Part 14 (1/2)

One evening in the hot, sultry summer, old Forty-nine rode down from the mountain into the great valley, following the trail taken by the lines of chained captives, and set his face for the Reservation.

At a risk of repet.i.tion, let us look at this Reservation. The government had ordered a United States officer, of the rank of lieutenant, to set apart a Reservation for the Indians on land not acquired and not likely to be desired by the white settlers, and to gather the Indians together there and keep them there by force, if force should be required. This young man established a Reservation on the border of a tule lake, shut in by a crescent of low sage-brush hills. The Indian camp was laid out on the very edge of this alkali lake. The crescent of sage-brush hills of a mile in circuit, reaching back and almost around the Reservation, was mounted at three points by cannon, ready to sweep the camp below. On this circuit of hills, healthy and pleasant enough the officers and soldiers had their quarters. Down in the damp, deadly valley, on the edge of the alkali lake, the newly appointed Indian Agent, with a tremendous appropriation to be expended in building houses and establis.h.i.+ng the Indians in their new homes, built the village. It was made up of two rows of low, one-story, one-room huts. Two big lamps hung in the one street; and from lamp to lamp before the doors of the little huts with earthen floors and turf-covered roofs, paced soldiers night and day.

These houses were damp and dismal from the first. Soon they began to be mouldy; fungi and toadstools and the like began to grow up in the corners and out of the logs. Little s.h.i.+ny reptiles, in the long hot rainy days that followed, and worms and all sorts of hideous vermin, began to creep and crawl through these dreadful dens of death, over the sick and dying Indians. Long slimy, unnamed, and unknown worms crawled up out of the earth, as if they could not wait for the victims to die.

The Indians were dying off by hundreds. They went to the officers and complained. The officers ordered a double guard to be set. And that was all.

You marvel that these young lieutenants could be so imperious and cruel?

It does seem past belief. But pardon just one paragraph of digression while we recall the conduct of a younger cla.s.s only last year on the Hudson. To me the real question before the courts in the Whitaker case is not whether this quiet stranger, with a tinge of black man's blood in his veins, mutilated himself, or no. But the real question is, did they or did they not, by their determined and persistent persecutions and insults, drive him in a fit of desperation to do this in the hope of pulling down ruin on the heads of all? This seems probable to me, and to me is far more monstrous than if they had, in sudden anger, cut his ears, or even cut his throat; and if these young bloods could so treat a stranger there, standing at such a manifest disadvantage, what would they not be capable of when they are, for the first time, clothed with a little brief authority, away out on the savage edge of the world?

The water here, as the hot season came on, was something dreadful. It was slimy with alkali. Little black worms knotted and twisted themselves together at the bottom of the cup, like bunches of witch-woven horse-hair. The Indians were dying of malaria. They were burning up with the fever. And this was the only water these people, who had been used to the fresh sweet snow-water of the Sierras, could have.

What could they do? They appealed to the officers. They were answered with insult: ”You must get used to it. You must get civilized.”

These dying Indians began to fight and quarrel among themselves. Ah, they were very wicked. They were quarrelsome as dogs; almost as quarrelsome as Christians!

This was a small Paris in siege. It was Jerusalem surrounded by t.i.tus.

Down there, dying as they were, a savage Simon and a degenerate John, as in Jerusalem of old, led their followers against each other, even across their dead that lay unburied in the mouldy death-pens and about their dark and narrow doors, and slew each other as did G.o.d's chosen people when besieged by the son of Vespasian.

Then the men in bra.s.s and blue turned the cannon loose on the howling savages, and shot them into silence and submission.

John Logan, Carrie and little Stumps, about this time had been brought with others from the mountains to the Reservation. Logan insisted on keeping the two children at his side and under his protection. He was laughed at by agents, and sub-agents.

He was kept chained. He was a.s.signed to a strong hut with gratings across the window--or rather the little loop-hole which let in the light. The guards were kept constantly at his door. He was entered on the books as a very desperate character, a barn-burner, and possible murderer. And so night and day he was kept under the constant watch of the soldiers with fixed bayonets. True, he was soon too weak to lift his manacled hands in strife. But nevertheless he was kept chained and doubly guarded in the little hut with gratings at the loop-hole.

Would he attempt to escape?

There were many broken fragments of many broken tribes here. Tribes that had fought each other to the death--fought as Germans and French have fought. And why not, pray? Has not a heathen as good a right to fight a heathen as has a Christian to fight a Christian? The only difference is, we preach and profess peace; they, war.

Logan was alone in this damp hut and deadly pen. He could hear the tramp of the soldiers; he could see the long thin silver beams of the moon reach through the gratings, reach on and on, around and over and across the damp, mouldy floor, as if reaching out, like G.o.d's white fingers, to touch his face, to cool his fever, and comfort him. But he could see, hear nothing more. He was so utterly alone! They would send an unfriendly Indian in with his breakfast, foul and unfit for even a well man, and a tin cup of water in the morning. Soon after the doctor would call around, also. Then he would see no face again till evening, when more food and water would be brought. At last the food was brought only in the morning. This did not at all affect Logan; for from the first the old pan containing his food had been taken away untouched. The man was certainly dying. The guard and garrison on the hill were waiting for this desperate character, whose capture had cost so much time and money, to attempt to escape.

From the first, even in the face of the blunt refusal, John Logan had begged for the boy to be brought him. He was certain the little fellow was dying--dying of desolation and a broken heart.

About the sixth day, the man chanced to hear from an Indian that the boy had quite broken down, and, refusing all food, lay moaning in his corner all the time, and all the time crying for John Logan or Carrie. The man now entreated more persistently than ever before. He promised the Doctor to eat, to get well, if only the boy could be brought to him and be permitted to spend his time there. For he knew from what the Doctor said that he must soon die if things kept on as they were. The weather was growing hotter and hotter; the water and the food, if possible, more repulsive than ever. Logan could no longer walk across the pen in which he was confined. He was so weak that he could not raise his heavily manacled hands to his face.

After the usual diplomacy and delay, the Doctor reported his condition, and also his earnest desire for the boy, to the Indian Agent.

There was a consultation. Would this crafty and desperate Indian attempt to escape? Was not all this a ruse on his part? Would not the United States imperil its peace and security if this boy and this man were to be allowed together? This mighty question oppressed the mind of the agent in charge for a whole day. Then, after the Doctor again urged the prisoner's request--for man and boy both seemed to be dying--this man reluctantly consented. Would Logan now escape after all? Could he ever get through these iron bars and past the four soldiers pacing up and down outside? Would he escape from the Reservation at last?

And now, at the close of the hottest and most dreadful day they had endured, an old Indian woman, bent almost double, came shuffling in by permission of the guard, and laid something on a pile of rushes and willows in a corner of the pen across from where John Logan lay.

The man heard a noise as of some one breathing heavily, and attempted to rise. He could hardly move his head. But in trying to support himself to a sitting posture, he moved his hands, and so rattled his manacles. This frightened the superst.i.tious old woman, and she ran away. She had laid a little skeleton on the rushes in the corner.

Logan with great effort managed to sit up and look across into the corner that was now being slowly illuminated by a beam of bright, white moonlight, that stole down the wall toward the little heap lying there, like some holy, white-hooded and noiseless-footed nun. At last he saw the face. It was that of little Stumps. The man sank back where he lay.

The sight was so pitiful, so dreadful to see, that he forgot his own misery and was all in tears for the little fellow who lay dying before him. He forgot his own fearful condition at the sight, and again attempted to rise and reach the little heap that lay moaning in the corner. It was impossible; he could not rise.

And how fared Carrie all this time? Little better than the others. She was no longer beautiful. And so she was left, along with a score or more of other dying and desperate creatures, in another part of the Reservation. She was not permitted to see the boy. Least of all was she permitted to see, or even hear from, John Logan. Day by day she drooped and sank slowly but surely down toward the grave.

But she did not fear death. She had faced it in all forms before. And even now death walked the place night and day, and she was not afraid.