Part 17 (1/2)
”I need not say how we deplore the orders, Mrs. Davies. I'm so sorry to have missed you to-day. Won't you lunch and dine with us to-morrow and talk over plans? We shall be so glad to have you.”
And Almira faltered that she had promised to lunch at Mrs. Darling's and spend the afternoon, and was afraid she couldn't promise to come to dinner, and Mrs. Cranston understood. They went home early, did the Cranston's,--that is, early for Fort Scott,--whereas Mrs. Davies, influenced by her energetic friends, danced until long after midnight, and then sat up and talked it all over until long after two.
”Willett's simply gone on you,” was Mrs. Flight's significant remark.
”No wonder lots of our primmers looked blue to-night. Willett used to dance with Mrs. Wright and Mrs. Hay all the time, but he hardly looked at them to-night. And did you see the look Miss Loomis gave him when he invited her? He says she snubbed him outright.” No, Almira hadn't seen, but she had caught almost every look that Willett gave her, and was thinking more of those and of what he said, and of his plea that she should be at Mrs. Darling's for luncheon next day,--they wouldn't drive back to Braska until afternoon,--and of the ball they meant to give at the railway hotel in town, to return the courtesies of their friends at the fort. He was to lead the german, and might have to lead it with Mrs.
Courtenay of the bank, who was the leader of local society but couldn't dance any more than he could fly, and if Mrs. Davies would only promise to be there all would be bliss. Mrs. Davies had said she could not be there. They were in mourning for Mr. Davies's mother, as Willett well knew, and she expected Percy home within a week or ten days. Captain Devers had a.s.sured her it couldn't be for longer, and indeed, oh, no!
she couldn't think of going to a ball in town.
But she did think of it very much indeed. She thought of it, and the dance of the evening gone, far more than she did of Percy and his party now sleeping in the snow or s.h.i.+vering in the wind at Dismal River. She wrote him one of her long letters Thursday morning, spending over an hour in the effort, and an equal time in her toilet for the luncheon at the Darlings. She was in the midst of this charming function, a.s.sisted by Mrs. Flight, when the gong on the front door announced the coming of a visitor. ”I can't see anybody now, can I?” she hazarded to Mrs.
Flight, and Mrs. Flight thought she really wouldn't have time, and so whispered to Katty, as that Milesian maid-of-all-work bustled through to answer the summons, ”Mrs. Davies will have to be excused to callers,”
and the parley at the hall door was brief enough. Almira and her a.s.sistant listened,--as what woman would not?--heard the courteous, cordial tone of inquiry for Mrs. Davies, and Katty's flurried ”Begs to be excused, mum,” and there was no need of the question which Mrs.
Flight asked,--”Who was it, Katty?” for both knew Mrs. Cranston's voice.
”I've done my best, Wilbur,” said Meg, as she threw herself on the arm of the big easy-chair in which her lord was reading the Chicago papers before the snapping, sparkling fireplace. ”She did not want to see me last night, and she practically refused to see me this morning. She has chosen her intimates, and it is a case of like unto like. We are not congenial. Yet I so wanted to be a friend to him and to her.”
Cranston dropped his paper and threw his strong arm about her waist, and when a man turns from the contemplation of his favorite journal to that of the face of his wife her queendom is a.s.sured.
”You've done all I could ask, dear,” was his answer, ”but we may have to pocket our pride a little. She is very young and inexperienced. She goes to Darlings' to-day, does she?--and that c.o.xcomb Willett is to be there, too.” The _Times_ slipped to the floor, forgotten, and Margaret, saying nothing more, drew closer to his side and nestled her round, soft cheek against his weather-beaten jowl, and Agatha, coming quickly in from her supervision of the boys' lessons in the adjoining room, went back to the book-littered table unnoticed. This frontier Darby and Joan, whose tin wedding had pa.s.sed and gone long months before, seemed spooning yet.
It's another ”way we have in the army,” and long may it live and linger.
CHAPTER XVIII.
Long remembered at the agency and among the lodges of the a.s.sembled Sioux was the morning of the arrival of Lieutenant Davies with a squad of half-frozen troopers at his back. The gale that swept the prairies on Wednesday had died away. The mercury in the tubes at the trader's store had sunk to the nethermost depths. The sundogs blazed in the eastern sky, and even the rapids of the Running Water seemed turned to solid blue. Borne on the wings of the blast, straight from the frozen pole, the Ice King had swooped upon the sheltered valley. Cold as is the wide frontier at such times, even among the gray heads, the old medicine-men, the great-grandmothers of the tribes, huddling in the frowzy, foul-smelling tepees, were legends of no such bitter, biting cold as this. Cattle lying here and there stark and stiffened, hardy ponies, long used to Dakota blizzards, even some among the Indian dogs had succ.u.mbed to its severity, while over at the agent's, behind double-listed doors and frost-covered sashes, around roaring coal fires in red-hot stoves, the employes and their families herded together almost as did the Indians, execrating the drop in the temperature one minute even while thanking G.o.d for it the next. It was the main thing that had interposed to save them from the vengeance of Red Dog's band.
All through the desperate battling of the previous summer, even in the face of fiercest triumph the Indians had known in years, one little band of Sioux had kept faith with the white brother and refused all effort to draw its young men to the war-path. For months, from early spring-tide, against three columns of regular troops, the hostiles in the Big Horn and Powder River countries had more than held their own, and under the spell of Sitting Bull and led by such war chiefs as Crazy Horse and Gall and Rain-in-the-Face, the turbulent spirits of nearly every tribe had swelled the fighting force until at times six thousand warriors were in the field engaged in b.l.o.o.d.y work. The whole Sioux nation seemed in arms.
Ogallalla and Brule, Minneconjou, Uncapapa, Teton and Santee, Sans Arc and Black Foot, leagued with their only rivals in plainscraft and horsemans.h.i.+p and strategy, the Cheyennes, thronged to that wild and beautiful land once the home of the Crows. Three columns had striven to hem them in,--three thousand wagon-hampered soldiers to surround six thousand free lances of the plains, and the Indians laughed them to scorn. When the columns pressed too close they swarmed upon the nearest, stung it, sent it staggering back; then watched for the next, and swept it out of existence. They flew at Crook on the 17th of June and fought him luringly, begging him to follow farther into their traps in the canon, but the Gray Fox knew them and divined the numbers that lurked in hiding behind the bold green curtain of bluffs, and so slipped out of the toils. They turned on Custer eight days later and left no tongue to tell the tale. Three columns, against such energetic measures, fell back to recruit and refit, and not until late in the season, doubled in strength, could they resume the offensive. Then, the summer's work accomplished, the warriors scattered, spoil laden, and the troops chased madly hither and yon until brought up standing at the boundaries of Her Britannic Majesty on the one side or those of the Indian Bureau on the other. Across the border-land Sitting Bull snapped his fingers at his pursuers. Across the reservation lines did many a jeering chief hurl taunt and challenge at the baffled soldiery. When winter came on there were still a few strong bands of Sioux and Cheyennes dancing to the war-drums in the fastnesses of the Big Horn, whence Miles and Mackenzie and the Frost King soon routed them; but most of the warriors who had spent their season in saddle in the field were once more at home under the sheltering wing of the Department of the Interior, while their chiefs and leaders, their hands still red with the blood of Custer's men, their wigwams freshly upholstered with cavalry scalps, went eastward on their customary junket to the capital of the nation, to be fed and feted and lionized, to come back laden with more spoil, more arms, ammunition, clothing, blankets, tobacco, kickshaws and trumpery dear to the savage heart, rejoicing, even though they marvelled, at the fatuity of a people that annually rewarded instead of punis.h.i.+ng their murderous work. They, the heroes of the summer's campaign, rode in triumph through the very homes of their victims, and weeping women and children listened in amaze to the plaudits with which their townspeople greeted the very savages who, not six months before, were hacking out the last flutter of life, drinking the heart's blood, revelling in the dying moan of beloved husband or father. Verily, we're a nation of odd contradictions.
And, just as a sojourn in Was.h.i.+ngton seems to turn many a white brother's head, so did this, though with better reason, send the savage homeward with boastful heart. He and his were welcomed back to the fold, lavishly provided for, all manner of requests and demands. .h.i.therto denied now smilingly honored. They came back lords of the soil, monarchs of all they surveyed, scornful of all who were not with them in the warfare of the summer gone by, and of these was the household of Spotted Tail. Long time chief of the Brules, he had kept faith with the whites, his kith and kin were loyal to their obligations, and in so far as example and influence could go they had held their tribe, all but the more turbulent young men, out of the fight. There was a band that for years had never ”drawn a bead” on white man,--settler or soldier,--a band that had furnished scouts and runners and trailers and had done yeoman's work upon the reservations. These were now, as was to be expected, of no more consequence in council lodge or tribal dance.
Snubbed by the war chiefs, sneered at by the young men, slighted by the maidens, it was bad enough that they should have lost caste among their own people, it was worse, and what made it infinitely worse that it was so utterly characteristic, that these faithful allies and servants should now find themselves neglected by the very government which they had so earnestly supported. Back from the war-path, day after day, came dozens of grinning, hand-shaking warriors lately in rebellion, and to them, their squaws and children, with lavish hand the agency dealt out blankets and calicoes, bacon and beef, coffee, flour, and sugar. Such redoubtables as Red Dog, Little Big Man, Prowling Wolf, and Kills Asleep were swaggering about, as were their young men, in plethora of savage adornment and ”store clothes.” Their squaws and children were warm and fat and garbed in attractive motley. Even their dogs were in better fettle than the social exiles of the Spotted Tail school, now in rags and dependent for their daily bread on what the agent would give them.
Three times it happened on ration days that Red Dog and Kills Asleep, swaggering about the corral, told their followers to pick out and drive away such cattle as were pa.s.sably fat and presumably tender, leaving to the silent loyals only a miserable batch of beeves which Lieutenant Boynton described as ”dried on the hoof.” The agent said he couldn't help it, ”Red Dog and the likes of him are now high in favor at Was.h.i.+ngton. They and their fellows could have me removed in a minute if I interfered, and they know it. There is no lie at my expense their interpreters wouldn't tell the inspectors, and against so many witnesses what could I do?”
”Do!” said Boynton, indignantly. ”Do your duty, and I'll back you up.
I'll testify to the truth.”
And then the agent smiled sadly, but scornfully, and said another truism. ”What good would that do? From Sheridan down, what army officer's statement has any weight whatever with the Indian Bureau,--when it isn't what it wants?”
”Well,” said Boynton, ”it's a d.a.m.ned shame, and I mean to make a formal report to department headquarters at once.”
And the agent said he wished he would, and Boynton did, but before that doc.u.ment could reach Omaha there were other and more serious troubles.
Two Lance was the name given the chief of the little band that had stood fast with Spotted Tail, and Two Lance had begged that he and his people might be allowed to go back to where most of the Brules lived, at the old home on the White River. ”This is no place for us,” said he. ”We are poor, hungry, ragged, almost naked. We are jeered at. Even our maidens are insulted by these our own people because we were taught to remain true to the Great Father and take no part in the war. Now, behold, they who killed his soldiers, murdered his settlers, and ravished his women are fat and strong and rich. Their ponies are as the herds of buffalo in our fathers' day, and we who served the great White Chief and protected his children, we are a shame and a scorn. Let us go to him who never broke a promise or told a lie and he will right us. Let us go back to Sintogaliska--to Spotted Tail.” But the agent said he had no authority.
It would be another moon before he could get it, and it might not come then. If they pulled up stakes and went anyhow he would have to send the white chief Boynton with his soldiers to fetch them back; and when Red Dog and Kills Asleep heard of this they rode to the village of Two Lance and jeered him anew and called him ”White Heart” and ”No Lance,” and some of Red Dog's young men said worse things to some of the Brule girls who stood shrouded in their ragged blankets, bidding them follow and be the mothers of men and braves and warriors and not remain in the lodges of faint hearted curs. There were Brules there, young braves who longed for battle then and there, and who leaped to their gaunt ponies and shouted challenge and defiance, but Two Lance interposed. There must be no fratricidal warring, said he. They would lay the matter before the council fire of Sintogaliska,--he who had ruled the Brules since first the white tents of the soldiers gleamed along the Platte--Sintogaliska who never lied. And this too was jeered and flouted. Sintogaliska, indeed! Sintogaliska was a traitor, an old woman whom the white father had bought with beads and candy. The warriors of the Sioux, the only men fit to lead, were such as Red Dog and Kills Asleep. But still Two Lance kept his temper and the public peace, and again he rode to the agent and told his story, and Boynton fired up and said in common decency the agent must do something to put a stop to Red Dog's insolence, and the agent sent for Red Dog and bade him report himself at the agency forthwith, and Red Dog replied that he would when he got ready, and if the agent wanted him sooner, why, to come and get him, and Elk-at-Bay, who brought his defiance, lunged in and laughed when he gave the message, and helped himself to the cigars remaining in the agent's box and swaggered out with them.
That evening in sudden brawl and in plain view of Mr. McPhail, the agent, one of Red Dog's braves stabbed to the heart the lover of a Brule girl whom he had affronted.