“They want to know if you will stay with the wounded boy until he dies—you and the doctor; and then will you have him buried?”
“Yes, we will attend to that.”
“And they want to know if you will pay them now, to-day?”
“Just as soon as the steers are cut out from the bunch.”
Then I drew out the money. They eyed it covetously. We agreed on approximately five hundred dollars in cash and stock at the current prices. A dozen Navajo rode off to assist in cutting out the animals, and I sent a Hopi to make the count. The crowd began dwindling away. [[323]]Something had been settled, and they wished to be off before Death stalked across the plain. The Navajo have an awesome fear of the dead; but they would rally again at the mourning feast.
Just then the woman raised her wail,—a long, quavering cry.
I have related before in this chronicle that the Navajo shun funerals. We buried the lad in the sand-dunes close by, and carried Lidge off to the Agency, giving notice to his mother, en route. A short time after this I sent him to a non-reservation school. It would be well for him to be out of the Desert for a few years,—five would be none too many,—otherwise, he might be found along the trail some morning, gone to join that other lad he had so strangely hurt.
It was not possible to get from Lidge a connected story of the shooting. It is my opinion that the Navajo boy rode up, saw the gun, and wanted it. “When a Navajo sees a Hopi with anything he wants, he takes it.” Lidge was on foot. No doubt the Navajo boy threw himself off his pony and came around under the horse’s neck, stooping. Lidge, more in fright and dismay than in anger, let him have it in the skull.
I prepared a report of this affair for Washington. The details were recited, and I referred to many reports of Navajo aggression, with the Hopi always helpless and never supported. Now, in effect at least, they had made their Agent stand and deliver. When last they had tried something of this kind, against Agent Reuben Perry of the Navajo Agency, who was caught in the Chin Lee country and held prisoner for several days, Commissioner Francis E. Leupp had taken prompt, decisive action. I [[324]]could not plead an exactly similar case, for only the Hopi had lost. But it seemed to me that an effort should be made to recover, to impress a realization of law on these insolent tribesmen.