The Captain of the Gray-Horse Troop Part 64

It was unutterably sweet to stretch out in his big, battered easy-chair, in the shaded coolness of the library, and feel Elsie's smooth, light hand in his hair.

"And you are never to leave me," he said, dreamily. "I can't realize it yet." After a pause he added: "I am demanding too much of you, sweetheart."

"You are demanding nothing, sir; if you did you wouldn't get it. If I choose to _give_ you anything, you are to be grateful and discreetly silent."

"Can't I say, 'Thank you'?"

"Not a word."

"I am content," he said, and closed his eyes again to express it, and she, being unasked, bent and kissed his forehead.

Rousing up a few minutes later, he said, "I have a present in keeping for you."

"Have you? What is it? Is it from you? Why didn't you let me see it before?"

He rose and opened a closet door. "Because the proper time had not come.

Before I show it to you I want you to promise to wear it."

"I promise," she instantly replied.

"Don't be so ready; I intend it to be a symbol of your change of heart."

"Well, then, I don't promise," she said, backing away.

"I don't mean your change of heart towards me; I have a ring to express that; this is to express your change of heart towards--"

"Towards Injuns?"

"No; towards all 'the small peoples of the earth.'"

"Well, then, I can't wear it; I haven't changed. Down with them!" she shouted, in smiling bravado.

He closed the door. "Very well, then, you shall not even see the present; you are not worthy of it."

"Oh, please! please! I'll forgive all the heathens of Africa, if you will only let me see."

"I don't believe I like that, either," he replied. "You are now too flippant. However, I'll hold you to the word. If you don't mean it now you will by-and-by."

Elsie clapped her hands with girlish delight as he held up a fine buckskin dress, beautifully adorned with beads and quills. It was exquisitely tanned, as soft as silk, and a deep cream color.

"Isn't it lovely! I'll wear it whether my heart is changed or not."

"Here are the leggings and moccasins to match."

She gathered them all up at a swoop. "I'm going to put them on at once."

"Wait!" he commanded. "Small Bird, who made these garments, is out in the kitchen. I want to call her; she can be your maid for this time."

As Small Bird sidled bashfully into the hall Elsie cried out in delight of her. She was dressed in the old-time Tetong dress, and was exceedingly comely. Her face was carefully painted and her hair shone with much brus.h.i.+ng and oil. Her teeth were white and even.

"Can she speak English?" asked Elsie.

"Not very well; but she understands. Small Bird, the lady says, thank you. She thinks they are very fine. Her heart is glad. Go help her dress."

"Come!" cried Elsie, eagerly, and fairly ran up the stairs in her haste to be transformed into a woman of the red people.

When she returned she was a sister to Small Bird. Her dark hair was braided in the Tetong fas.h.i.+on, her face was browned, and her little feet were clothed in glittering, beaded moccasins.

"You look exactly like some of the old engravings of Mohawk princesses,"

cried Curtis. "Now you are ready to sit by my side and review the procession."

"Are we to have a procession?"

"Indeed we are, as significant as any mediaeval tournament. I am the resident duke before whom the review takes place, and I shall be in my best dress and you are to sit by my side--my bride-elect."

"Oh no!"

"Oh yes. It is decided." He drew himself up haughtily. "I have said it, and I am chief to-day. It is good, Small Bird," he said, as the Tetong girl started to go. "My wife likes it very much."

Elsie ran towards the girl and took her by the shoulders as if to make her understand the better. "Thank you; thank you!"

Small Bird smiled, but surrendered to her timidity, and, turning, ran swiftly out of the room.

Curtis hooked Elsie in his right arm. "Now all is decreed. You have put on the garb of my people," and his kiss stopped the protest she struggled to utter.

Surely the day was a day strangely apart. Everything that could be done to make it symbolic, to make it idyllic, was done. Curtis appeared after lunch in a fine costume of buckskin, trimmed with green porcupine quills and beads, and for a hat he wore a fillet of beaver-skin with a single feather on the back. Across his shoulder he carried the sash of a finely beaded tobacco pouch, and in his hand a long fringed bag, very ancient, containing a peace-pipe, which had been transmitted to Crawling Elk by his father's father, a very precious thing, worn only by chieftains.

"Oh, I shall paint you in that dress," cried Elsie.

So accoutred, he led the way to the canopied platform under the flag-pole, where the reviewing party were to sit. In order that no invidious distinctions might be drawn, two or three of the old chiefs and their wives had been given seats thereon, and they were already in place. Not many strangers were present, for Curtis had purposely refrained from setting a day too long ahead, but Lawson's friends and some relatives of the employes, and several of the young officers from the fort made up the outside representation. Maynard was in his brightest uniform, and Jennie, looking very nice in a muslin gown, and a broad, white hat, sat by his side.

From the seats in the stand, the camp, swarming with hors.e.m.e.n, could be seen. Wilson, as grand marshal, was riding to and fro, a.s.sisted by Lawson, who had entered into the game with the self-sacrificing devotion of a drum-major. His make-up was superb, and when at last he approached, leading the cavalcade, Elsie did not recognize him. His lean face, dark with paint, was indistinguishably Tetong, seen from a distance, and he sat his horse in perfect simulation of his red brethren. He was but re-enacting scenes of his early life. His hunting-s.h.i.+rt was dark with use, and his splendid war-bonnet trailed grandly down his back. He rode by, looking neither to the right nor the left, singing a new song.

"We are pa.s.sing.

See us pa.s.sing by.

We are leaving the old behind us.

The new we seek to find. We are pa.s.sing, pa.s.sing by."

Crawling Elk followed, holding aloft a spear with a green plume; it was a turnip thrust through with a sharp-pointed, blackened stick, and behind him, two and two, came fifty of his young warriors carrying s.h.i.+ning hoes upright, as of old they carried their lances, while at their shoulders, where quivers of arrows should have swung, dangled trim sheaves of green wheat and golden barley. The free fluttering of their feather-ornamented hair, the barbaric painting on their faces and hands, symbolized the old life, as the green arrows of the grain prefigured the new. Behind them rode their women, each bearing in her left hand a bunch of flowers. Those who could read wore on their bosoms a small, s.h.i.+ning medal, and in their hair an eagle feather. No Tetong woman had ever worn a plume before.

Standing Elk, quaint and bent, rode by, singing a war-song, magnificent in his dress as war chief, leading some twenty young men. His hands were empty of the signs of peace, and his face was rapt with dreams of the past, but his young men carried long-handled forks which flamed in the sun, and bracelets of green gra.s.s encircled their firm, brown arms.

They, too, were painted to signify their clan and their ancestry, and the "medicine" they affected was on their b.r.e.a.s.t.s. Their wives were close behind, each bearing a stalk of corn in bloom; their beaded saddles and gay blankets were pleasant to see. Every weapon bespoke warfare against weeds. Every ornament represented the better nature, the striving, the aspiration of its wearer.

Then came the school-children, adding a final note of pathos, poor little brown men and women trudging on foot to symbolize that they must go through life, plodding in the dust of the white man's chariot wheel--their toes imprisoned in a shapeless box of leather, their hair closely clipped, their clothing hot and restrictive. Each carried a book and a slate, and their faces were very intent and serious as they paced by on their way from the old to the new. They were followed by the school-band playing "The Star-Spangled Banner," with splendid disregard of the broken faith of the government whose song it was.

And so they streamed by, these folk, accounted the most warlike of all red men, genially carrying out the wishes of their chief, ill.u.s.trating, without knowing it, the wondrous change which had come to them; the old men still clinging to the past, the young men careless of the future, the children already transformed, and, as they glanced up, some smiling, some grave and dreaming, Elsie shuddered with a species of awe; it seemed as if a people were being disintegrated before her eyes; that the evolution of a race having proceeded for countless ages by almost imperceptible degrees was now and here rus.h.i.+ng, as by mighty bounds, from war to peace, from hunting to harvesting, from primitive indolence to ordered thrift. They were, indeed, pa.s.sing, as the plains and the wild s.p.a.ces were pa.s.sing; as the buffalo had pa.s.sed; as every wild thing must pa.s.s before the ever-thickening flood of white ploughmen pressing upon the land.

Twice they circled, and then, as they all ma.s.sed before him, Curtis rose to sign to them.