Chapita was the widow of the blood-brother of her father. One of her few sentiments had been gratitude to the big chief who had been her husband's friend, and this now flowered in loyalty to his child. She was an unlovely person but she was human. Her cabin was an unlovely place but it was a shelter. Wah-na-gi was very tired with her long ride, too tired perhaps to sleep. She closed her eyes but not in slumber, and each time that she opened them to escape from the mental images which terrified and mocked her, it seemed to her as if the walls of the little cabin were closing in on her inch by inch and that if she lost herself in forgetfulness they would crush her. The strained stillness of the night was broken by the mournful howl of the coyotes and the mournful answer of Chapita's dogs, trying to tell their wild kin how impossible it was to go back! The dogs were explaining that it wasn't a pleasant thing to be man's "best friend" but it was better than being his hunted enemy. But the logic of this made no impression on the coyotes whose only answer to its inevitableness was to call again and again—come back; come back.
The following day Wah-na-gi stayed away from the Agency as long as she could, but it is a long day which has had no night. The odors of the cabin offended her, and she was waiting for the tardy sun when at last it consented to get up. Chapita would not allow her to share the simple chores. They were her refuge from consuming loneliness; so Wah-na-gi stirred about in the stillness; she sat down in it; she rose up in it. She looked away off into the distance where was the Red Butte Ranch. She looked down on the Agency buildings and the brave flutter of its flag. She did these things several times. Then by the law of gravitation she found herself in the afternoon at the post-office. She knew she had no letters, but she had to speak to some one. The fat post-mistress had protruding eyes and wore glasses that horribly magnified them. She looked like a mediaeval gargoyle.
"No!" there was no mail for Wah-na-gi, and this simple fact was put through the narrow window in a way to suggest the early Hebrew prophets in their favorite posture toward the stiff-necked and rebellious generation.
Wah-na-gi duly quailed. Thus encouraged the amiable official glared at her malevolently and suggested with clumsy guile:
"I suppose you know there's a ree-ception to-night at the agent's to the Guv'ment inspector, skool inspector?"
"No; I didn't know it."
"S'pose you're goin'?"
"I don't know—I, er—I don't know." And she hastened out of the dingy little office of inquisition. Both knew that she wasn't going.
It would seem that one might face the future without despair even if one should be purposely excluded from so important a function as a reception by the agent to the school functionary, but these things are relative. This was as important here as the king's drawing-room would be in London, and we know that fortunes have been spent, the arts of diplomacy exhausted, homes shaken, and governments jeopardized for social prizes of no more real consequence. Every one would know that she was not there, and nowhere on earth where human beings meet can they exist without the approval of their fellows.
Besides the wound to her self-esteem there was a genuine loss to her in not meeting the official. She had started a movement to interest the Indian children in themselves, their own art, music, history, and poetry, to awaken their pride of race and stimulate their desire to preserve and perpetuate these priceless things which were fast drifting back into the unknown and forgotten. The movement had received encouragement from some of the wiser folk at Washington. She wanted to show what she had done, what the children had accomplished. Perhaps it wasn't of consequence, but it seemed so to her. The inspector would be told the experiment was a failure, and at the thought of that she wanted to cry out.