The Captain of the Gray-Horse Troop Part 21

Two Horns came to meet them, and Parker cried out, "h.e.l.lo! see the big Indian!"

The chief greeted Lawson with a deep and hearty "Hah! Nawson--my friend.

How! How!" And Lawson, with equal ceremony, replied, in Dakota:

"I am well, my brother; how is it with you?"

"My heart is warm towards you."

Elsie gave him her hand, and he took it without embarra.s.sment or awkwardness. "I know you; you make pictures," he said, in his own tongue.

"Jerusalem, but he's a stunner!" said Parker. "h.e.l.lo, old man! How you va.s.s, ain't it?" and he clapped the old man on the shoulder.

Two Horns looked at him keenly, and the smile faded from his face. "Huh!

Big fool," he said to Lawson.

"You mustn't talk to an Indian like that, Parker, if you expect to have his friendship," said Lawson. "Two Horns hates over-familiarity."

"Oh, he does, does he?" laughed Parker. "Kind of a Ward McAllister, hey?"

Lawson, a little later, said, privately: "That was a bad break, Parker; you really must treat these head men with decent respect or they'll hoodoo you so you can't get any models. Two Horns is a gentleman, and you must at least equal him in reserve and dignity or he will report you a buffoon."

Parker, who had done his figures from models procured in Paris from Buffalo Bill's show, opened his eyes wide.

"Lawson, you're joking!"

"You'll find every word I tell you true. I advise you to set to work now and remove your bad impression from Two Horns, who is one of the three princ.i.p.al chiefs. You can't come out here and clap these people on the back and call 'em 'old hoss.' That will do in some of the stories you read, but realities are different. You'll find money won't command these people, either."

"I thought they liked to be treated as equals?"

"They do, but they don't like to have a stranger too free and easy. You haven't been introduced yet."

While Crane's Voice attended to the teams, Jennie and Two Horns worked at getting supper. Their comradeship was charming to see, and the Parkers looked on with amazement. Two Horns, deft, attentive, careful, antic.i.p.ated every want. Nothing could be finer than the perfectly cheerful a.s.sistance he rendered the pretty cook. His manner was like that of an elder brother rather than that of a servant.

"I didn't suppose Indians ever worked around a camp, and especially with a woman," remarked Parker.

"What you don't know about Indians is still a large volume, Parker,"

retorted Lawson. "If you stay around with this outfit for a few weeks you'll gather a great deal of information useful for a sculptor of redmen."

Elsie took Lawson mildly to task for his sharp reply.

Lawson admitted that it made him impatient when a man like Parker opened his mouth on things he knew nothing about. "You never can tell what your best friend will do, can you? Parker is decidedly fresh. If he keeps on he'll become tiresome."

Elsie presumed on her enormous experience of three months on the reservation, and gave Parker many valuable hints of how to wheedle the Tetongs in personal contact.

"It seems I'm being schooled," he complained.

"You need it," was Lawson's disconcerting reply.

As night fell, and the fire began to glow in the cool, sweet dark with increasing power, they all sat round the flame and planned the trip into the mountains.

"I have some Tetongs up there who are disposed to keep very clear of the agency. Red Wolf is their head man. You may all go with me and see my council with him if you like."

"Oh! that will be glorious fun!" cried Elsie.

But Parker asked, a little anxiously, "You think it safe?" which amused Curtis, and Parker hastened to explain: "You've no idea what a bad reputation these Tetongs have. Anyhow, I would not feel justified in taking Mrs. Parker into any danger."

"She is quite safe," replied Curtis. "I will answer for the action of my wards."

"Well, if you are quite sure!"

"How far away Washington seems now!" remarked Elsie, after a silence. "I feel as if I had gone back to the very beginning of things."

"It seems the end of things for the Tetongs," replied Lawson. "We forget that fact sometimes when we are anxious to have them change to our ways.

Barring out a few rudenesses, their old life was a beautiful adaptation of organism to environment. Isn't that so, Curtis?"

"It certainly had its idyllic side."

"But they must have been worried to death for fear of getting scalped,"

said Parker.

"Oh, they didn't war much till the white man came to disturb them, by crowding one tribe into another tribe's territory. Their 'wars' were small affairs--hardly more than skirmishes. That they were infrequent is evident from the importance given small forays in their 'winter counts.'"

One by one the campers began to yawn, and Jennie and Mrs. Parker withdrew into the tent reserved for the women, but Lawson and Elsie and Curtis still remained about the fire. The girl's eyes were wide with excitement. "Isn't it delicious to be a little speck of life in this limitless world of darkness? Osborne, why didn't we camp last year?"

"I proposed it, but Mattie would not hear to it. I have a notion that you also put my suggestion aside with scorn."

She protested that he was mistaken. "It is the only way to get close to these wild people. I begin to understand them as I sit here beside this fire. What do you suppose Two Horns is thinking about as he sits over there smoking?"

As they talked, Lawson began to yawn also, and at last said: "Elsie Bee Bee, I am sleepy, and I know Curtis is."

"Not at all," protested Curtis. "I'm just coming to myself. As the camp-fire smoulders the night is at its best. Besides, I'm in the midst of a story."

"Well, I didn't sleep very well last night," began Lawson, apologetically. "I think--if you don't mind--"

"Go to bed, Sleepy Head," laughed Elsie. "We'll excuse you."

"I believe I will," and off he went, leaving the two young people alone.

"Go on!" cried Elsie. "Tell me all about it."

Curtis glowed with new fire at this proof of her interest. "Well, there we were, Sergeant Pierce, Standing Elk, and myself, camped in Avalanche Basin, which at that time of the year is as full of storms as a cave is of bats." A yelping cry on the hill back of them interrupted him. "There goes a coyote! Now the night is perfect," he ended, with a note of exultant poetry.

She drew a little nearer to him. "I don't enjoy that cry as well as you do," she said, with a touch of delicious timidity in her voice. "That's the woman of it, isn't it?"

"I know how harmless he is." After a pause, he slowly said: "This is the farthest reach of the imaginable--that you should sit here beside my fire in this wild land. It must seem as much of a dream to you as your splendid home was to me."

"I didn't suppose these things could shake me so. How mysterious the world is when night makes it lone and empty! I never realized it before.

That hill behind us, and the wolf--and see those willows by the brook.

They might be savages creeping upon us, or great birds resting, or any silent, threatening creature of the darkness. If I were alone my heart would stand still with awe and fear of them."