Lydia of the Pines Part 28

During the half hour that followed, Lydia did not speak again nor did she hear any of the conversation. New voices were beginning to whisper to her. Try as she would to hush them with her faith in her father and John, they continued to query: How about the Indians? Whose is the land? What do you yourself believe?

When Levine rose at nine to leave, she followed him to the door. "Adam and I'll walk a way with you," she said, "while Dad puts his chickens to bed."

"Fine!" exclaimed John. "My wheel is out of commission so I have to walk to the trolley."

He glanced at Lydia a trifle curiously however. This was a new venture on her part. It was a clear, cold, starlit night. Lydia trudged along for a few moments in silence. Then Levine pulled her hand through his arm.

"Out with it, young Lydia," he said.

"Do you suppose," she asked, "that G.o.d is something like ether--or like electricity--in the air, everywhere, something that sort of holds us together, you know?"

"Well," replied John, slowly, "I wouldn't want to believe that. I want to find a G.o.d we can know and understand. A G.o.d that's tender and--and human, by Jove."

Lydia looked up at him quickly in the starlight. "After what you said about Indians to-night, you can't believe G.o.d could be tender and--and let that happen!"

Levine returned her look and smiled. "You score there, honey. Lydia, you're growing up. Your head's above my shoulder now."

The young girl nodded carelessly. "But I wanted to talk to you about taking the reservation, not about me."

"I guess we'd better do that another time. I don't dare to have you walk further with me. This is a lonesome road back for you. And besides, I don't want you to scold me."

"Scold you!" Lydia paused in her astonishment. "Why, I love you as much as I do anybody in the world. How could I scold you?"

Levine looked down into the shadowy, childish eyes. "Couldn't you?

Well, you're a dear, anyhow. Now scoot and I'll watch till you reach the gate."

Lydia hesitated. She felt a change in John's manner and wondered if she had hurt his feelings. "Kiss me good night, then," she said. "You don't do it as regularly as you used to. If I don't watch you, you'll be finding some one else to travel with you."

John turned the little face up and kissed her gently on the forehead, but Lydia with rare demonstrativeness threw her arms about his neck and kissed his lips with a full childish smack.

"There!" she said complacently. "Come on, Adam! Don't wait, Mr.

Levine. I'm safe with Adam."

But John Levine did wait, standing with his hand against his lips, his head bowed, till he heard the gate click. Then he lifted his face to the stars. "G.o.d," he whispered, "why do You make me forty-five instead of twenty-five?"

CHAPTER IX

THE ELECTION

"Perhaps, after all, I have fulfilled my destiny in being a lute for the wind. But then why the cones and the broken boughs?"--_The Murmuring Pine_.

It rained on Election Day, a cold November drizzle that elated the Democrats. "A rainy day always brings a Democratic victory," said Amos, gloomily, voicing the general superst.i.tion.

The day was a legal holiday and even the saloons were closed. Yet Lake City was full of drunken men by noon. Every hack, surrey and hotel bus in town was busy in the pay of one faction or the other hauling voters to the booths. The Capitol square was deserted but groups of men, some of them very drunk and some of them very sober, were to be found throughout the business section of the city, bitterly debating the reservation question.

There were a great number of Indians in town that day, big dark fellows in muddy moccasins and faded mackinaws who stood about watching the machinations of the whites without audible comments.

Toward night the rain stopped and Lydia begged her father to take her into town to see the parade that would be indulged in by the victorious party. Amos was not at all averse to taking in the parade, himself.

So nine o'clock found the two at the Square with a great waiting crowd.

There were very few women in the crowd. Those that Lydia saw were painted and loud-voiced. Amos told her vaguely that they were "hussies" and that she was not to let go of his arm for an instant.

Lydia didn't know what a hussy was, but she didn't want to stir an inch from her father's side because of her fear of drunken men. She was in a quiver of excitement; torn with pity and doubt when she thought of Charlie Jackson; speechless with apprehension when she thought of the possibility of Levine's being defeated.

It was close on ten o'clock when the sound of a drum was heard from the direction of the Methodist Church. The crowd started toward the sound, then paused as Binny Bates, the barber, in a stove-pipe hat, mounted on a much excited horse, rode up the street. Binny was a Levine man and the crowd broke into cheers and cat-calls.

After Binny came the band, playing for dear life "Hail the Conquering Hero" and after the band, two and two a great line of citizens with kerosene torches. After the torches came the transparencies: "Levine Wins!" "The Reservation is Ours." "Back to the land, boys!" "We've dropped the white men's burden."

And following the transparencies came a surprise for crowd and paraders alike. Close on the heels of the last white man strode Charlie Jackson, with a sign, "The land is ours! You have robbed us!" and after Charlie, perhaps a hundred Indians, tramping silently two by two, to the faint strain of the band ahead,

"Columbia, the gem of the ocean The home of the brave and the free--"

For a moment, the crowd was surprised into silence. Then a handful of mud caught Charlie's sign and a group of college students, with a shout of "Break up the line! Break up the line," broke into the ranks of the Indians and in a moment a free for all fight was on.

Amos rushed Lydia down a side street and upon a street car. "Well!

Well! Well!" he kept chuckling. "John ate 'em alive! Well! Well!"

Then in the light of the car he looked at Lydia. "For heaven's sake!

What are you crying for, child?"

"I don't know," faltered Lydia. "I'm--glad for Mr. Levine--but poor Charlie Jackson! You don't suppose they'll hurt him?"

"Oh, pshaw," replied Amos. "Nothing but an election night fight! The young Indian went into the parade just to start one."

"How soon will the Indians have to get off the reservation?" asked Lydia.

"Oh, in a year or so! John's got to get a bill through Congress, you know."

"Oh." Lydia gave a great sigh of relief; a year or so was a very long time. She decided to forget the Indians' trouble and rejoice in Levine's triumph.

It was a triumph that John himself took very quietly. He realized that he had ahead of him in Congress a long and heavy campaign. The forces against him were not going to lie down, defeated by his election. But after the fas.h.i.+on of American elections, there were no protests or quarrels afterward. The town settled immediately to its old routine and Levine was dropped from the front pages of the newspapers.

Charlie Jackson was taciturn for a week or so, then he played brilliantly in the Thanksgiving football game and at the banquet which followed he was his old genial self.

After Christmas Lydia began seriously to consider how she could earn the twenty-five dollars that her share in the camping trip would cost.

Lizzie was aghast at the size of the sum and didn't approve of the idea of camping anyhow. Amos gave his consent to her going, feeling that it was quite safe; that Lydia never could earn the money.

Lydia was dampened but not daunted. One (in January) Sat.u.r.day afternoon, she went to call on Ma Norton. Ma was sitting in her bright kitchen sewing carpet rags. Ma's hair was beginning to turn gray but her plump cheeks were red and her gray eyes behind her spectacles were as clear as a girl's.

"Who's going to chaperone you children?" she asked Lydia.

"Miss Towne. The rest kicked, but I like her."

"You use a good deal of unnecessary slang, my dear," said Ma. "Who of the boys and girls are going?"