“Well, one might say, the supervision of everything.”
“Is that your mail—your official mail?”
“Yes, sir.”
“You have many duties?”
“Quite a few.”
“What is your salary?”
I dropped the letter of the Department that I had been trying to decipher between questions, arose calmly, and led the old gentleman aside.
“That,” I said in a whisper, “is a State secret. There is an agreement between the War Department and the Interior Department, entered into just after the Navajo Treaty of 1868, and concurred in by every President since Andrew Johnson, that no Indian Agent of the Navajo country shall ever divulge the exact size of his reward. He may, with discretion, reduce the sum in speaking of it; but he may not under liability of extreme penalty, give out the true figures. It might encourage the native to revolt. You see my position?”
“Naturally,” he said. He wiped his brow. He was simply overpowered. And he bothered me no more.
But Messrs. Weber and Fields’ famous answer would have been more appropriate. “I’m ashamed to tell you.”