into the main office, distributed letters at various desks, and placed what remained in the pigeonholes on the wall that served as a post office for the employees. Practically everybody had been transferred, except Mrs. Sadie Harris, who was promoted to the position of chief clerk, and Mr. Snitz, presumably because he was so valuable to the superintendent. Mr. and Mrs. Felkesen seemed to have been forgotten. Miss Lane was dismissed from the service for insubordination, sympathizing with refractory Indians, and usurping the prerogatives of the superintendent.

‘And now, Charlie,’ said Mr. Branders, cheerfully, ’take all your men, deputize as many more as you think you’ll need, and go out and round up Bear Ghost. Bring him in!’ And Mr. Branders left for town.

At one o’clock Charlie presented himself at the office with his men, seventeen strong. Sadie Harris, in charge in the absence of the superintendent, went out to give last instructions. Miss Lane paused in the occupation of cleaning out her desk. ‘Superintendent Branders’s orders are that you must get Bear Ghost. You are not to come back without him!’ Mrs. Harris declaimed from the top of the steps to the police assembled before her. ‘You are to bring him in — dead or alive! Do you hear that? Dead or alive!’

Miss Lane went out through a side door. About a quarter of a mile from the agency she stepped out from behind a clump of willows and faced Charlie. ‘You’ll never bring him back alive, will you?’

‘No,’ said Charlie.

Miss Lane touched her trembling lips with a hand that trembled even more. ‘I’ll go get him,’ she said.

Charlie shook his head. ‘He won’t come. He won’t come for nobody any more. He’s just sick of all that trouble he’s been in there at the agency.’

‘Well, let me go and talk to him. It will do no harm. If he won’t come with me, why then you can try.’

‘You’d better not,’ warned Charlie, uneasily. ‘You see — Bear Ghost’s got kinda funny lately.’

But in the end Miss Lane had her way. At the turn of the river they went down into a ravine, and paused for a consultation. ‘I’ll be up there on that point,’ Miss Lane said, tying her white handkerchief to the end of a stick.

‘Gee, Miss Lane, we’ve just got to get him, you know. Mrs. Harris, she — well, you know how it is down there at the agency.’

‘I’ll get up there on that point and hold up this flag. If Bear Ghost comes out, surround the hill; he won’t be able to escape. If he refuses to come peacefully with me, I ’ll start back this way, signal with the flag, then drop down in that hollow up there, just behind that rock. I’ll be out of range of the guns there, and you — you can do whatever you think you ought to do.’

‘But suppose he shoots you?’ said Charlie.

‘He won’t do that,’ she answered confidently, and started up the side of the hill. Once or twice panic seized her and she almost turned and ran. ‘I must n’t lose my head,’ she admonished herself. ‘No matter what happens, I must not lose my head.’

The coarse, cindery black sand crunched gratingly under her feet, rasping her already raw nerves; little chill currents rippled up and down her spine, pinched the flesh on her arms. At the top she caught her breath. She was so dreadfully exposed! A target for all the world, it seemed to her. Her twitching hands furled and unfurled her flag of truce. She cleared her throat. ‘How, koda!’ she called out, and raised the flag.

Bear Ghost stepped out from behind a boulder only a few yards away, and, brandishing his gun, started to run toward her, screaming and shouting! The world rocked, she swayed. Bear Ghost stumbled, fell at her feet; she caught at his shoulders to keep from falling.

‘Ina! Ina! Ina!’ Bear Ghost sobbed, clinging to her dress.

‘Chief!’ she quavered, and saw his eyes — the eyes of a child, overflowing with a child’s frightened tears.

‘Mother! Mother! Mother!’ he wept against her.

‘Yes, I am here. I am. Oh, my son! Oh, mi-cinca! ’ she murmured brokenly, and closed her arms about him. ‘Oh, mi-ċinċ' — mi-ċinċ’ —mi-ċinċ'...'

And no Indian mother crooning the endearing diminutive over a dead son ever felt a deeper grief than young white Miss Lane knew at that moment. Her sweet old friend! His old wife with her bundles, trudging her lone way to the sun! The coughing young wife, the mother nursing her three children, all the hungry, all the sick; the fierce, dauntless warriors retreating before the white invaders, and fighting so bitterly for every foot of the land they loved as no other land ever has been loved; the whole pitiful, hopeless, doomed race, destroyed, then permitted to live, and reviled when the devastated human shells failed to quicken at the destroyer’s bland invitation to join his soaring in the choice realm evolved from their own ravished possessions! She held them all, helpless in her helpless arms. Those seventeen men lurking with ready guns in the ugly black land, why did n’t they shoot? ‘Go on, shoot! Shoot, you fools!’ she sobbed.

‘Ina, let us go home,’ the old man wailed. ‘Ina! Ina, let us go home.’

She pulled herself up: ‘Yes, my son! Yes! We will go home! Come!’ He rose and put his hand in hers; she caught the flag to her distorted mouth to keep from screaming. ‘We will go home, mi-ċinċa,’ she mumbled in the white cloth, took a step, and stopped. He had no home. He had nothing, no one, only Sadie Harris and —

She lost her head — completely. ‘Mi-ċinċa,’ she said, her hands fluttering agonizingly against his face, ‘it is war! It is war, my son! There is a soldier behind that rock. Point your gun just above the rock. I will walk between you and him; he will not shoot a woman. When I wave my flag — Oh, my son, when I wave my flag and fall in that hollow by the rock, shoot first!’

He laughed gleefully, and she fled before him, his gun pointed at her back. Suddenly she raised her white flag, waved it frantically, and pitched forward on her face. Eighteen guns crashed.

In after years, when Mr. Branders wished to point his contention that one could not trust an Indian, he would relate this story. ‘There was that fool girl, Betsey Lane, thinking she knew Indians, and goin’ up there to get him

— buttin’ in, as usual. Oh, she was n’t afraid of Bear Ghost! Oh my, no! Why, he was her friend! Yah! And then the old fellow turned around and tried to shoot her in the back. Well, believe me, she learned her lesson. No more Indians for her! Why, within an hour after she’d got back to the agency

— so rattled she just about had to be carried in from those hills — she’d packed all her stuff and skipped out. Did n’t even wait to get her check, or leave an address. She just vanished, that’s all. And good riddance, too. She was as bad as Bear Ghost. . . . Just natural-born insurgents, both of ’em.’