Jennie looked at him as if he were presented from a new angle of vision. "George, there is a queer streak in you—for a soldier; you're too soft-hearted. But don't you get too much interested in Elsie Bee Bee; she's dangerous—and, besides, Mr. Lawson wears an air of command."
VII
ELSIE RELENTS A LITTLE
The feeling against the redmen, intensified throughout the State by the removal of Sennett, beat against Curtis like a flood. Delegations of citizens, headed by Streeter and Johnson, proceeded at once to Washington, laden with briefs, affidavits, and petitions, and there laid siege to Congress as soon as the members began to assemble. The twenty original homesteaders were taken as the text for most impassioned appeals by local orators, and their melancholy situation was skilfully enlarged upon. They were described as hardy and industrious patriots, hemmed in by sullen savages, with no outlet for trade and scant pasturage for their flocks—in nightly fear of the torch and the scalping-knife.
To Curtis, these settlers were by no interpretation martyrs in the cause of civilization—they were quite other. His birth, his military training, and his natural refinement tended to make him critical of them. They were to him, for the most part, "poor whites," too pitiless to be civilized, and too degenerate to have the interest of their primitive red neighbors. "The best of them," he said to Jennie, "are foolhardy pioneers who have exiled their wives and children for no good reason. The others are cattlemen who followed the cavalry in order to fatten their stock under the protection of our guidon."
The citizens of Pinon City wondered why their delegates made so little impression on the department, but Streeter was not left long in doubt.
The Secretary interrupted him in the midst of his first presentation of the matter.
"Mr. Streeter, you are a cattleman, I believe?"
Streeter looked a little set back. "I am—yes, sir, Mr. Secretary."