Lydia of the Pines Part 53

"I am sent here by the Indian office to make a Roll of the Indians on this reservation, in the attempt to discover which are full and which mixed bloods."

"Do you find your task difficult, Mr. Hardy?" Levine's voice was whimsical.

"Very! The Government allows a man to claim his Indian rights when he has as little as one sixty-fourth of Indian blood in his veins. On the other hand, the older Indians are deadly ashamed of white blood in their veins and hate to admit it."

"Mr. Hardy, you have your Rolls with you? Yes? Well, tell me the blood status of each of these witnesses."

The room was breathless while the little Roll-maker ran through his list. According to this not one of the witnesses against Levine was a full blood nor one of the Indians from whom he had taken land. Even old Susie and Charlie's sister, he stated, had white blood in their veins.

"It's a lie!" shouted Charlie. "This man Hardy is paid by Levine!"

"Gently, Jackson!" said Senator James. "Mr. Levine, do you wish to call more witnesses?"

"Not for the present," replied John. "Let Jackson go on."

Charlie called old Susie. And old Susie, waving aside any attempts on Charlie's part to help, told of the death of her daughter from starvation and cold, this same daughter having sold her pines to Levine for a five-dollar bill and a dollar watch. She held out the watch toward Levine in one trembling old hand.

"I find this in dress, when she dead. She strong. It take her many days to die. I old. I pray Great Spirit take me. No! I starve! I freeze! I no can die. She young. She have little baby. She die."

Suddenly, she flung the watch at Levine's feet and sank trembling into her chair.

There was silence for a moment. In at the open window came the rumble of a street-car. Levine cleared his throat.

"All this is dramatic, of course, but doesn't make me the murderer of the squaw."

"No! but you killed my father!" shouted Charlie Jackson. And rising, he hurled forth the story he had told Lydia, years before. Lydia sat with her hands clasped tightly in her lap, her eyes fastened in horror on Charlie's face. A great actor had been lost in creating Charlie an Indian. He pictured his father's death, his sister's two attempts at revenge with a vividness and power that held even Levine spell-bound.

It seemed to Lydia that the noose was fastened closer round John's neck with every word that was uttered.

Suddenly she sprang to her feet. "Stop, Charlie! Stop!" she screamed.

"You shan't say any more!"

Senator Elway rapped on the table. "You're out of order, Miss Dudley,"

he exclaimed, sharply.

Lydia had forgotten to be embarra.s.sed. "I can't help it if I am," she insisted, "I won't have Charlie Jackson picturing Mr. Levine as a fiend, while I have a tongue to speak with. I know how bad the Indian matters are. n.o.body's worried about it more than I have. But Mr.

Levine's not a murderer. He couldn't be."

The three commissioners had looked up at Lydia with a scowl when she had interrupted Charlie. Now the scowl, as they watched her flushed face, gave way to arched eyebrows and a little smile, that was reflected on every face in the room except Charlie Jackson's.

"Lydia, you keep out of this," he shouted. "You don't know what you're talking about."

"I do too!" stormed Lydia. "I--"

"Order! Let Jackson finish, Miss Dudley," said Senator Smith.

"I can't let him finish," cried Lydia, "until I tell you about Mr.

Levine. He's been as much to me as my own father ever since my mother died when I was a little girl. He's understood me as only my own mother could, hasn't he, Daddy!"

Amos nodded, with a little apologetic glance at the commissioners.

Levine's eyes were fastened on Lydia's face with an expression that was as sweet as it was fathomless. Charlie Jackson stood biting his nails and waiting, his affection for Lydia holding in abeyance his frenzied loyalty to his father.

"You think he could murder when he could hold a little girl on his knees and comfort her for the death of her little sister, when he taught her how to find G.o.d, when--oh, I know he's robbed the Indians--so has my own father, it seems, and so has Pa Norton, and so has Kent, and all of them are dear people. They've all been wrong.

But think of the temptation, Mr. Commissioner! Supposing you were poor and the wonderful pines lay up there, _so easy to take_."

Senator Elway would have interrupted, but Senator James laid a hand on his arm. "It's all informal, let her have her say," he whispered.

"It's the first bright spot in all the weeks of the hearing."

"Did you ever feel land hunger yourself," Lydia went on eagerly, "to look at the rows and rows of pine and think what it would mean to own them, forever! It's the queerest, strongest hunger in the world. I know, because I've had it. Honestly, I have, as strongly as any one here--only--I knew Charlie Jackson and this awful tragedy of his and I knew his eyes would haunt me if I took Indian lands."

"You're covering a good deal of ground and getting away from the specific case, Miss Dudley," said, Smith. "Of course, what you say doesn't exonerate Mr. Levine. On the other hand, Jackson has no means of proving him accessory to the murder of his father. We've threshed that out with Jackson before. What you say of Mr. Levine's character is interesting but there remains the fact that he has been proceeding fraudulently for years in his relations to the Indian lands. You yourself don't pretend to justify your acts, do you, Mr. Levine?"

Lydia sat down and Levine slowly rose and looked thoughtfully out of the window. "The legality or illegality of the matter has nothing to do with the broader ethics of the case, though I think you will find, gentlemen, that my acts are protected by law," he said. "The virgin land lies there, inhabited by a degenerate race, whose one hope of salvation lay in amalgamation with the white race. An ignorant government, when land was plenty and the tribe was larger, placed certain restrictions on the reservation. When land became scarce, and the tribe dwindled to a handful, those restrictions became wrong. It was inevitable that the whites should override them. Knowing that the ethics of my acts and those of other people would be questioned, I went to Congress to get these restrictions removed. If another two years could have elapsed, before these investigations had been begun, the fair name of Lake City never would have been smirched." Levine's hand on the back of his chair tightened as he looked directly at Billy Norton.

Once more Lydia came to her feet. "Oh, Mr. Levine," she exclaimed, "don't put all the blame on Billy! Really, it's my fault. He wouldn't have done it if I hadn't agreed that it was right. And he would have stopped when he found that Dad and his father had taken full blood lands only--why--why, I said that if I could stand his showing that you had been--crooked--up there, I could stand anything and I made him go on."

She stopped with a little break in her voice that was not unlike a sob.

And for the first time there spread over John Levine's face a blush, so dark, so agonizing, that the men about him turned their eyes away.

With a little groan, he sat down. Lydia clasped her hands.

"Oh, it is all my fault," she repeated brokenly, "all the trouble that's come to Lake City."

Billy Norton jumped up. "That's blamed nonsense!" he began, when Smith interrupted him, impatiently.

"Be seated, Norton." Then, gently, to Lydia, "My dear, you mean that, knowing what an investigation would mean to the people you love, you backed young Norton in instigating one. That you knew he would not go on without your backing?"

"Yes, sir," faltered Lydia.

"Can you tell us why?" asked Elway, still more gently.

Lydia, whose cheeks were burning and whose eyes were deep with unshed tears, twisted her hands uncomfortably and looked at Billy.

"Go ahead, Lyd," he said, rea.s.suringly.

"Because it was right," she said, finally. "Because--Ducit Amor Patriae---you know, because no matter whether the Indians were good or bad, we had made promises to them and they depended on us." She paused, struggling for words.

"I did it because I felt responsible to the country like my ancestors did, in the Civil War and in the Revolution, to--to take care of America, to keep it clean, no matter how it hurt. I--I couldn't be led by love of country and see my people doing something contemptible, something that the world would remember against us forever, and not try to stop it, no matter how it hurt."

Trembling so that the ribbon at her throat quivered, she looked at the three commissioners, and sat down.

James cleared his throat. "Mr. Dudley, did you know your daughter's att.i.tude when you undertook to get some pine lands?"

Amos pulled himself to his feet. His first anger at Lydia had given way to a mixture of feelings. Now, he swallowed once or twice and answered, "Of course, I knew she was sympathetic with the Indians, but I don't know anything about the rest of it."

The commissioners waited as though expecting Amos to go on. He fumbled with his watch chain for a moment, staring out the window. With his thin face, his high forehead and spa.r.s.e hair, he never looked more like the picture of Daniel Webster than now.

"Gentlemen," he said, "I'm a New Englander and I'm frank to admit that I've wandered a long way from the old ideals, like most of the New Englanders in America. But that isn't saying, gentlemen, that I'm not--not darned proud of Lydia!"

There was a little murmur through the room and Senator Elway smiled, a trifle sadly. "Mr. Dudley," he said, "we're all proud of Lydia. She's made our unsavory task seem better worth while."