Underwood aroused himself to a more genuine interest. "Why, if it is a matter that you have your heart set upon, I certainly should be glad to give you any information possible. But I don't believe there is any one in town who makes any attempt at that sort of work, or takes any interest in it. I should certainly know if any one made a profession of it, or even had a well-developed fad for it, to use your own word. Why? Is the basket rare?"
"I have never seen that particular knot before. What's more, I didn't know that the mid-continent Indians did that sort of weaving at all. I should guess that it is the work of some one individual weaver and possibly those who have learned from her. Do you know any one in town who has a personal acquaintance with the Indians?"
The doctor smiled whimsically. "Our dear and cherished friend Selby has a first-hand acquaintance with them. When I first came to High Ridge, it was just a frontier settlement. The Indians were the free lances of the State. They still hunted in the northern woods with much of their original freedom, and they came to town to do their trading and to get what they wanted by a sort of proud and independent begging that came near to having the ethical weight of natural law. How could you refuse a fellow mortal a paper of tobacco when he came and took it out of your pocket? To take it back with a dignity matching his own was something that required more ancestral training in dignity than most of us had. All the men that had a love for hunting came sooner or later to pick out some Indian who would act as scout and show him the best trails. There's an attraction about that sort of life."
"And Selby was one of them?"
"More than any of us. Selby and old man Bussey antedate my time. They were here when there was only a beginning of a town, and it was mostly wild country. Bussey was a born Bohemian who lived among the Indians for years like one of themselves. Even after he was married, he would go off for the whole summer, leaving his wife and the kid to shift for themselves. Sometimes he took Ben along, and Mrs. Bussey would come around and work for Mrs. Underwood."
"You linked Selby and Bussey together. Did he go among them also?"
"He often went off with Bussey, but he went for the trades he could make, rather than for any innocent purpose like hunting. He was a mere boy when he began selling them calicoes warranted to fade in the first wash in exchange for muskrat and beaver skins. And he cheated them when he could, at that."
"Did he take any interest in Indian basketmaking?"
"I'm sure I don't know. Old man Bussey could probably have woven your basket for you and put in some extra kinks of his own in addition, but I never paid much attention to that sort of thing,--old squaw's work!"
"I hope to convince you of its value and importance. If I went up to the Reservation, should I find any of those old neighbors of yours?"