"This is not all," said the Indian to his wife, and she went up to the loft again and brought down a canvas bag. It would have held about a quart. Untying the string which closed it, he turned the contents out on the table, gold and silver coins. We counted it. Sixty-two sovereigns and a few small pieces of silver, all English money.
To say that I was amazed but mildly expressed my thoughts at the time. Here was an Indian family, poor as poverty, yet with over three hundred dollars in gold for years in their cabin, and knowing its purchasing power perfectly well all the time. I asked him why he did not use it to buy necessities at such a time as this. He gave me a look of mingled sorrow and wonder that I would so much as suggest such a thing, and said that these things were left with him for safe keeping, and that he would sooner starve than betray his trust. They were starving then, and it was not the first time so either. I tried to persuade him to use it, but he said "No," and put it all back into the bag, and everything belonging to the young stranger was taken up and put away in the loft.
The next day I went away. My summer trips took me elsewhere for several years, but this past summer I was back to the north shore of Lake Superior again. Having a mind to look up my old Indian friend, I went to the place where we had parted company, but the little pier was wholly gone. We made a landing and soon came upon the ruins of the house. The roof had fallen in and the walls were partly rotted down. The little garden patch was a tangle of briers and weeds; desolation reigned everywhere.
A couple of days later, still sailing along the shore, we came in sight of a long, strong, handsome pier, with a tall flag staff on its outer end. Back of it, about a hundred yards up the shore, was a tiny Indian village of maybe two hundred souls. Landing at the dock, a handsome young man greeted me and called me by name. He was a grandson of my old Indian friend. I immediately asked him of his grandfather.
"Come and see where we have laid him," was his answer; and taking me by the hand he led me to a beautiful little grassy plot, surrounded with a neat white paling fence. There, beside the wife of his youth, who had shared with him his privations, his joys and his sorrows, there his children had reverently laid him away.
We then went to the home of the young Indian. He had a neat story-and-a-half house, nearly covered with trailing vines. It was well furnished, a cabinet organ, a sewing machine, some books and pictures, a gasoline stove, carpets, curtains and other furniture of civilization. He was a prosperous lumberman, and a full-blooded Indian.
I asked him regarding the violin, theodolite, books, money, etc. The money had been used after his grandfather's death, the other articles he has in his possession now.
Going back as well as we could we came to the conclusion that they originally belonged to the man who afterward became Sir Samuel Baker, but we could not be certain. Of this we are sure, that the keeping of the money and other valuables so many years was a rare example of fidelity. And the strangest part of it all is, that my knowledge of it, and yours, should come about through kindness to a dog in distress. I have had considerable experience with Indians, from the far North of our land to South America, from the Atlantic to the Pacific. Times without number have I trusted my person and valuables to them, and in not a single instance was the confidence misplaced.
VI. "GO!" A STORY OF RED CLOUD.
The new El Dorado was in sight, writes Calkins. Gordon's party of twelve tired frontiersmen had mounted the high divide which separates the sources of the Running Water from those of the Cheyenne. For five weeks the men had shoveled drifts, buffeted blizzards and kept a constant vigil among the interminable sand-hills. By means, too, of stable canvas, shovels, axes, iron picket-pins and a modicum of dry feed, they had kept in good condition the splendid eight-mule team which drew their big freighter.