The agent rose grimly. “Very well, I’ll see justice done this man if I bring the whole power of the department to bear on you. I will enlist the aid of every lover of justice in the country. Howling Wolf has been abused. So far from shooting he came in here as my messenger unarmed and peaceful. Your drunken citizens assaulted him. I do not wonder that my people say you have the hearts of coyotes.”
As Cook drove away out of the squalid town he felt as he had several times before—the cruel, leering, racial hate of the border man, to whom the red man is big game. He had a feeling that, among all these thousands of American citizens, not one had the heart to stand out and say, “I’ll help you secure justice.”
His heat made him momentarily unjust, for there were many worthy souls, even in this village, who would have joined him could they have been made intimately informed of the case. At the moment he felt the helpless dismay of the red man when enmeshed by the laws of the whites.
But he was not a man to yield a just position without a struggle. As he rode he planned a campaign which should secure justice for Howling Wolf. His meeting with the half-frenzied wife of the captive only added new vigor to his resolution. With face haggard with suffering the poor woman cried out to him, “Where is he—my husband?”
He gave her such comfort as he could and drove on mentally writing letters, which should make the townsmen writhe with shame of their inhumanity.
Court did not sit for many weeks, but Howling Wolf knew nothing of that. He lived in daily hope of being released. He fed his heart on the words of his friend the agent. He brooded over his wrongs like a wounded wolf in his den, till his heart became bitter in his bosom. The glow of his new found love of the white man had died out—smothered by the cold gloom of his prison. He remembered only one white face with pleasure—that of his agent. All others were grinning or hateful or menacing.
He would have gone mad but for the visits of his wife and children who came to see him and were allowed to approach the bars of his cell so that he might lay his hands on the head of his little son. These brief visits comforted him—for the sake of his wife and children he lived.
In a week or two the people of Big Snake had quite forgotten Howling Wolf. If any word recalled him to their minds they merely said, “Do him good to feel the inside of a stone wall. It’ll take the fight out of him. He’ll be good Injun once he gets out. He’s in luck to escape being strung up.”
Now the town possessed a baseball team that had defeated every other club in the State, excepting one. St. Helen’s had proved a Waterloo to Big Snake on the Fourth of July and so its citizens fairly ached for a chance to “do St. Helen’s up,” and win back some of the money they had lost.
One morning about two weeks after his imprisonment Howling Wolf’s keen ears caught the sound of far-off drums and he wondered if the soldiers were coming at last to release him. His heart leaped with joy and he sprang to his feet vigorous, alert, and so listened long. He could hear plainly the voice of the bugle and he fancied he could detect the marching of columned feet. His friend, the agent, was coming to punish his captors.