My hand slipped over to the automatic. Threats had been made against me by Navajo. In 1916 they technically murdered me, and the press carried the story because of the Indian flavor. I had the unusual experience of reading my obituary in many papers, and might have felt puffed up about it had I not recognized a tone of regret when the rumor was exploded. Now I knew there was someone on the porch, and if the someone had a good excuse for being there, why not announce it. Just as I prepared to send a shot across it, out of the silence came a faint gasping, as if the person sought to speak and could not. The woman was suffering from bronchitis, and had lost her voice in that cool ride across the desert. And she might have lost her voice entirely at the end of it.
The second instance happened earlier on a summer evening. This time someone was riding fast—faster than an Indian goes unless something of moment has occurred. I found an Indian girl at the door. She was a returned student who had reported to me a short time before, home from a non-reservation school. She had gone back to her people’s camp. I had not recommended that, for her people were among those who sometimes made trouble. Years before, this one member of a large family had been sent to school. After three years she had returned and had been again sent away. It was the only thing to do for her. In dress, training, and standpoint she had become an alien. When she came home again, she had ceased to be a savage. I had warned her not to visit the camps.
“Stay at this school for your vacation. Let your people come here to see you. They will come.”
But she felt that she should go to her mother and sisters. [[328]]
“Well?” I asked her.
“The men had whiskey,” she told me. “And they didn’t want me there. They were afraid I would tell you. And I said I would tell you, if they did not stop drinking. So they beat me, and they beat my sister too.”
“Who beat you?”
“Hoske Nehol Gode.”
“And who is that? I don’t recall that name?”
“He is my cousin.”