Lydia of the Pines Part 42

CHAPTER XIII

THE INDIAN CELEBRATION

"The oak, the maple, the birch, I love them all, but nothing is so dear to the pine as the pine."--_The Murmuring Pine_.

Lydia was tired the day after the party, tired and moody. After she had told Lizzie and Ma Norton all about the evening, she spent the rest of the day lying on the lake sh.o.r.e, with a book but not reading. Late in the afternoon she went into the house and took Florence Dombey from her accustomed seat in a corner of the living-room.

For a long time she sat with Florence Dombey in her arms, looking from the hectic china face to the scintillating turquoise of the lake and listening to the hushed whispering of the pine. Finally with Adam lumbering jealously after her, she climbed the narrow stairs into the attic.

Back under the eaves stood a packing box into which Lydia never had looked. It contained all of little Patience's belongings. Holding Florence Dombey in one arm, she lifted the lid of the box, catching her breath a little as she glimpsed the cigar box furniture and a folded little white dress. Very carefully she laid Florence Dombey beside the furniture, leaned over and kissed her china lips and closed down the lid of the box. Then of a sudden she dropped to the floor with her head against the box and sobbed disconsolately. Adam gave a howl and crowded into her lap and Lydia hugged him but wept on.

The late afternoon sun sifted through the dusty attic window on her yellow head. Somewhere near the window a robin began to trill his vesper song. Over and over he sang it until at last Lydia heard and raised her head. Suddenly she smiled.

"There, Adam," she said, "now I'm really grown up and I feel better.

Let's go meet Dad."

It was three or four days later that news came that the Levine bill had pa.s.sed. It was a compromise bill as John had intimated it would be to the half breeds in the woods. Only the mixed bloods could sell their lands. Nevertheless there was great rejoicing in Lake City. Plans were begun immediately for a Fourth of July celebration upon the reservation. Kent to his lasting regret missed the celebration.

Immediately after school closed he had gone into Levine's office and had been sent to inspect Levine's holdings in the northern part of the State.

Levine returned the last week in June and took charge of the preparations. Amos, who never had been on the reservation, planned to go and Levine rented an automobile and invited Lydia, Amos, Billy Norton and Lizzie to accompany him.

It rained on the third of July, but the fourth dawned clear and hot.

Lydia really saw the dawn for she and Lizzie had undertaken to provide the picnic lunch and supper for the party of five and they both were busy in the kitchen at sunrise. At eight o'clock the automobile was at the door.

John drove the car himself and ordered Lydia in beside him. The rest packed into the tonneau with the baskets. It seemed as if all Lake City were headed for the reservation, for Levine's automobile was one of a huge line of vehicles of every type moving north as rapidly as the muddy road and the character of the motive power would permit. As they neared the reservation, about eleven, they began to overtake parties of young men who had walked the twenty miles.

They pa.s.sed the Last Chance, which was gaily hung with flags. Its yard was packed with vehicles. Its bar was running wide open. They swung on up the black road into the reservation, around a long hill, through a short bit of wood to the edge of a great meadow where John halted the car.

On all sides but one were pine woods. The one side was bordered by a little lake, motionless under the July sun. On the edge of the pines were set dozens of tents and birch-bark wick-i-ups. In the center of the meadow was a huge flagpole from which drooped the Stars and Stripes. Near by was a grandstand and a merry-go-round and everywhere were hawkers' booths.

Already the meadow was liberally dotted with sight-seers of whom there seemed to be as many Indians as whites. The mechanical piano in connection with the merry-go-round shrilled above the calls of vendors.

Overhead in the brazen blue of the sky, buzzards sailed lazily watching.

"Isn't it great!" cried Lydia. "What do we do first?"

"Well," said Levine, "I'm free until three o'clock, when the speeches begin. There'll be all sorts of Indian games going until then."

"You folks go on," said Lizzie. "I'm going to sit right here. I never was so comfortable in my life. This may be my only chance to see the world from an automobile and I don't calculate to lose a minute. I can see all I want from right here."

The others laughed. "I don't blame you, Liz," said Amos. "I feel a good deal that way, myself. What's the crowd round the flagpole, John?"

"Let's go see," answered Levine.

"How did you get the Indians to come, Mr. Levine?" asked Billy.

"By offering 'em all the food they could eat. The majority of them haven't any idea what it's all about. But they're just like white folks. They like a party. Don't get crowded too close to any of them, Lydia. They're a dirty lot, poor devils."

The crowd about the flagpole proved to be watching an Indian gambling game. In another spot, a pipe of peace ceremony was taking place. The shooting galleries were crowded. Along the lake sh.o.r.e a yelling audience watched birch canoe races. The merry-go-round held as many squaws and papooses and stolid bucks as it did whites.

The four returned to the automobile for lunch hot and muddy but well saturated with the subtle sense of expectation and excitement that was in the air.

"This is just a celebration and nothing else, John, isn't it?" asked Amos as he bit into a sandwich.

"That's all," replied Levine. "We thought it was a good way to jolly the Indians. At the same time it gave folks a reason for coming up here and seeing what we were fighting for and, last and not least, it was the Indian Agent's chance to come gracefully over on our side."

"Did he?" asked Lydia.

"He did. He's done more of the actual work of getting the celebration going than I have."

"I wonder why?" asked Billy, suddenly.

"All there is left for him to do," said Levine. "Lydia, before the speeches begin, go up in the pines and choose your tract. I'll buy it for you."

Lydia glanced at Billy. He was thinner this summer than she had ever seen him. He was looking at her with his deep set gray eyes a little more somber, she thought, than the occasion warranted. Nevertheless she stirred uneasily.

"I don't want any Indian lands," she said. "I'd always see Charlie Jackson in them."

"The whole thing's wrong," muttered Billy.

Levine gave him a quick look, then smiled a little cynically. "You'd better go along with Lydia and take a look at the pines," he suggested.

"Amos, I've already got your tract picked out. It's ten miles from here so you can't see it to-day. Come over to the speakers' stand and help me get things arranged."

"I'd like to look at the pines again, anyhow," said Lydia. "Come along, Billy."

Lydia was wearing the corduroy outing suit of the year before and was looking extremely well. Billy, in an ordinary business suit, was not the man of the world of Graduation night, yet there was a new maturity in his eyes and the set of his jaw that Lydia liked without really observing it. Old Lizzie watched the two as they climbed the slope to the woods. Billy strode along with the slack, irregular gait of the farmer. Lydia sprang over the ground with quick, easy step.

"Billy's a man grown," Lizzie said to herself, "and he's a nice fellow, but he don't tug at my old heart strings like Kent does--drat Kent, anyhow!" She settled herself as conspicuously as possible in the automobile. "If Elviry Marshall would pa.s.s now, I'd be perfectly happy," she murmured.

Billy and Lydia entered the woods in silence and followed a sun-flecked aisle until the sound of the celebration was m.u.f.fled save for the shrill notes of the mechanical piano, which had but two tunes, "Under the Bamboo Tree" and the "Miserere."

"I hate to think of it all divided into farms and the pines cut down,"

said Lydia.

Billy leaned against one of the great tree trunks and stared thoughtfully about him.

"I'm all mixed up, Lydia," he said. "It's all wrong. I know the things Levine and the rest are doing to get this land are wrong, and yet I don't see how they can be stopped."

"Well," Lydia fanned herself with her hat, thoughtfully, "for years people have been telling me awful things Mr. Levine's done to Indians and I worried and worried over it. And finally, I decided to take Mr.

Levine for the dear side he shows me and to stop thinking about the Indians."

"You can stop thinking, perhaps," said the young man, "but you can't stop this situation up here from having an influence on your life.

Everybody in Lake City must be directly or indirectly affected by the reservation. Everybody, from the legislators to the grocery keepers, has been grafting on the Indians. Your own father says the thing that's kept him going for years was the hope of Indian lands. Margery Marshall's clothed with Indian money."

"And how about the influence on you, Billy?" asked Lydia with a keen look into the young fellow's rugged face.

"I'm in the process of hating myself," replied Billy, honestly. "I came up here last month to see how bad off the Indians were. And I saw the poor starving, diseased brutes and I cursed my white breed. And yet, Lyd, I saw a tract of pine up in the middle of the reservation that I'd sell my soul to own! It's on a rise of ground, with a lake on one edge, and the soil is marvelous, and it belongs to a full-blood."