When they got to the house, Flora jumped out and loped up the steps, blazing, and slammed the door. Kate tried to follow, but her tight dress and tight shoes were too much for her, and she fell down. That got Kate’s mad up, and when Kate’s good and mad she’s a mule. She banged at the door, but no one opened. So she sat down on the front doorstep to wait till Flora came out. You know what Indians are. She was ready to wait all night. She was used to nights six months long, and a few hours in a San Francisco fog didn’t worry her a bit. She took off her shoes, and loosened her dress, and stuck to the mat.
Finally Flora sent out one of the hired help to drive Kate away. Kate pulled out one of her “medicine stones” that she had always found would work, and it worked all right. He went in with a twenty-dollar gold piece and told all the rest of the help, and they came out one by one and got twenties, while Kate froze to the doorstep. Then Flora telephoned for the police, and a copper came up from the station to put Kate off the steps. He stopped when she handed him the first twenty. He put up his club when she brought out two more, and went back, after telling the Donovans he couldn’t exceed the law.
There she stayed till eight o’clock next morning, but it finally got through her head that Flora would never leave while she was there, so Kate decided to hide out and lay for her. She went across the street and sat down on the steps of the Presbyterian church, a couple of blocks away, where she drew a crowd of kids and nurse-girls, till the cop on the beat came up and drove ’em away and collected another pair of twenties.
About ten o’clock, Flora, thinking the coast was clear, came out and got into her carriage. Kate was ready for her, holding up her skirt in one hand and her shoes in the other. The carriage drove off and Kate fell in behind on a little trot. You know how Indians run; they can keep it up all day, and you can’t get away from ’em. Flora saw her, and made the driver whip up.
There they went, lickety-split, a swell turn-out, with Flora yelling at the driver to go faster, and about half a block behind poor old Kate, right in the middle of the street, on the car-track, in dinkey open-work silk stockings, with her shoes in one hand, going like a steam-engine. Her hat fell off as she crossed Polk Street, but Lord, she didn’t care, she had barrels of ’em at the hotel. I guess they had a clear street all the way. It must have taken the crowd like a circus parade.
The police never caught on till they got to Kearney Street, and there I was standing, looking for my wife. A copper came out to nail her for a crazy woman, but I got there first, and bundled her into a hack.
When we got up to our rooms she was so queer and strange that for a little while I didn’t know but she had gone nutty, after all. She never said a word till she had straightened up her dress and put on her shoes and got out a new hat. Then she stood in front of a big looking-glass. Finally she turned loose on me.
“I want to be white and have a thin nose and a little waist like an American woman. Where can I get that? How many medicine stones will it take to make me white?”
“Oh, Kate,” I said, “don’t talk like that, old girl. You are good enough for me. You can’t buy all that, anyway.”
Then she said, “You don’t like me the way you like that other woman. How many medicine stones will it take to make me just as if I was white?”