Part 14 (2/2)
She lay down at night with death. She knew no fear at all. She constantly asked for and wanted to see the helpless little boy, in the hope that she might help or cheer him. But no one listened to anything she had to say. Once, after a very hot and horrible day, two of her companions in captivity were found to be dead. The guard who paced up and down between the huts was told of it. But he said it was too late to have them carted away that night. And so this girl lay there all night by the side of the dead, and was not afraid. Nay, she even wished that she too, when the cart came in the morning, might be found silent and at peace. And then she thought of those whom she loved, and reproached herself for being so selfish as to want to die when she still might be of use to them.
Let us escape from these dreadful scenes as soon as possible. They are like a nightmare to me.
And yet the mind turns back constantly to John Logan lying there; the little heap of bones in the corner; the pure white moonlight creeping softly down the wall, as if to look into the little fellow's eyes, yet as if half afraid of wakening him.
Could Logan escape? Chains, double guards, death--all these at his door holding him back, waiting to take him if he ever pa.s.sed out at that door. Mould on the floor, mould on the walls, mould on the very blankets. The man was burning to death with the fever; the boy, too, lying over there. The boy moaned now and then. Once Logan heard him cry for water. That warm, slimy, wormy water! O, for one, just one draught of cool, sweet water from the mountains--their dearly loved native mountains--and die!
The moon rose higher still, round and white and large; and at last, wheeling over the camp of death, seemed to pause in pity and look full in upon those two dying captives. It seemed to soothe them both.
The little boy saw the moonbeam on the wall, and was pacified. It looked like the face of an old friend. It brought back the old time; the life, the woods, the water--above all, the cool sweet waters of the mountains.
He seemed to know where he was. He lay still a long time, and then felt stronger. He called to John Logan. No answer. Then the feeble, piping little voice lifted up and called as loud as it could. No answer still.
The boy crawled from off the little pallet and tried to rise. He sank down on the damp floor, and then tried to crawl to John Logan. He tried to call again, as he began to slowly crawl towards the other corner. But the poor little voice was no louder than a whisper. Very weak and very wild, and almost quite delirious, the boy kept on as best he could. He at last touched the blankets, the breast, and he drew himself up just as the moon looked down on the pale upturned face. Then, with a moan, a wild, pitiful cry, the little fellow fell back on the damp mouldy floor.
John Logan was dead! Despite the chains, the bars at the window, the double guard at the door, the man had escaped at last!
The pitying moon did not hasten to go. It lingered there, reached down along the damp, mouldy floor to a little form of skin and bone; and then, as if this moon-beam were the Savior's mantle spreading out to cover the white and stainless soul, it covered the pinched and pitiful little face. For the boy, too, lay dead.
Here was the end of two lives that had known only the long dark shadows, only the deep solitude and solemnity of the forest. Like tall weeds that sometimes shoot up in dark and unfrequented places, and that put forth strange, sweet flowers, these two lives had sprung up there, put forth after their fas.h.i.+on the best that is in man, and then perished in darkness, unnamed, unknown.
Who were they? John Logan, it is now whispered, was the son of an officer made famous in the war annals of the world. The officer had been stationed here in early manhood, gave his heart as she believed to a daughter of a brave and powerful chief, whose lands lay near where he was stationed for a summer, and then? The old, old tale of betrayal and desertion. The woman was disgraced before her people. And so when they retreated before the encroachments of the whites, she, being despised and cast off by her people, remained behind waiting the promised return of her lover. He? He did not even acknowledge his child. This General, who had taken the lives of a thousand men, had not the moral courage to reach out a hand to this one little waif which he had called into existence.
Do you know, there never was a dog drowned in the pound so base and low that he would not fight? Yet this brute-valor is largely admired, even to this day, by Christian people. This man could kill men, could risk his own life, but he could not give this innocent child his name.
And so it was, the boy, after he had learned to read, by the help of Forty-nine, and an occasional missionary who sometimes preached to the miners, and spent the pleasant summer months in the mountains--this boy, I say, who at last had heard all the story of his father's weakness and wickedness from Forty-nine's lips disdained to use his name, but chose one famous in the annals of the Indians. And this brief sketch is about all there is to tell of the young man who lay dead in chains, in the prison-pen of the Reservation.
”Civilization kills the Indian,” said the Doctor that morning in his daily round, after he had examined the dead bodies.
”He does not look so desperate, after all,” said an officer, as he held his nose with his thumb and finger, and leaned forward to look at the dead Indian, while his other hand held his sword gracefully at his side.
And then this officer, after making certain that this desperate character was quite dead, drew forth his cigar-case, struck a light, and climbing upon his horse, galloped back to his quarters on the hill.
The Doctor, now left alone, stooped and put back the long silken hair from the thin baby-face of the boy, as the body was brought out and being carried to the cart made to receive the dead, and remarked that it was not at all like that of the other Indians. Another young officer came by as the Doctor did this, and his attention was called to the fact. The officer tapped his sword-hilt a little, looked curiously at the pitiful, pinched little face, and then ordering the soldiers to move on with their burden, he turned to the Doctor and remarked, as the two went back together to their quarters on the hill, that ”no doubt it was the effect of the few days of civilization on the Reservation that had made the boy so white; pity he had died so soon; a year on the Reservation, and he would have been quite white.”
Unlike other parts of the Union, here the races are much mixed. Creoles, Kanakas, Mexicans, Malays, whites, and blacks, have intermixed with the natives, till the color line is not clearly drawn. And in one case at least some orphan children of white parentage were sent to the Reservation by parties who wanted their property. Though I do not know that the fact of white children being found on a Reservation makes the sufferings of the savages less or their wrongs more outrageous. I only mention it as a frozen fact.
Carrie did not know of the desolation which death had made in her life, till old Forty-nine, who arrived too late to attend the burial of his dead, told her. She did not weep. She did not even answer. She only turned her face to the wall as she lay in her wretched bed, burning up with the fever, but made no sign. There was nothing more for her to bear. She had felt all that human nature can feel. She was dull, dazed, indifferent, now to all that might occur.
To turn back for the s.p.a.ce of a paragraph, I am bound to admit that these dying Indians often behaved very foolishly, and, in their superst.i.tions brought much of the fatality upon themselves. For example, they had a horror of the white man's remedies, and refused to take the medicines administered to them. Brought down from the cool, fresh mountains, where they lived under the trees in the purest air and in the most beautiful places, they at once fell ready victims to malarial fevers. The white man, by a liberal use of quinine and whisky, as well as by careful diet, lived very well at the Reservation, and suffered but little, yet had he been forced to live in a pen, crowded together like pigs in a sty, with the bad air, on the damp, mouldy ground, he had died too, as fast perhaps as the Indian died.
The old man could do but little for the dying girl. He was in bad odor with the officers; they treated him with as little consideration almost as if he too had been a savage. But he was constant at her side; he brought a lemon which he had begged, on his knees, as it were, and tried to make her a cool drink of the slimy, wormy water. But the girl could not drink it. She turned her face once more to the wall, and this time, it seemed, to die.
One morning, before the sun rose, she recovered her wandering mind and called old Forty-nine to her side. She was surely dying; but her mind was clear, and she understood perfectly all she said or did. Her dark eyes were sunken deep in their places, and her long, sun-browned hands were only skin and bone. They fell down across her heaving little breast, as if they were the hands of a skeleton. Little wonder that her persecutors had turned away with horror, perhaps with fear, from those deep, hollow eyes, and the pitiful emaciated frame, that could no longer lift itself where it lay.
The old man fell down on his knees beside her and reached his face across to hers. With great effort she lifted her two naked long, arms, and wound them about the old man's neck. He seemed to know that death was near, as he reached his face over hers. Over his cheeks and down his long white beard the tears ran like rain and fell on her face and breast.
”Forty-nine, father! Let me call you father; may I? I never had any father but you,” said the girl feebly, as the tears fell fast on her face.
”Yes, yes, call me father. Call me father, Carrie, my Carrie; my poor, dear, dear little Carrie,--do call me father, for of all the world I have only you to love and live for,” sobbed the old man as if his heart would break.
<script>