After all this, it really was hard that when their own darling baby—Little Girl, they called her—came down with acute bronchitis, Grandmother and even Blue Earth suddenly rebelled, and obstinately refused to have anything to do with the “white man’s way.” The little stove was kept constantly stuffed with wood, and the baby lay gasping on the bed, rolled in unsavory quilts, reeking with heat and untouched for days by a drop of water. To all Stella’s pleas for a warm bath, an open window, even in an adjoining room, she received the sullen reply:
“This is no time for fooling. It didn’t matter when Little Girl was well, but now she is very sick. If we are not careful she will die!”
It was the dead of winter, but nevertheless Stella rode the fifteen miles to the agency on her faithful pony, saw the doctor, and even persuaded him to ride back with her. Backed by his authority, she took bodily possession of the sick child, gave it an alcohol rub, air, and medicine, and watched through the long, silent night.
Next morning, Little Girl was plainly worse. Grandmother crawled out-of-doors and tied a rag of red calico to a pole—her pitiful, unspoken prayer to the Powers! Her hoarse voice could be heard in the pauses of the wind, chanting a weird and mournful song.
Stella inwardly trembled at the sound, and all the spirits of her ancestors seemed to upbraid her from the dull, resentful eyes of the tormented mother, who sat huddled on the bed like a crouching animal, staring at the intruder with a look that said plainly:
“You have an Indian skin, but a white heart. If my child dies, you will have killed her!”
The girl shut her eyes and her ears, and she, too, prayed.
But she didn’t forget when the time came to give the doctor’s medicine. Hours passed like a bad dream, until, as she bent over the loved little form, a moment was enough to note the easier breathing, the beads of sweat on the pinched baby face. And that terror had gone by.
It was now late August, and no rain had fallen on the reservation for many weeks. The waving sea of prairie grass, vivid in May as a green gem, was now of a rufous brown. Water-holes were sucked dry; the smaller creeks had quite forsaken their sandy beds, and many of the people had to drive their cattle and horses long miles to water, every morning and evening.
The “Little Father” sat humped up in his office chair, with his coat off, discontentedly signing a batch of official papers and heaping objurgations on the weather, when Blue-Coat unceremoniously made his way in at the wide-open door and thrust a letter under the agent’s nose. The letter was from Cherry Creek.