Shadows of Shasta Part 5

"Do you think red hair is so awful ugly?"

And what a wondrous glory of hair it was! It was so intensely black; and then it had that singular fringe of fire, or touch of t.i.tian color, which seen in the sunset made it almost red.

The man stops, turns, comes back a step or two, as she continues:

"I do--I do! Oh, I wish to Moses I had tow hair, I do, like Sylvia Fields."

The man is standing close beside her now. He is looking down into her face and she feels his presence. The foot does not swing so violently now, and the girl has cautiously, and, as she believes, unseen, lifted the edge of her tattered sleeve to her eyes. "Why Carrie, your hair is not red." And he speaks very tenderly. "Carrie, you are going to be beautiful. You are beautiful now. You are very beautiful!"

Carrie is not so angry now. The foot stops altogether, and she lifts her face and says:

"No I ain't--I ain't beautiful! Don't you try to humbug me. I am ugly, and I know it! For, last winter, when I went down to the grocery to fetch Forty-nine--he'd gone down there to get medicine for his ager, Mr.

John Logan--I heard a man say, 'She is ugly as a mud fence.' Oh, I went for him! I made the fur fly! But that didn't make me pretty. I was ugly all the same. No, I'm not pretty--I'm ugly, and I know it!"

"Oh, no, you're not. You are beautiful, and getting lovelier every day."

Carrie softens and approaches him.

"Am I, John Logan? And you really don't think red hair is the ugliest thing in the world?"

"Do I really not think red hair is the ugliest thing in the world? Why, Carrie?"

Carrie, starting back, looks in his face and says, bitterly: "You do.

You do think red hair is the ugliest thing in all this born world, and I just dare you to deny it. Sylvia Fields--she's got white hair, she has, and you like white hair, you do. I despise her; I despise her so much that I almost choke."

"Why, now, Carrie, what makes you despise Sylvia Fields?"

"I don't know; I don't know why I despise her, but I do. I despise her with all my might and soul and body. And I tell you, Mr. John Logan, that"--here the lips begin to quiver, and she is about to burst into tears--"I tell you, Mr. John Logan, that I do hope she likes ripe bananas; and I do hope that if she does like ripe bananas, that when bananas come to camp this fall, that she will take a ripe banana and try for to suck it; and I do hope she will suck a ripe banana down her throat, and get choked to death on it, I do."

"Oh, Carrie, this is very wicked!" cries John Logan, reproachfully, "and I must leave you if you talk that way. Good-bye," and the man shoulders his gun and again turns away.

"Well, do you think red hair is the ugliest thing in the world? Do you?

Do you now?"

"Carrie, don't you know I love the beautiful, red woods of autumn?"

It is the May-day of the maiden's life; the May shower is over again, and the girl lifts her beautiful face, and says lightly, almost laughing through her tears,

"And, oh, you did like the red bush, didn't you, Mr. John Logan? And, oh, you did say that Moses saw the face of G.o.d in the burning bush, didn't you, Mr. John Logan?"

"I want you to tell me a story, I do," interposes Stumps. The boy had stood there a long time, first on one foot, then on the other, swinging his squirrel, pouting out his mouth, and waiting.

"Yes, tell us a story," urges Carrie.

"Oh, yes, tell us a story about a c.o.o.n--no, about a panther--no, a bear.

Oh, yes, about a bear! about a bear!" cries the boy, "about a bear!"

"Poor, half-wild children!" sighs John Logan. "Nothing to divert them, their little minds go out, curiously seeking something new and strange, just, I fancy as older and abler people's do in larger ways. Yes, I will tell you a story about a bear. And let us sit down; my long walk has tired my legs;" and he looks about for a resting place.

"Oh, here, this mossy log!" cries Stumps; "it's as soft as silk. You will sit there, and I here, and sister there."

John Logan leans his gun against a tree, hanging his pouch on the gun.

"Yes, I will sit here--and you, Carrie?"

"Here. Oh, John Logan, I just fit in."

One of Logan's arms falls loosely around Carrie, the other more loosely around Stumps.

"Yes, it's a nice fit, Carrie--couldn't be better if cut out by a tailor."

Carrie, swinging her feet, and looking in his face, very happy, exclaims:

"Oh, John Logan! Don't hold me too tight--you might hurt me!"

Stumps laughs. "He don't hold me tight enough to hurt me a bit." Then looking up in his face, says, "I want a bear story, I do."

"Well, I will tell you a story out of the Bible. Once upon a time there was a great, good man--a very good and a very earnest man. Well, this very good old man, who was very bald headed, took a walk one evening; and the very good old man pa.s.sed by a lot of very bad boys. And these very bad boys saw the very bald head of the very good man and they said, 'Go up, old bald head! Go up, old bald head!' And it made this good man very mad; and he turned, and he called a she-bear out of the woods, and she ate up about forty."

"Oh!" cries Stumps, aghast.

"Oh!" adds Carrie. "And he wasn't a very good man. He might have been a very bald-headed man, but he wasn't a very good man to have her eat all the children, Mr. John Logan."

Stumps, nursing his squirrel, with his head on one side, says:

"Well, I don't believe it, no how--I don't! What was his name--the old, bald-head?"

"His name was Elijah, sir."

"Elijah! The bald-headed Elijah! Oh, I do believe it, then; for I know when Forty-nine and the curly-headed grocery-keeper were playing poker, at ten cents ante and pa.s.s the buck--when Forty-nine went down to get his ager medicine, sister--Forty-nine, he went a blind; and the curly-headed grocery-keeper he straddled it, and then Forty-nine seed him, he did. And so help me! he raked in the pot on a Jack full. And then the curly-headed grocery-keeper jumped up, and struck his fist on the table, and he said, 'By the bald-headed Elijah!'"

Carrie nestles closer, and in a half whisper, mutters,

"I believe I'm getting a little chilly."

Stumps hears this, and says,

"Why, Carrie, I'm just a sweatin', and--"

"Shoo! What noise was that? There is some one stealing through the bush!"

John Logan, as he spoke, rose up softly and cautiously, and half bent forward as he put the two children aside and reached his gun. He looked at the cap, ran an eye along the barrel, and then twisted his belt about so that a pistol was just visible beneath his coat. The man had had an intimation of trouble. Indeed, his gun had been at hand all this time, but he did not care to frighten the two happy waifs of the woods with any thought of what might happen to him, and even to them.

These children had but one thing to dread. There was but one terrible word to them in the language. It was not hunger, not starvation,--no, not even death. It was the _Reservation_! That one word meant to them, as it means to all who are liable to be carried there, captivity, slavery, degradation, and finally death, in its most dreadful form.

And why should it be so dreaded? Make the case your own, if you are a lover of liberty, and you can understand.

Statistics show that more than three-fourths of all Indians removed to Reservations of late years, die before becoming accustomed to the new order of things.