Lydia of the Pines Part 38

Lydia's knees and back had given out and she was lying on her stomach and one elbow, sc.r.a.ping away without looking up.

"Lizzie's complained all day," she said. "She doesn't realize how our house looks like 'poverty and destruction' compared with other folks.

I'm going to get some style into it, if I have to tear it down. Oh, Daddy, don't you get sick of being poor?"

"Yes," said Amos, shortly, "and I think you're a silly girl to wear yourself out on this kind of thing."

Lydia sat up and looked at him. She was growing fast and was thinner than ever, this summer. "If mother was alive," she said, "she'd know exactly how I feel."

Suddenly there came to Amos' memory a weak and tender voice, with contralto notes in it like Lydia's, "Lydia's like me, Amos. You'll never have trouble understanding her, if you'll remember that."

"Lydia," he said, abruptly, "make the house over if you want to, my dear," and he marched out to the kitchen to wash and take off his overalls.

It took Lydia several days to complete her task. When it was done the cracks were still prominent and the oily finish was spotted. But in Lydia's eyes it was a work of art and she cut the old carpet into three parts with enthusiasm. She sewed the fringe on the rugs, on the front porch. Sitting so, she could see Margery when she appeared far down the road, could view the beauty of the Nortons' wide fields, and could hear the quiet sighing of the pine by the gate. On the afternoon on which she finished the last of the rugs, Charlie Jackson and not Margery appeared. Lydia's heart sank a little as he turned in the gate, though in his greeting he seemed his usual genial self.

He admired the rugs and the gleam of the s.h.i.+ning floor through the doorway. Then without preamble, he asked, "Did you talk to Levine, Lydia?"

"Yes," she said. "He--he just doesn't see it any way but his, Charlie!"

The young Indian's face fell. "I certainly thought you could influence him, Lydia. Did you really try?"

"Of course I tried," she exclaimed, indignantly. "He insists that the only way to save you Indians is to make you work for a living."

"He's doing it all for our good, huh?" sneered Charlie.

"He doesn't pretend. He says he wants the land. He's paying for it though."

"Paying for it!" cried the Indian. "How's he paying, do you know?"

"No, and I don't want to know! I'm tired of hearing things against Mr.

Levine."

"I don't care if you are," said Charlie, grimly. "If you're going to keep on being his friend, you've got to be it with your eyes open. And you might as well decide right now whether you're going to take him or me for your friend. You can't have us both."

"I wouldn't give up Mr. Levine for any one on earth." Lydia's voice shook with her earnestness. "And I don't see why I have to be dragged into this business. I've nothing to do with it."

"You have too! You're white and it's every white's business to judge in this. You'll be taking some of the profits of the reservation if it's thrown open, yourself."

"I will not!" cried Lydia. "I wouldn't want an inch of that land."

Then she caught her breath. Something within her said, "Wouldn't, eh--not the vast acres of cathedral pines, you thought of as yours, at camp?" She flushed and repeated vehemently, "Not an inch!"

Charlie smiled cynically. "Listen, Lydia, I'll tell you how Levine pays for his Indian lands."

CHAPTER XII

THE HIGH SCHOOL SENIOR

"Where the pine forest is destroyed, pines never come again."--_The Murmuring Pine_.

Lydia sighed helplessly and began to st.i.tch again on the fringe, thrusting her needle in and out viciously.

"Years ago," began Charlie, grimly, "my father foresaw what the whites were trying to do. None of the other full bloods believed him. He had nothing to do with half-breeds."

"I don't see why you always speak so of the mixed bloods," interrupted Lydia. "Their white blood ought to improve them."

"It ought, yes,--but it doesn't. And the reason is that only the rottenest kind of a white man'll make a squaw a mother. And only the low harpies in places like Last Chance will let an Indian father a child."

Lydia flushed but compressed her lips and let Charlie speak on. She knew that it was useless to try to stem the tide of protest that was rising to his lips.

"Father was the chief of the tribe and he called council after council until at last they all decided he'd better go to Was.h.i.+ngton and see if he could get help from the Indian Commissioner. Even then John Levine had a following of half-breeds. He told the yellow curs to kidnap my father and he'd see if he could make him more reasonable. So the half-breeds laid in ambush the day father started for Was.h.i.+ngton.

Father put up an awful fight and they killed him!"

"Oh, Charlie!" cried Lydia, dropping her sewing. "Oh, Charlie!"

"Yes," said the Indian, tensely, "and though Levine wasn't there he was just as much my father's murderer as if he'd fired the shot. Of course, nothing was ever done by the authorities. It was hushed up as an Indian brawl. But my sister, she was twenty then, she found out about Levine and she came in and set fire to his house one night, thinking she'd burn him to death. Instead of that, she just scared his old hired man who was drunk. Levine was away from home. But he's a devil. He found out it was my sister and he told her the only way she could keep from being jailed was to sell him all our pines--for a hundred dollars. So she did, but she shot at him that Thanksgiving night when he'd been at your house."

"Oh, _Charlie_!" whispered Lydia, horror in her blue eyes and her parted lips. She looked at him in utter dismay. No longer was he the debonair favorite of the High School. In his somber eyes, his thin cold lips, his tense shoulders, the young girl saw the savage. She looked from Charlie to the familiar garden, to Adam, scratching fleas, and beyond to the quiet herds in the Norton meadows. Surely Charlie's tale of killings had no place in this orderly life. Then her glance fell upon the pine beside the gate. It murmured softly. Again Lydia saw the cloistered depths of the reservation pines and again there stirred within her that vague l.u.s.t for owners.h.i.+p. And she knew that Charlie's tale was true.

She moistened her dry lips. "But what can I do, Charlie! I'm only a girl."

"I'll tell you what you can do. You can throw down your murderer friend and side with me. You can get every one you know to side with me. And, Lydia, never tell Levine, or any one else, what you know about him. It wouldn't be safe!"

He leaned toward her as he spoke and Lydia s.h.i.+vered. "I won't," she whispered. Then she said aloud in sudden resentment, "But I'm not going to throw Mr. Levine down without his having a chance to explain.

Who are you to think you've got a right to ask me?"

Charlie caught her slender wrist in a firm grasp. "I'm a human being fighting for justice--no--fighting for existence. That's who I am."

"Oh, I don't want to know about it!" cried Lydia. "I don't want to think about it! I'm just a girl. I want to be happy just a little while before I grow up. I've had too much unhappiness."

"Yes, you have had," agreed Charlie, grimly, "and that's why you will think about it in spite of yourself. You understand how I feel because you've suffered. When are you going to throw Levine down?"

Lydia's face whitened. "Never!" she said.

"What! When you know he's a murderer?"

"He never intended to kill your father. Anyhow, I can't help what he's done. He's like my own father and brother and mother all in one to me."

The two young people sat looking into each other's eyes. Suddenly Charlie threw Lydia's hand from him, and like Billy Norton, he strode down the path and out of the gate without a word. Lydia was trembling violently but she picked up her sewing and forced herself to finish the rugs and spread them on the living-room floor. They looked very well, she thought. Later on, they showed a vicious tendency to turn up, to wrinkle and scuffle easily, threatening the life and limb of the heavy treading Lizzie and of Amos a dozen times a day. But the evening after Charlie's visit she was too distrait to notice the complaints of her elders.

Levine did not appear at the cottage for several days. During that time Lydia tried to put Charlie's story out of her mind. With housework and swimming and giggling with Margery, she managed to do this during the day, but at night she dreamed of it and woke, and spoke to Adam.

When John did come out she avoided talking to him and he caught her several times looking at him with a sad and puzzled expression. When they started on their usual Sunday walk, Amos went back to the house for his cane and Levine said, abruptly, "Out with it, young Lydia!"

"I promised I wouldn't," she said.