“Mebbe she likes us because I talk a little of the language she ain’t heard for a long time, Hawkworth.”
“Perhaps. But she says nothing about that part of it. Lucy likes company. I’m English, Hartley. I was born of a family in which there was too much money and too many sons. I was educated in England, brought up with some queer traditions in my brain, some queer ideas, you might call them.
“You wonder why I married a squaw? God knows, I sometimes wonder why myself. Perhaps it was because I lost faith. But no matter. Lucy has been a good wife. I suppose I did not realize what I was doing when I married her, but the realization came later.”
Big Medicine hooked his hands over his knees and stared at the threadbare carpet, deep in thought.
“The realization,” he continued softly, “was the fact that my children would be half-breeds. They could never take their place with the whites. It seemed to me that the Indian blood would predominate, always. And one reason for that would be the fact that they would know that they had an Indian mother.
“You have known Indians and half-breeds, Hartley. And you know that the half-breed never measures up. They inherit the vices of both bloods and the virtues of neither. They are a weak-kneed, and often treacherous combination.
“And that realization hurt, Hartley. I suppose it is the old pride of ancestry cropping out; my inheritance of a hidebound pride, in which the children are the greater. It was like a blow in the face, when the realization came to me. Perhaps I might have left Lucy and married a white woman—but I didn’t. I’ve some of the instincts of a gentleman left, some honor. But I knew that my offspring would always work under the handicap of an Indian mother.”
“And knowin’ that would make ’em more red than white?” asked Hashknife. “Is that yore theory, Hawkworth?”
“Yes. I wonder”—he lifted his head and looked at Hashknife keenly—“I wonder if a child born of a white man and an Indian woman, brought up away from them and taught to believe that nothing but white blood flowed in his or her veins—would they not be the same as a pure breed?”
“The psychology of ignorance?” smiled Hashknife. “I don’t know, Hawkworth. But what satisfaction would that be to either the white man or the Indian squaw? It might be a good experiment, but goshawful tough on the parents. By golly, I’d raise my own kid—regardless of who or what its mother might be.”