The Loom of the Desert

by Idah Meacham Strobridge

When I first knew George (he was “Young George” then), he was married and had children. Four; two boys and two girls. More than other Indians, he aped the Whites in their ways, and was reckoned (for a Paiute) a decent fellow. His camp was the best, his food the most plentiful, and his children the best kept and cleanest. The mother sewed well, and neither she nor the children ever went ragged. Among Indians they were as the hard-working, temperate laborer’s family is among the white men who work—work with their hands for a living.

George had money laid by—joint earnings of his own and of Susan, his wife. He worked at the settlers’ wood-piles in winter, chopping wood; and in summer he worked in the hay fields. She washed and ironed for the white families. Wage was high in those days, and George and Susan prospered. That was a contented little camp built there in the tall sagebrush, and they were happy as needs be.

And then——

There happened that which is not always confined to the camp of the red man. It was the old story— another woman. Well, has not the world seen such things before? There are women—even those without the dower of beauty—of whose strange power no explanation can be given save that they can, and do, “charm men.” And in no less measure was this brown-skinned woman a charmer. She had already parted more than one husband and wife—had destroyed the peace and quiet of more than one home, when she and George stood where the ways met.

If this had happened some three thousand years ago, and she had lived on the banks of the Nile, and if you were a poet, or a recorder of history, no doubt you would have written her down a siren—a dark-eyed charmer of men—a sorceress of Egypt; but she lived on the Humboldt river instead, and all this happened within the last four decades, and she was only a squaw of one of our North American tribes. Neither was she a pretty squaw judged by our cañons of beauty. Yet are not such things matters of geography governed by traditions? And when a man is bewitched by a man, brown-skinned or white, he is very apt to see charms where another cannot discover them.

Sophy, the siren, came into the camp, and with her coming fled peace. Poor Susan, unloved and deserted, sat apart and cried her heart out—as many a white woman has done before her, and since—when powerless to prevent, or right the wrong that was done her. So, bewitched and befooled, George gave himself up to the madness that was his undoing. The money which had been laid by went like water held in the hand. The camp was neglected; the stores were wasted. The children, from whom the mother had been banished, went ragged and oftentimes hungry.

It took George a long time to awake from his delirium, but he did awaken finally—after many months. All things come—some day—to the writing of “finis.” And no joy falls so soon and so completely as the joy built on an unsound foundation. One day George came to his senses. Then he cast the woman out; cast her out, and forever. He brought back to his home the mother of his children, and she foregave him. Well, what would you?—she was his wife, and a woman forgives much for the sake of the children she has held to her breast. So the camp was made tidy again and the children cared for as of old, and there were new stores gathered, and money was again saved.

Now George—being an Indian, being a Paiute—had never heard of Colley Cibber, else he might have been reminded that “we shall find no fiend in hell can match the fury of a disappointed woman—scorned! slighted! dismissed without a parting pang.” Neither did George—being a Paiute Indian—know the meaning of the word “Nemesis.”

That was more than twenty years ago; and for more than twenty years the woman, Sophy, made his life a series of persecutions. If he builded aught at the camp, it was torn down; what he raised in his garden was destroyed; what he bought, was quickly broken. Horses were driven far astray; and his favorite dogs were poisoned. Then, when she had exhausted all her ingenuity in these and a hundred other ways of making his life a torment, she turned her wiles on Doctor Jim, one of the great medicine men of the tribe, married to Susan’s mother, and an inmate of George’s camp. Doctor Jim’s long residence in the house had given to George a certain enviable status among the Indians, and this prestige the woman now meant to destroy. On Doctor Jim were bestowed her blandishments, and—like George before him—he was fain to follow whither she led. With the medicine man’s going, departed the glory of the house. And it left, in the person of the deserted wife, another mouth for George to feed; while at the same time the assisting support which Doctor Jim had given the household was taken away.

Troubles came thick and fast to Old George. He had begun to be called “Old” George now. One day while he was handling a cartridge it accidentally exploded and tore away part of his hand. This hampered him in what work he got to do; and sometimes because of it he was refused employment. Then the evil fate that had chosen him for a plaything, threw him from a train running at full speed, and left him lying on the track with broken legs, and pitifully crippled. He got well after many weary months while Susan nursed him, and between whiles of nursing earned the living for the dwellers within the camp. When Spring came, Susan died.