Lydia of the Pines Part 43

There was understanding in Lydia's eyes. "Oh, the pines are wonderful," she exclaimed. "If one could only keep them, forever! And I suppose that's the way the Indians feel about them too!"

"It's all wrong," muttered Billy. "It's all wrong, and yet," more firmly, "the reservation is doomed and if we don't take some of it, Lydia, we'll not be helping the Indians--but just being foolish."

Lydia nodded. A hot breeze drifted through the woods and the pines sighed deeply.

"To have it and hold it for your children's children," exclaimed Lydia, pa.s.sionately. "You and yours to live on it forever. And yet, I'd see a dead Indian baby and starving squaws behind every tree, I know I would."

"I tell you what I'm going to do," said Billy, doggedly. "I'm going to get hold of that tract. I'm not going to deceive myself that it's all anything but a rotten, thieving game we whites are playing, but I'm going to do it, anyhow."

"I'd like to myself," Lydia still had the look of understanding, "but I'm afraid to! I'd be haunted by Charlie Jackson's eyes."

"I'm going to get that tract. I'll pay for it, somehow, and I'll go on doing what I can to see that the Indians get what's left of a decent deal."

Again the two listened to the wind in the pines, then Lydia said, "We must get back for the speeches."

Billy started back, obediently.

"We're grown up, aren't we, Billy?" sighed Lydia. "We've got to decide what we're going to do and be, and I hate to think about it. I hate important decisions. Seems as though I'd been dogged by 'em all my life."

"If I had my way," cried Billy, unexpectedly, "you never should quite grow up. You'd always be the dear little yellow-haired girl that tramped her legs off to earn my miserable old school books. And that's what you always will be to me--the oldest and youngest little girl!

And whether you like me or not, I'll tell you you're not going to have any worries that I can help you ward off."

They were emerging into the meadow and Lydia laughed up at him mischievously, "I've always thought I overpaid for those school books.

They were fearfully used up. Oh, the speeches have begun," and Billy was hard put to it to keep close to her as she rushed toward the speakers' stand.

Levine had just finished his speech when Billy and Lydia got within hearing, and he introduced State Senator James Farwell as the chief speaker of the day. Farwell had considerable history to cover in his speech. He began with the Magna Charta and worked by elaborate stages through the French Revolution, the conquest of India, the death of Warren Hastings, the French and Indian War, the American Revolution and the Civil War to Lincoln's Gettysburg speech.

His audience, standing in the burning sun, was restless. The Indians, understanding little that was said, were motionless, but the whites drifted about, talked in undertones and applauded only when as a fitting peak to all the efforts of the ages toward freedom, Farwell placed the present freeing of the Indians from the reservation.

"The great fool!" said Billy to Lydia, as Farwell finally began to bow himself off the platform.

Levine rose and began, "Ladies and gentlemen, this ends our program.

We thank--"

He was interrupted here by applause from the Indians. Looking round he saw Charlie Jackson leading forward old Chief Wolf.

"Chief Wolf wants to say a few words," cried Charlie.

"The program is closed," called Levine loudly.

There was a threat in Charlie's voice. "He is going to speak!" And there was a threat in the Indian voices that answered from the audience, "Let speak! Let speak."

Levine conferred hastily with Farwell and the Indian Agent, then the three with manifest reluctance--stood back and Charlie led the old Indian to the foot of the platform.

Old Wolf was half blind with trachoma. He was emaciated with sickness and slow starvation. Nevertheless, clad in the beaded buckskin and eagle feathers of his youth, with his hawk face held high, he was a heroic figure of a man.

He held up his right hand and began to speak in a trembling old ba.s.s, Charlie's young tenor translating sentence by sentence. With the first word, the audience became motionless and silent.

"I come from the wick-i-ups of my fathers to say one last word to the whites. I am an old, old man. The last winter was bitter hard and I may never see another July sun. I have lived too long. I have seen my race change from young men strong and daring as eagles, as thrifty and fat as brown bears, to feeble yellow wolves fit only to lap the carrion thrown them by the whites, and to lie in the sun and die.

"And I say to you whites, you have done this. You have moved us on and on, promising always that each resting place shall be ours forever.

You swore by your G.o.d, in solemn council, that we could keep this reservation forever. With room for all the peoples of the world here, you could not find room for the Indian. You are a race of liars. You are a race of thieves. You have debauched our young men with your women. You have ruined our daughters with your men. You have taken our money. And now you are entering our last home with the hand of desolation. When the enemy enters the abiding place, the dweller is doomed. But I place the curse of the Indian Spirit on you and the land you are stealing. Some day it will be done to you as you have done to us. Some day--"

Levine stepped forward. "Jackson, take that Indian away," he commanded.

An angry murmur came from the Indians in the audience. A murmur that as Levine laid hold of old Wolf's arm, grew to strange calls. There was a surging movement toward the platform. Billy jumped on a box that he had found for a seat for Lydia.

"Charlie!" he roared, "Charlie! Remember there are women and children in this crowd."

"What do I care for your women and children?" shouted Charlie.

Then his glance fell on Lydia's golden head. She waved her hand to him beseechingly. Charlie hesitated for a moment, then spoke loudly in Indian to the crowd, and led old Wolf from the platform. The movement forward of the Indians ceased. The whites moved out of the crowd and for a moment there was a complete segregation of Indians and whites.

Then the mechanical piano which had stopped during the speech-making suddenly started up with a loud tw.a.n.g of "Under the Bamboo Tree." Two Indian boys laughed and started on a run for the merry-go-round and the crowd followed after.

Billy got down from his box with a sigh of relief. "That might have been an ugly moment," he said, "if Charlie hadn't seen you."

"The poor things! Oh, Billy, the poor, poor things!" exclaimed Lydia.

Billy nodded. "It's all wrong."

The noise of hawkers began again, but something had gone out of the celebration. The Indians stood about in groups, talking, Charlie and Chief Wolf the center always of the largest group.

Amos and John joined Billy and Lydia at the machine. "The war dancing begins at sundown," said Levine. "I told the Indian Agent 'twas a risk to let them go on, after this episode. But he laughs at me. I don't like the look of things, though."

"They aren't armed?" asked Amos.

"No, but've got those pesky bows and arrows we were having them show off with. I don't know but what I'd better get you folks home."

"Shucks," said Amos, "I wouldn't let the Indians think they could scare us. What could they do, poor sickly devils, anyhow?"

"That's right," said Billy. "There's nothing can happen. I don't think Charlie Jackson would stand for any violence."

"I don't know about that," Levine spoke thoughtfully. "He's left Doc Fulton and is living on the reservation again. They always revert."

"Listen! Listen!" cried Lydia,

There was a red glow behind the clouds low in the west. From the foot of the flagpole came a peculiar beat of drum. A white can beat a drum to carry one through a Gettysburg. An Indian can beat a drum to carry one's soul back to the sacrifice of blood upon a stony altar. This drum beat "magicked" Lydia and Billy. It was more than a tocsin, more than a dance rhythm, more than the spring call. They hurried to the roped-off circle round the flagpole, followed by John and Amos.

An Indian in beaded buckskin squatted by the pole, beating a drum.

Above him the flag stirred lazily. The west was crimson. The scent of sweet gra.s.s was heavy. There was a breathless interval while the drum seemed to urge Lydia's soul from her body.

Then there came the cry again followed by a wordless chant. Into the ring, in all the multicolored glory of beads and paint, swung a dozen moccasined braves. They moved in a step impossible to describe,--a step grave, rhythmic, lilting, now slow, three beats to a step, now swift, three steps to a beat. Old chiefs, half blind with trachoma, scarred with scrofula and decrepit with starvation; young bucks, fresh and still strong, danced side by side, turned by the alchemy of the drum into like things, young and vivid as dawn.

At intervals, at the bidding of the braves, squaws arose and moved sedately into the circle. In their dark dresses they moved about the outer edge of the circle with a side step that scarcely ruffled their skirts. The west lost its glow. Fires flashed here and there in the meadow. In the flickering, changing lights the dance went on and on.

The flag fitfully revealed itself above the melting, gliding, opalescent group about the pole, that by degrees was growing larger as was the constant rim of somber squaws, with their dumb faces Sphinx-like in the half light.

Lydia s.h.i.+vered with excitement. Billy pulled her arm through his.