But the excitement proved too great a strain upon her temperament, and she was carried to the hotel in a fainting condition. As she recovered consciousness, she said to Hazel, "Chiquita will be one of the first to leave the National Hunting Ground for the great Happy Hunting Ground above." She realized that her vitality was weakened, that overwork and exposure had made her vulnerable to insidious disease, whose progress would be rapid now that the weakened spots had succumbed to its ravages. But she would not give up the cherished hopes of seeing her one aim in life accomplished, the forest-grown reservation where her people could forever hunt and fish without further molestation or dividing up of the land, and in its center wigwams, lodges, tepees and her great hospital for the sick, helpless and aged when they would be unable to take care of themselves.
Immediate preparations were made to carry out her cherished wish, which had been so many years her aim. With Jack to aid her the purchases of material were made. Contracts were entered into for the erection of the buildings and equipment therefor. Nurses and attendants were engaged for the hospitals, and for a year she watched the accumulating results which her education and fortune were bringing about.
But the task of civilization was one which nature condemned in such a short period. The overwork and confinement was more than she could endure and she sought rest from the weary toil inflicted upon herself in behalf of her people.
THE TEPEE ON THE GRAND RIVER.
In a grove of tall fir trees, close to the placid waters of the Grand River, Yamanatz erected his tepee, where in the soft, balmy air, fragrant with balsam and cedar, Chiquita could rest and watch the clouds as they made great shadow pictures on the mountain and stream. Like a sentinel, a lone peak stood beyond the cleft in the great divide, whose precipitous sides rose in towering splendor all clad in verdure green. The river reflected on its mirror of millions of tiny drops of sparkling water, the blue sky, the trees tinted red by the setting sun, the tepee on the bank of the stream and the mountain tipped with its cap of eternal snow. The camp fire sent a spiral of thin blue smoke toward the azure dome, and by the lurid coals two Utes smoked in silence. Within the sign-bedecked tepee, upon a couch of lion skins, lay Chiquita, clad in hunting garb, her rifle and fishing rod beside her. Yamanatz, Antelope, Jack, and the mother of Chiquita stood by, while the fairest of the White River maidens told them of the great happiness which awaited her in the Happy Hunting Ground of the Utes which lay just beyond the sky.
"If my father and my mother were only there," said Chiquita, as she pointed beyond the cleft above the river. "And, Jack," she continued, "you must beg leave of absence from the heaven of the white man and visit Chiquita in her happy home. You will find birds that sing and the bounding deer and flowers that bloom. The warriors of many, many snows are gathered there and you will see the Utes in all their grandeur, as they were before the white man took their land."
"But what of your friends, Chiquita, those who taught you of the religion of our people, of the only Christ who died to save mankind?" asked Jack, as he recalled the years and years of Chiquita's life in school, in college, in the hospital, the church and in the society of the ablest women of the nineteenth century.
"Ah, Jack!" Chiquita waited a moment, then with her bright eyes reflecting the love of the forest queen for her native haunts, customs and the freedom of the woods, she continued, "The God who gave you the Christ gave you also wisdom, and with that wisdom cruel weapons to drive the weaker to destruction. The paleface has driven the red man to his death. My people share not the needs nor desires which civilization brings to the white brethren, nor the society demands which make our paleface sister a slave to her calling. Jack, I have lived among my white sisters, I have been one of them, been sought for, banqueted, heralded and had tributes of honor thrust upon me. No school, no church, no institution of science, no club, no society, no matter how select, has been other than glad to have Chiquita honor them with her presence. With wealth untold and accomplishments unattained before by any woman in the world, Chiquita returns to her forest home for peace and contentment. 'In my Father's house are many mansions.' Yes, Jack, and the tepees of the great Indian nation stretch beyond the sky to welcome Chiquita. See, Jack, father, mother, the braves in all their glorious array are waiting for Chiquita! 'Our Father,' the Great Spirit of both the red and white man, welcomes. It is in the peace of the Happy Hunting Ground that we find rest. Adios, Jack. The great Yamanatz will soon follow and it will not be long ere all my people are as the buffalo, and the white man alone in the land that once was a paradise, but the mockery of civilization turned it into a stench hole of iniquity and market place of educated vampires, against which the child of the forest of the same God had no"—The voice failed to respond to the effort. Chiquita was dead. And with her was buried that undying, unquenchable, unsung love which consumed her heart.