Stella, too, had a “part”—she and Rosey Bernstein led their class; and those who saw her on that day of days will long remember the tall, swaying figure, the gliding step, the vivid, dark face with its touch of foreign distinction among the rosy village girls, and most of all the tender, rhythmic tones that rang so true in her touching farewell to school days and to the comrades of that golden time.
For Yellow Star had made her difficult decision—to go back to her own people and do for them what she could. There had come, in the early spring, a cry for help—another dingy scrawl in scarce legible Dakota from the Indian camp on Cherry Creek. Blue Earth had a “bad heart;” her husband, Young Eagle, had left her and gone across the Big Water with the show; she had a baby girl now, and the boy was five years old. She wanted them to “walk the white man’s road,” and she wanted The-One-who-was-left-Alive to come and live with her, and teach her how to teach her children. There were many women in the camp, she said, who needed such help.
After a sleepless night with the letter under her pillow, the girl had shown it to her friends and asked their advice. In her heart, she knew that there was only one answer possible, and they read her decision in her face. Of course, Doris and Cynthia cried a little, and squeezed her hands, and begged her “not to give up her plans, darling;” while Miss Sophia held her peace with remarkable consistency and success. But Doctor Brown promptly hunted up Mr. Parker, and the two had an important conference.
“I can see she means to go, and it may be the best thing to do, for a time, at any rate,” the Doctor admitted, gruffly. “But there’s just one thing about it; that girl is not going into an Indian camp without position or backing. She’s too handsome, for one thing; and too young and trusting altogether. Young as she is, Stella is competent to fill a good place in the Government Indian Service, and that she must have!”
“I’ve been telling my wife I’d like nothing better than to send the girl through college, if she wants to go,” demurred Mr. Parker. “I think she could persuade my girl to go with her—there or anywhere! Say, Doc! are you dead sure she ought to butt in amongst a lot of half-savage Sioux—a girl who would make a place for herself in any community?”
“I don’t know much about the American Indian, but judging from our Stella, there must be good stuff in the breed,” answered the Doctor, stanchly. “She’d make a magnificent nurse—doctor, perhaps; but she’s too young to begin training yet awhile. Better let her try it out west for a year or two; she will, anyway; she’s made up her mind, and you know what that means. What I came over to ask you is have you any wires to pull that’ll land our little girl in the Indian Service? What?”
“Sure,” assented Mr. Parker, heartily. “There’s Senator Morton; he’ll do anything for me—within reason, of course. We’ll fix it up in no time.”
When Stella herself was cautiously consulted, a fortnight later, she declared that she did not know enough to teach and would rather not take a school position. She wanted to live right in the camp, she said, close to the people; to help the poor, ignorant women and children, like Blue Earth and her babies.
“Then you want to be a field matron,” pronounced the Doctor, who had been studying the subject. “Six hundred a year and the right to draw on the agency for supplies—soap and buckets and rations for sick people and all that. The work just what you would be doing anyway, and the whole United States Government back of you. That’s the talk.”
And so it came about that our eighteen-year-old Indian girl delivered her valedictory with her appointment as field matron at Cherry Creek pinned inside her white frock, right over the loving heart that beat high with the hope of service.