Amos at first was furious when he heard of the investigation. He, with every one else in town, was eager to know who had started the trouble.
"Some sorehead," said Amos, "who couldn't get all the land he wanted, I'll bet. And a sweet time the commission will have. Why, they'll have to dig into the private history of every one in Lake City. It'll ruin Levine! Oh, pshaw! No, it won't either! He can get everything whitewashed. That's the way American investigations always end!"
But Levine could not get everything whitewashed. The group of three commissioners sat for months and in that time they exposed to the burning sun of publicity the muck of thievery and dishonor on which Lake City's placid beauty was built.
By some strange turn of fortune, Congress had chosen three honest men for this unsavory task, three men grimly and unswervingly determined to see the matter through. They sat in rooms in the post-office building. In and out of the building day after day passed the Indians to face the sullen and unwilling whites summoned to hear and answer what these Indians had to say of them. Charlie Jackson acted as interpreter. Lydia saw him once or twice on the street when he nodded coolly. He had dropped his white associates completely.
The local papers refused to report the commission's session. But papers outside the State were voracious for the news and little by little tales were published to the world that made Lake City citizens when out of the city, hesitate to confess the name of their home town.
The leading trustee of the Methodist Church was found to have married a squaw in order to get her pine and her pitiful Government allowance. His white wife and children left him when this was proved to them, and it was proved only when the starving squaw and her starving children were finally acknowledged by the trustee before the commission.
The Methodists were held up to scorn for a few months until a prominent
Presbyterian who was the leading grocer in town was found to have
supplied the Indian Agent for years with tainted groceries for the
Indians.
The most popular dentist in town filled teeth for the Indians whenever they received their allowances. His method of filling was simple. He drove empty copper cartridge caps over the teeth. These when burnished made a handsome showing until gangrene set in. The afflicted Indians were then turned over to a popular young doctor of Lake City who took the next year's allowance from the bewildered patients.
Marriage after marriage of squaws with Lake City citizens was unearthed, most of these same citizens also having a white family. Hundreds of tracts of lands that had been obtained by stealing or by fraud from full bloods were listed. Bags of candy, bits of jewelry, bolts of cotton had been exchanged for pine worth thousands of dollars.
It was a nerve-racking period for Lake City. Whether purposely or not, the net did not begin to close round John Levine till toward the end of the hearing. Nor did Levine come home until late in the summer, when the commission had been sitting for some months.