Lone Wolf, approaching Seger, dismounted, and laid his arm over his friend’s shoulder. “My friend,” he said, with grave tenderness, “I wondered why you were with these men, and my heart was heavy; but now I see that you were here to turn aside the guns of the cattlemen. My heart is big with friendship for you. Once more you have proved my good counselor.” And tears dimmed the fierceness of his eyes.
A week later, a slim, smooth-cheeked second lieutenant, by virtue of his cap and the crossed arms which decorated his collar, ran the line, and Lone Wolf made no resistance. “I have no fight with the soldiers of the Great Father,” he said: “they do not come to gain my land. I now see that Washington has decreed that this fence shall be built.” Nevertheless, his heart was very heavy, and in his camp his heroic old guard sat waiting, waiting!
BIG MOGGASEN
BIG MOGGASEN
Far in the Navajoe Country there are mountains almost unknown to the white man. Beginning on the dry penon spotted land they rise to pine clad hills where many springs are. Deep cañons with wondrous cliffs of painted stone cut athwart the ranges and in crevices of these walls, so it is said, are the stone houses of most ancient peoples. It is not safe for white men to go there—especially with pick and shovel, for Big Moggasen the Chief is keenly alive to the danger of permitting miners to peer about the rocks and break them up with hammers.
Because these mountains are unknown they are alluring and men often came to the agency for permission to enter the unknown land. To them the agent said, “No, I don’t want a hellabaloo raised about your death in the first place, and in the second place this reservation belongs to the Navajoes—you’d better prospect in some other country.”
Big Moggasen lived far away from the agency and was never seen even by the native police. He lived quite independent of the white man’s bounty. He drew no rations and his people paid no taxes. His young men tended the sheep, the old men worked in silver and his women wove blankets which they sold to the traders for coffee and flour. In such wise he lived from the time that his father’s death made him a chief.
In winter his people retreated to the valleys where they were sheltered from the wind—where warm hogans of logs and dirt protected them from the cold, and in the spring when the snow began to melt they drove their flocks of black and white sheep, mixed with goats, higher in the hills. In midsummer when the valleys were baking hot, the young herders urged their herd far up among the pines where good grass grew and springs of water gushed from every cañon.