The boy grew very much worse in the night, and in his temporary delirium he called piteously for his mother and in his native tongue, and the agent told one of the policemen to carry word to the mother, “Pawnee Woman,” that her son was sick. “Say to her that we are doing all we can for him, and that he is in no danger,” he added.
That day was a long day to Robert, a day that was filled with moments of delirium as a June day is filled with cloud shadows. Each hour carried him farther from the white man’s religion and the white man’s medicine—only his good agent comforted him; to him he clung with ever-weakening fingers. The agency doctor, earnest to the limits of his powers (you can’t buy great learning at eight hundred dollars per year), drew the agent aside and said: “The boy is in for a siege, Major. His temperature is rising in spite of everything. He must be watched closely to-night.”
“I’ll look out for that,” said Williams. Weary as he was, he watched again the second night, for the boy would not let him go, and his heart was very tender toward him.
The next morning as he sat in his little office he heard the swift soft thud of moccasined feet in the hall, and a timid knock. “Come!” he shouted, and before he could turn, a Cheyenne woman ran swiftly in. Her comely face was set in tragic lines of grief, and sobbing convulsively, while the tears flooded her cheeks. She laid one hand upon the agent’s shoulder, and with the other she signed: “Father, my son is going to die. Your work and your lodge have killed him. Have pity!” As she signed she wailed heart-brokenly, “He will die.”
“Dry your tears,” he replied, “He is not going to die. Two nights I have watched with him. I have myself given him strong medicine. He is better.”
She moaned as if all hope were gone. “No, no. He is very sick, father. He does not know me. His eyes are like those of a dead boy. Oh, have pity! Come with me. Come and aid him.”
To comfort her the weary man went back to the hospital, and as they entered, the mother made a wild gesture of repulsion, and said to the nurse: “Go away, dog woman! You are killing my son.”
In vain Williams tried to tell her how faithful the nurse had been. She would not listen.