She nodded seriously, but with a glint of mischief in her eyes. "Yes, I can understand that it must be hard for a man to do his work handicapped as you are but no one away out here will count it against you. Every man here has a chance no matter what his past has been. You see, we don't care what a man has been or what his fathers were; we accept him for what he is and value him for what he can do. So all you need to do is to forget and go straight ahead with your work and you'll easily live it down. Only, of course," she added gently, "I wouldn't advise you to tell everybody what you have told me. Some might not understand."
He retorted warmly: "Of course you cannot understand our point of view. Everything is so new and raw out here that you have no social standards."
"New and raw?" She laughed again. "Why, Mr. Holmes, you are the only new thing in this country. Do you see that man over there?"
They were riding south on the road that follows the river and she pointed to an Indian who sat idly in the shade of his pole and mud hut.
"What's the matter with him?" asked the engineer.
"Nothing. Only he, too, has ancestors. Ages and ages before your forefathers knew that this continent existed, that man's people lived in a city not far from here—a city with laws, customs, religions, social standards—yes, and civil engineers, for you can easily trace the lines of their canals, in which they brought water from the river and carried it through a tunnel in the mountains to irrigate their land, just as you modern engineers are planning to do. The Seer and I rode over there once and he told me about it. I'll show you, if you like. New! Why the West was ages old before the East was discovered! The Seer says that if Columbus had come first to the western coast New England to-day would still be an uninhabitable, howling wilderness."
"But I don't see what all this has to do with social standards," he said, nettled at her reply.
"Simply this. If a man's position in life is to be fixed by the age of his family or the number of years that they have occupied a certain section of the country, then that Indian is your superior. His ancestors lived here long before yours settled in New England."
"But we are proud of our ancestors because of what they were and what they accomplished. We have a right to be. Think of what the world owes them!"
"Oh, I must have misunderstood you. You seemed to place so much emphasis on their having come over in the Mayflower. They were grand—those brave old pioneers. I am proud of them too for what they were. And did they have social positions by which they fixed a man's place in life, I wonder?"