The Captain of the Gray-Horse Troop Part 15

This silenced him. He took time to consider what this sudden depression on her part meant. As he studied her he saw her lip quiver, and anxiety suddenly left him. His tone was laughter-filled as he called: "Come, now, Miss Brisbane, you're making game of me by taking my criticisms so solemnly. I can see a smile twitching your lips this moment. Look at me!"

She looked up and broke into a laugh. He joined in with her, but a flush rose to his face.

"You fooled me completely. I reckon you should have been an actress instead of a painter."

She sobered a little. "Really, I _was_ depressed for a moment. Your tone was so terribly destructive. Shall we go down?"

"Not till you say you'll forgive me and forget my harangue."

She gave him her hand. "I'll forgive you, but I'm going to remember the harangue. I--rather liked it. It made me think. Strange to say, I like people who make me think."

Again his heart leaped with the blood of exultant youth. "She is coming to understand me better!" he thought.

"You must see my other pictures by daylight," she was saying. "Mr.

Lawson likes this one particularly." They had moved out into the little reception-room. "I did it in Giverney--we all go down sooner or later to paint one of Monet's pollard willows. These are my 'stunts.'"

Lawson! Yes, there was the secret of her increasing friendliness. As the fiancee of Lawson she could afford to lessen her reserve towards his friend.

And so it happened that, notwithstanding her cordial welcome and her respectful consideration of his criticism, he went away with a feeling of disappointment. That her beauty was more deeply enthralling than he had hitherto realized made his disquiet all the greater. As he stepped out upon the street, she seemed as insubstantial as a dream of his imaginative youth, far separated from any reality with which he had any durable a.s.sociation.

X

CURTIS AT HEADQUARTERS

Curtis was frankly exclamatory at the size and splendor of Lawson's apartments. He had accepted the invitation to take breakfast with him without much thought as to the quality of the breakfast or where it would be eaten, until he found himself entering the hall of a superb apartment hotel.

"Why, see here, Lawson," he exclaimed, as he looked about his friend's suite, "this is too much for any bachelor--it's baronial! I must revise my judgments. I had a notion you were a hard-working ethnologic sharp."

"So I am," replied Lawson, smiling with frank enjoyment of his visitor's amazement. "I've been at work two hours at my desk. If you don't believe it, there's the desk."

The room was filled with books, cases of antique pottery, paintings of Indians, models of Pueblo dwellings, and other things in keeping, and was made rich in color by a half-dozen very choice Navajo blankets in the fine old weaves with the vegetable dyes so dear to the collector.

The long table was heaped with current issues of the latest magazines, and dozens of books, with markers set to guard some valuable pa.s.sages, were piled within reach. It was plainly the library of a student and man of letters.

Lawson's lean, brown face at once a.s.sumed a different aspect to Curtis.

It became more refined, more scholarly, and distinctly less shrewd and quizzical, and the soldier began to understand the writer's smiling defiance of Western politicians and millionaire cattle-owners. Plainly a man of large fortune, with high social connections, what had Lawson to fear of the mountain West? The menace of the greedy cattlemen troubled him no more than the howl of the blizzard.

In the same measure that Lawson's power was revealed to him the heart of the agent sank. He could not but acknowledge that here was the fitting husband and proper home for Elsie--"while I," he thought, "have only a barrack in a desolate Indian country to offer her," and he swung deep in the trough of his sea of doubt.

A map on the wall, lined with red, caught his eye, and he seized upon it for diversion.

"What is this?" he asked.

"That's my trail-map," replied Lawson. "The red lines represent my wanderings."

Curtis studied it with expert eyes. "You have ploughed the Arizona deserts pretty thoroughly."

"Yes, I've spent three summers down in that country studying cliff-dwellings. It's a mighty alluring region. Last summer I broke away and got back into the north, but I am greatly taken with the hot suns.h.i.+ne and loneliness of the desert."

Curtis turned sharply. "What I can't understand, Lawson, is this: How can you pull up and leave such a home?"--he indicated the room with a sweep of his hand--"and go out on the painted desert or down the Chaco and swelter in the heat like a horned toad?"

Lawson smiled. "It _is_ absurd, isn't it? Man's an unaccountable beast.

But come! Breakfast is waiting, and I hope you're hungry."

The dining-room was built on a scale with the library, and the mahogany table, spa.r.s.ely covered with dishes, looked small and lonely in the midst of the s.h.i.+ning floor. This feature of the beautiful room impressed Curtis, and as they took seats opposite each other he remarked, "If I were not here you would be alone?"

"Yes, quite generally I breakfast alone. I entertain less than you would think. I'm a busy man when at home."

"Well, the waste of room is criminal, Lawson, that's all I have to say--criminal. You'll be called upon to answer for it some time."

"I've begun to think so myself," replied the host, significantly.

They talked mountain ranges and Pueblo dwellers, and the theoretical relation of the mound-builders to the small, brown races of the Rio Grande Valley, touching also on the future of the redman; and all the while Curtis was struggling with a benumbing sense of his hopeless weakness in the face of a rival like Lawson. He gave up all thought of seeing Elsie again, and resolutely set himself to do the work before him, eager to return to his duties in the Western foot-hills.

Lawson accompanied him to the Interior Department and introduced him to the Secretary, who had the preoccupied air of a business man rather than the a.s.sumed leisure of the politician. He shook hands warmly, and asked his visitors to be seated while he finished a paper in hand. At last he turned and pleasantly began:

"I'm glad to meet you, Captain. Yours is a distinguished name with us.

We fully recognize the value of your volunteer service, and hope to make the best use of you. Our mutual friend, Lawson here, threatens to make you Secretary in my stead." Here he looked over his spectacles with a grave and accusing air, which amused Lawson greatly.

"Not so bad as that, Mr. Secretary," he laughed. "I merely suggested that Captain Curtis would make an excellent President."

"Oh, well, it all comes to the same thing." He then became quite serious. "Now, Captain, I would suggest that you put this whole matter as you see it, together with your recommendations, into the briefest, most telling form possible, and be ready to come before the committee to-morrow. Confer with the commissioner and be ready to meet the queries of the opposition. Brisbane is behind the cattlemen in this controversy, and he is a strong man. I agree entirely with you and Lawson that the Tetongs should remain where they are and be helped in the way you suggest. Be ready with computations of the cost of satisfying claims of the settlers, building ditches, etc. Come and see me again before you return. Good-morning," and he bent to his desk with instant absorption.

Lawson again led the way across the square in search of the commissioner's office. The large, bare waiting-room was filled with a dozen or more redmen, all wearing new blue suits and wide black hats.

They were smoking in contemplative silence, with only an occasional word spoken in undertone. It was plain they were expecting an audience with the great white chief.

Several of them knew Lawson and cried out: "Ho! Ho!" coming up one by one to shake hands, but they glowed with pleasure as Curtis began to sign-talk with them.

"Who are you?" he asked of one. "Oh! Northern Cheyenne--I thought so.

And you--you are Apache?" he said to another. "I can tell that, too.

What are you all waiting for? To see the commissioner? Have you had a good visit? Yes, I see you have nice new suits. The government is good to you--sometimes." They laughed at his sharp hits. "Well, don't stay too long here. The white man will rob you of your good clothes. Be careful of fire-water."

One old man, whose gestures were peculiarly flowing and dignified, thereupon signed: "When the white man come to buy our lands we are great chiefs--very tall; when we ask for our money to be paid to us, then we are small, like children." This caused a general laugh, in which Curtis joined. They all wanted to know who he was, and he told them. "Ah! we are glad for the Tetongs. They have a good man. Tell the commissioner we are anxious to council and go home--we are weary of this place."

Lawson, meanwhile, had entered the office and now reappeared. "Mr. Brown will see you at once, Captain."

The acting commissioner wore the troubled look of a man sorely overworked and badly badgered. He breathed a sigh of ostentatious relief as he faced his two visitors, who came neither to complain nor to ask favors. He studied Curtis contemplatively, his pale face set in sad lines.

"I'm leaning on you in this Tetong business," he began. "I have so many similar fights all over the West, I can't give you the attention you deserve. It seems as though our settlers were insane over Indian lands.

I honestly believe, if we should lay out a reservation on the staked plains there'd be a mad rush for it. 'The Injun has it--let's take it away from him,' seems to be the universal cry. I am pestered to death with schemes for cutting down reservations and removing tribes. It would seem as if these poor, hunted devils might have a thumb-nail's breadth of the continent they once entirely owned; but no, so long as an acre exists they are liable to attack. I'm worn out with the attempt to defend them. I'll have nervous prostration or something worse if this pressure continues. Yesterday nearly finished me. What kind of pirates do you raise out there, anyway?"

Curtis listened with amazement to this frank avowal, but Lawson only laughed, saying, in explanation: "This is one of the commissioner's poor days. He'll fight till the last ditch--"

"Irrigating ditch!" supplemented the commissioner. "Yes, there's another nightmare. Beautiful complication! The government puts the Indian on a reservation so dry that water won't run down hill, and then Lawson or some other friend of the Indian comes in here and insists on irrigating ditches being put in, and then I am besieged by civil engineers for jobs, and wild-eyed contractors twist my door-k.n.o.bs off. Captain Curtis, keep out of the Indian service if you have any conscience."

"That's exactly why I recommended him," said Lawson--"because he _has_ a conscience."