She had heard all the arguments before. They had little or no terrors for her now. They were the arguments used by the people back in her eastern home, those dear, dear people, her people—how far away she was!—when they had schemed and plotted so pathetically to keep her with them, the second one to break away from the slow, safe, and calm traditions of her kin in the place where generation after generation of her people had lived and died, and now lay waiting the Great Judgment in the peaceful country burying-ground.
She had listened to them dutifully, half-believingly, swallowed hard and followed her uncle, her father’s youngest brother, to the “Land of the Dakotahs,” the fair land of promise, right in the face of her fears and the loneliness that loomed before her—a thing with smirks and horns and devil’s eyes that would not be suppressed, but perched itself insolently before her, a heart-choking presence, magnified by the mist in her eyes, through all the long, long journey to the west country. It had left her for a while when she had crossed the Sioux and was on Dakota soil at last. It was such a glorious land through which she was passing, the fair region of the corn-belt, and such a prosperous land, and the fields spread so broadly. It had been a sunny day with clear skies, one of those days when distances are so infinite in South Dakota, the land of widespread spaces. It was indeed a fertile valley through which she was passing. There is none better on earth.
When her train had pulled out of Yankton, she reflected with a whimsical smile that she had not yet seen an Indian. To be sure, she had not really expected to see one in feathers and war-paint, but surely an Indian of some description—did not the traditions of her youth run that Dakota was the land of Indians and blizzards? She well remembered—indeed, could she ever forget?—when, a tot of seven or eight, she had run out into the road to gaze after the carry-all that was taking her well-beloved young uncle away, away, into that dreadful land where blood ran like rivers and where people trimmed their clothes with scalps. She even remembered the feel of the warm, yellow dust up to her bare ankles and the dreadful lump that she couldn’t swallow when her uncle leaned out and waved his hat vigorously, crying out gayly:—
“Good-bye, little girl, good-bye. If they take my scalp, I’ll beg them as a special favor to send it back to you as a keepsake. Don’t forget to take good care of it. I was always rather proud of my yaller mop.”
He had said more; he had kept on calling to her till the big woods swallowed him. But she had understood nothing after that last awful charge. It had happened more than fifteen years before, but for many and many a day thereafter, sensitive mite that she had been, she would run and hide in the hay-mow whenever she saw her father or the boys coming from town with the mail. It was years before the horror of the expected packet containing the fair hair of her young uncle, dabbled with blood, fell away from her.
Gradually the awfulness of that dread expectation passed away. Now, that same dear uncle was a man of power and position in the new land that had graciously permitted him his scalp. Only last November he had been reëlected to his third term on the bench of his circuit with a big, heart-stirring majority. In the day of his prosperity he had not forgotten the little, tangle-haired girl who had cried so inconsolably when he went away, and the unaccountable horror in whose eyes he had tried to laugh away on that never-to-be-forgotten day when he had wrenched his heartstrings from their safe abiding-place and gone forth in quest of the pot of gold at the rainbow’s end—the first of many generations. Tradition knew no other since his ancestors had felled forests and built homes of hewn logs. Now he had sent for Louise. His court reporter had recently left him for other fields of labor.
There was commotion among her people on receipt of the astounding proposition. She lived over again the dark days of the first flitting. It might well be her uncle had exaggerated the dangers of life in the new land. It was great fun to shock his credulous relatives. He had surely written them some enormous tales during those fifteen years and more. He used to chuckle heartily to himself at reading some of the sympathizing replies. But these tales were held in evidence against him now that he dared to want Louise. Every letter was brought out by Louise’s dear old grandmother and read to her over again. Louise did not half believe them, but they were gospel truth to her grandmother and almost so to her father and mother as well. She remembered the old spirit of fun rampant in her favorite uncle, and while his vivid pictures took all the color from her sensitive face, deep down in her heart she recognized them for what they were worth. The letters were a strange medley of grasshoppers, blizzards, and Indians. But a ten-dollar per diem was a great temptation over a five-dollar per diem, and times were pretty hard on the old farm. More than all, the inexplicable something that had led her uncle to throw tradition to the four winds of heaven was calling her persistently and would not be denied. So she had written to him for the truth.
“My dear child,” he had answered, “I live in a little city whose civilization would make some of our good friends in the old home stare. As for grasshoppers, I believe there was some crazy talk ages ago, but in my day I do well to corner enough scrawny, scared specimens to land a fish in midsummer. Their appalling scarcity is a constant sorrow to me. Makes me plumb mad even yet to think of the hopeless hours I used to spend blistering my nose on White River, dangling for my finny favorite with dough-balls. Dough-balls—ugh! ‘Send us more grasshoppers, oh, Lord,’ is my daily prayer. As for your last question, I cannot answer it so well. Not enjoying the personal acquaintance of many Indians I cannot tell you much about them. I believe there are a few over on the Crow Creek Reservation and perhaps as many on Lower Brule. I wouldn’t be positive, but I think so. Occasionally I meet one coming from that direction. I have heard—mind, this is only hearsay—that there are a handful or so down on the Rosebud Reservation. I wouldn’t vouch for it. You can hear most anything in this day and generation. The few I have met seem mild enough. They appear to be rather afraid of me. Their chief occupations seem to be dog-eating and divorce-getting, so you can see for yourself how highly modern and civilized they are becoming. I am sure you will have no trouble.”
Louise had not altogether believed this rollicking letter, but it had helped her to her decision.
Wind City and still no Indians; but there was the dear hero of her childhood. He was much changed to be sure; his big joints had taken on more flesh and he had gained in dignity of deportment what he had lost in ease of movement. His once merry eyes had grown keen with the years of just judging. The lips that had laughed so much in the old days were set in lines of sternness. Judge Hammond Dale was a man who would live up to the tenets of his high calling without fear or favor, through good and evil report. Yet through all his gravity of demeanor and the pride of his integrity, Louise instinctively felt his kindliness and loved him for it. The loneliness fell away from her and a measure of content had come in its place, until the letter had come from the State’s attorney up in the Kemah County:—