“Did you see those trespass signs along the road?” was the reply.
“Did you see them yourself?” retorted the other.
“You bet I did, and I’m here to see that others see them, too.”
Turning back his coat, Mallison revealed a bright star pinned to his vest. Now, that star represented the fact that the reporter had certain rights at fires and other places where the press is permitted to be represented; but to the hunter it looked fearfully like the star that a game warden might carry. He essayed a conciliating laugh, while backing hastily toward the exit at the bridge outside of which his Studebaker was parked. He got into it in a great hurry.
Grinning, Mallison sat up, his eye upon the out-jutting rock where the grouse had fallen. Lazily he stretched himself; leisurely he climbed up the cliff to the rock and lightly he dropped down in Cheerio’s cave.
He swung around in a circle, blinking his eyes and emitting a long, amazed whistle.
For the next half hour he was a very busy reporter. Aladdin’s cave could have afforded him no more satisfaction or interest.
The Indian pictures were ranged along a shelf in the natural gallery that stretched under the rock for a space of about thirty feet. It was amply lighted and completely sheltered. As Mallison went down the line of pictures he realized that here was indeed a rare find.
Colour had been splashed prodigally upon the canvasses. Maroon, lemon, magenta, scarlet, vivid purple, cerise, blues, flame colour. Indian colours! Indian faces! Here was more than a mere tribe of Indians. The artist had stamped indelibly upon the canvas a revelation of the history of a passing race. He had painted the Iliad of the Indian race.
Here was an ancient chief, grave, stern as a judge, with the dignity of a king and a pride that all the squalor and poverty and starvation of a long, hard life, the repression and tyranny at the hands of successive Indian agents and parasites upon his race, had been unable to quench.