"Moreover, Crawling Elk is the annalist and story-teller of his tribe. He carries the 'winter count' and the sacred pipe, and can tell you of every movement of the Tetongs for more than a century and a half. His mind is full of poetry, and his conceptions of the earth and sky are beautiful. He knows little that white men know, and cares for very little that the white man fights for, but his mind teems with lore of the mysterious universe into which he has been thrust, and which he has studied for seventy-two years. In the eyes of God, I am persuaded there is no very wide difference between old Crawling Elk and Herbert Spencer. The circle of Spencer's knowledge is wider, but it is as far from including the infinite as the redman's story of creation. Could you understand the old man as I do, you would forget his rags. He would loom large in the mysterious gloom of life. Your painting is as prejudiced in its way as the description which a cowboy would give you of this old man. You have given the color, the picturesque qualities of your subjects, but you have forgotten that they are human souls, groping for happiness and light."
As he went on, Elsie stared at the picture fixedly, and it changed under her glance till his deeply passionate words seemed written on the canvas. The painting ceased to be a human face and became a mechanical setting together of features, a clever delineation of the exterior of a ragged old man holding a beaded tobacco-pouch and a long red pipe.
"This old 'beggar,'" Curtis continued, "never lights that pipe you have put in his hands without blowing a whiff to the great spirits seated at the cardinal points of the compass. He makes offerings for the health of his children—he hears voices in the noon-day haze. He sits on the hill-top at dawn to commune with the spirits over his head. As a beggar he is picturesque; as a man, he is bewildered by the changes in his world, and sad with the shadow of his children's future. All these things, and many more, you must learn before you can represent the soul of the redman. You can't afford to be unjust."
She was deeply affected by his words. They held conceptions new to her. But his voice pierced her, strangely subdued her. It quivered with an emotion which she could not understand. Why should he care so much whether she painted her subjects well or ill? She was seized with sudden, bitter distrust.
"I wish I had not shown you my studies," she said, resentfully.
His face became anxious, his voice gentle. "I beg your pardon; I have presumed too far. I hope, Miss Brisbane, you will not take what I say too much to heart. Indeed, you must not mind me at all. I am, first of all, a sort of crank; and then, as I say, I don't know a word about painting; please forget my criticisms."
She understood his mood now. His anxiety to regain her good-will was within her grasp, and she seized the opportunity to make him plead for himself and exonerate her.
"You have torn my summer's work to flinders," she said, sullenly, looking down at a bit of charcoal she was grinding into the rug beneath her feet.
He was aghast. "Don't say that, I beg of you! Good Heavens! don't let my preachment discourage you. You see, I have two or three hobbies, and when I am once mounted I'm sure to ride right over somebody's garden wall." He rose and approached her. "I shall never forgive myself if I have taken away the smallest degree of your enthusiasm. My aim—if I had an aim—was to help you to understand my people, so that when you come out next summer—"
"All that is ended now," she said, sombrely. "I shall attempt no more Indian work!"