It was as if I saw it all far off through sheets of crystal. There was nothing I wanted. It represented the forces from which I longed to get away. As I walked about the streets of this settlement on the plains, drenched with sun and breeze-swept, I was conscious of an unknown world of art. I used to say to myself: I can not know the heights of life, wealth, power. I can not have things that do not depend upon myself. But, with my brain, I can know the heights of art. I can know all men have dreamed. I learned languages as other women learn to sew. For me they kept few difficulties. My foreign tutor, to whom I owe a debt of gratitude, who knew many tongues, was introducing me to books of the Old World. He had a library of his own, of which he was good enough to give me use. His name was Arnold Jeannerett.
I was dazed at first, breathless, at this introduction to the sumptuous Palaces of Thought. Less and less I saw the world about me. It faded away with its crudity, harsh, noisy contrasts; discomforts; its persistent attempt to make life miserable for me. Nothing remained but a place of enchantment where there were no imperfections, and everything was as I wished.
I read Ariosto. I learned to know Petrarch, and the classics of Italy. I read the splendid prose of France; Bossuet, Fenelon, Chateaubriand, Rousseau. I read the lyric poets of Germany. Hidden upon my person somewhere, either in a pocket in my calico petticoat, or else within the lining of my hat, was some tiny book of the Old World.
But an unexpected complication arose. It made the women of the village angry. And in no slight degree. What right had I to amuse myself in ways not theirs? There was nothing left undone within their inventive range, which I soon learned to my sorrow was considerable, to make me understand their displeasure.
Sweeping past my eyes there was the picturesque panorama of the plains. Interesting things peculiar to isolation were happening.
Chief Joseph, with the warriors who murdered Custer, with their squaws and children, were being removed to a northern Reservation. They stopped in our village. Chief Joseph made a speech which one of the tribal interpreters put into English. The old chief described the massacre. He did it with relish. I sat in front of him, on a board upheld by two nail kegs. When he came to the horrors of it, over his dull eyes, which years had given singular expressionlessness, grey mists floated like spring across black winter. The memory was sweet.
The Main Street with its ugly, flat-topped buildings stretched from north to south. Through this artificial canal swept the wind, having come across desolate plains. Drifting through this street until midnight, moved a strangely assorted crowd, laughing, talking, drinking, quarreling. There were buck Indians in beaded moccasins, a striped calico about their loins, and tin bracelets upon thin, muscled arms. They walked with dignity. Sleek squaws, who toed in, toddled after them. Tin rings were in their ears. There were Mexicans with black, wide faces and white hats; Greasers, whom on-rushing civilization would soon annihilate; cowboys with fringed leggings and high heels, and gamblers with angular, prairie faces. There were soldiers from nearby forts and a few great-hearted pioneers who loved lonely places and who lived their adventures instead of writing them.
The thing I loved best was the clouds that rose high above the levels. They painted pictures. They satisfied my longing to get away.
I loved them when they were white, glittering mountains looking down upon some fairy land.
I used to ride out upon the levels, stop my horse, observe them, feeling happily upon face and arms, the warm, rollicking wind of the south, from unknown spaces where perhaps flowers grew. One longed sometimes here for the lonely comfort of long rains.