"And I say to you whites, you have done this. You have moved us on and on, promising always that each resting place shall be ours forever. You swore by your God, in solemn council, that we could keep this reservation forever. With room for all the peoples of the world here, you could not find room for the Indian. You are a race of liars. You are a race of thieves. You have debauched our young men with your women. You have ruined our daughters with your men. You have taken our money. And now you are entering our last home with the hand of desolation. When the enemy enters the abiding place, the dweller is doomed. But I place the curse of the Indian Spirit on you and the land you are stealing. Some day it will be done to you as you have done to us. Some day—"
Levine stepped forward. "Jackson, take that Indian away," he commanded.
An angry murmur came from the Indians in the audience. A murmur that as Levine laid hold of old Wolf's arm, grew to strange calls. There was a surging movement toward the platform. Billy jumped on a box that he had found for a seat for Lydia.
"Charlie!" he roared, "Charlie! Remember there are women and children in this crowd."
"What do I care for your women and children?" shouted Charlie.
Then his glance fell on Lydia's golden head. She waved her hand to him beseechingly. Charlie hesitated for a moment, then spoke loudly in Indian to the crowd, and led old Wolf from the platform. The movement forward of the Indians ceased. The whites moved out of the crowd and for a moment there was a complete segregation of Indians and whites.
Then the mechanical piano which had stopped during the speech-making suddenly started up with a loud twang of "Under the Bamboo Tree." Two Indian boys laughed and started on a run for the merry-go-round and the crowd followed after.
Billy got down from his box with a sigh of relief. "That might have been an ugly moment," he said, "if Charlie hadn't seen you."
"The poor things! Oh, Billy, the poor, poor things!" exclaimed Lydia.
Billy nodded. "It's all wrong."
The noise of hawkers began again, but something had gone out of the celebration. The Indians stood about in groups, talking, Charlie and Chief Wolf the center always of the largest group.
Amos and John joined Billy and Lydia at the machine. "The war dancing begins at sundown," said Levine. "I told the Indian Agent 'twas a risk to let them go on, after this episode. But he laughs at me. I don't like the look of things, though."
"They aren't armed?" asked Amos.
"No, but've got those pesky bows and arrows we were having them show off with. I don't know but what I'd better get you folks home."
"Shucks," said Amos, "I wouldn't let the Indians think they could scare us. What could they do, poor sickly devils, anyhow?"
"That's right," said Billy. "There's nothing can happen. I don't think Charlie Jackson would stand for any violence."
"I don't know about that," Levine spoke thoughtfully. "He's left Doc
Fulton and is living on the reservation again. They always revert."
"Listen! Listen!" cried Lydia,
There was a red glow behind the clouds low in the west. From the foot of the flagpole came a peculiar beat of drum. A white can beat a drum to carry one through a Gettysburg. An Indian can beat a drum to carry one's soul back to the sacrifice of blood upon a stony altar. This drum beat "magicked" Lydia and Billy. It was more than a tocsin, more than a dance rhythm, more than the spring call. They hurried to the roped-off circle round the flagpole, followed by John and Amos.
An Indian in beaded buckskin squatted by the pole, beating a drum. Above him the flag stirred lazily. The west was crimson. The scent of sweet grass was heavy. There was a breathless interval while the drum seemed to urge Lydia's soul from her body.
Then there came the cry again followed by a wordless chant. Into the ring, in all the multicolored glory of beads and paint, swung a dozen moccasined braves. They moved in a step impossible to describe,—a step grave, rhythmic, lilting, now slow, three beats to a step, now swift, three steps to a beat. Old chiefs, half blind with trachoma, scarred with scrofula and decrepit with starvation; young bucks, fresh and still strong, danced side by side, turned by the alchemy of the drum into like things, young and vivid as dawn.
At intervals, at the bidding of the braves, squaws arose and moved sedately into the circle. In their dark dresses they moved about the outer edge of the circle with a side step that scarcely ruffled their skirts. The west lost its glow. Fires flashed here and there in the meadow. In the flickering, changing lights the dance went on and on. The flag fitfully revealed itself above the melting, gliding, opalescent group about the pole, that by degrees was growing larger as was the constant rim of somber squaws, with their dumb faces Sphinx-like in the half light.
Lydia shivered with excitement. Billy pulled her arm through his.
"I don't like this," he muttered.
"What's the matter?" exclaimed Lydia. "Do you think there's going to be trouble?"
"I don't know. It's just something in the air. I think we'd better find the folks and get you and Lizzie out of this."
"I don't believe they mean any harm," said Lydia. "Lots of the whites started home before sunset, anyhow."
"I wish you had," replied Billy. "Gee, here it comes."
The chant suddenly changed to a yell. The drum beat quickened, and the great circle of dancing Indians broke and charged the crowd of whites. A number of them drew revolvers and began firing them into the air. Others drew taut the great bows they carried. The whites plunged backward precipitately.
Billy thrust Lydia behind him. "Don't move, Lyd," he cried, pushing aside a threatening buck as he did so.
"Kill 'em whites!" shrieked the squaws.
"Run 'em whites off our reservation!" shouted half a dozen young bucks.
Lydia was trembling but cool. "Good for them! Oh, Billy, good for them!" she exclaimed.
He did not reply. His great body circled about her, with shoulder and elbow buffeting off the surging crowd. Thus far the whites had taken the proceedings as a joke. Then a white woman screamed,—
"Run! It's a massacre!"
"Massacre" is a horrifying word to use to whites in an Indian country.
Men and women both took up the cry,—
"It's a massacre! Run!"
And the great crowd bolted.
Like pursuing wolves, the Indians followed, beating the laggards with their bows, shouting exultantly. Billy caught Lydia round the waist and held her in front of him as well as he could, and for a few moments the rush of the mob carried them on.
Then Lydia heard Billy's voice in her ear. "If this isn't stopped, it will be a massacre. We've got to find Charles Jackson."
"We may be killed trying to find him!" Lydia cried.
"We've got to make a try for it, anyhow," replied Billy. "Brace your shoulders back against my chest. I'll try to stop."
They succeeded in holding themselves steadily for a moment against the mob and in that moment, Billy caught a screaming squaw by the arm.
"Susie, where's Charlie Jackson?"
She jerked her thumb back toward the flag pole and twisted away.
"All right! Now we'll make for the pole, Lydia, get behind me and put your arms round my waist. Hang on, for heaven's sake."
Lydia did hang on for a few moments. But the flight was now developing into a free for all fight. And before she knew just how it happened, Lydia had fallen and feet surged over her.
She buried her face in her arms. It seemed an age to her before Billy had snatched her to her feet. In reality she was not down for more than two minutes. Billy swung her against his chest with one arm and swung out with his other, shouting at Indians and whites alike.
"You damned beasts! You dirty damned beasts."
Lydia, bruised and shaken, clung to him breathlessly, then cried, "Go ahead, Billy!"
He glanced down at her and saw a streak of blood on her forehead. His face worked and he began to sob and curse like a madman.
"They've hurt you, the hellhounds! I'll kill somebody for this."
Kicking, striking with his free arm, oaths rolling from his lips, he burst through the crowd and rushed Lydia to the free space about the flagpole where Charlie Jackson stood coolly watching the proceedings.
Billy shook his fist under the Indian's nose.
"Get down there and call the pack off or I'll brain you."
Jackson shrugged his shoulders, calmly. "Let 'em have their fun. It's their last blowout. I hope they do kill Levine and Marshall."
Lydia pulled herself free of Billy. Her voice was trembling, but she had not lost her head.
"Call them off, Charlie. It'll just mean trouble in the end for all of you if you don't."
Charlie looked at Lydia closely and his voice changed as he said, "You got hurt, Lydia? I'm sorry."
"Sorry! You damned brute!" raved Billy. "I tell you, call off this row!"
The two young men glared at each other. Afterglow and firelight revealed a ferocity in Billy's face and a cool hatred in Charlie's that made Lydia gasp. The shouting of the mob, the beating of the drum was receding toward the road. The flag snapped in the night wind.
Billy put his face closer to Charlie's. The muscles of his jaw knotted and his hands clenched and unclenched.
"Call it off!" he growled.
Charlie returned Billy's stare for a long moment. Then sullenly, slowly, he turned and threw out across the night a long, shrill cry. He gave it again and again. At each repetition the noise of the mob grew less, and shortly panting, feverish-eyed bucks began to struggle into the light around the pole.
Then, without a word, Billy led Lydia away. The Indians passing them shook their bows at them but they were unmolested.
"Can you walk, Lydia? Do you think you're badly hurt?" asked Billy.
"I'm not hurt except for this cut on my head. And I guess I'm scared and bruised from being stepped on. That's all."
"All! To think of me not scratched and you hurt! Your father ought to horsewhip me!"
"You saved me from being trampled to death!" cried Lydia, indignantly.
"Oh there's the auto."
There it was, indeed, with old Lizzie standing in the tonneau, wringing her hands, and Amos and Levine, dust covered and disheveled, guarding the car with clubs.
They all shouted with relief when they saw the two. Lydia by now had wiped the blood from her face.
"Billy," cried Levine, "could you run the car and the two women down the road while Amos and I help the Agent get order here? The worst seems to be over, for some reason."
"Billy got Charlie Jackson to call the Indians in," said Lydia.
"Good work!" exclaimed Amos. "Are you both all right?"
"Yes," answered Lydia. "Go on! Billy'll take care of us."
"I'll wait for you at the willows, a mile below Last Chance," said
Billy.
"Land," said Lizzie, as the car swung through the hurrying whites, to the road. "About one picnic a lifetime like this, would do me!"
Billy was an indifferent chauffeur but he reached the willows without mishap.
"Now," he said, "come out in front of the lamps, Lydia, till I see what happened to you."
"For heaven's sake, did Lydia get hurt?" screamed Lizzie.
"Don't fuss about me," said Lydia crossly, not offering to follow the other two out of the car.
Billy turned, lifted her down bodily and led her around to the lamps, while he told Lizzie what had happened.
The cut on the scalp was slight. Billy washed it out with water from the brook back of the willows and Lizzie produced a clean pocket handkerchief with which to bind it. Then they went back to the car and ate their belated supper. After a time, Lizzie, who had the back seat to herself, began to snore comfortably.
Little by little, the stars were blotted out by a thin film of clouds. Sitting under the willows with the murmur of the brook and the fragrance of marsh grass enveloping them, the two young people did not talk much.
"Billy, were you scared?" asked Lydia.
"I don't know. I only know I went crazy when I saw you were hurt.
God, Lydia—I couldn't stand that!"
"Billy," whispered Lydia, "you're so good to me and I was so horrid to you once."
Billy felt her fingers on his knee and instantly the thin little hand was enveloped in his warm fist. "Do you take it all back, Lydia?"
"Well, the horrid part of it, I do," she hedged.
"That's all right," returned the young man. "I'm willing to fight for the rest of it. Don't try to pull your hand away, because I intend to hold it till the folks come. You can't help yourself, so you have no responsibility in the matter."
So for an hour longer they sat, watching the summer night and waiting. And sometimes it seemed to Lydia that they were a pioneer man and woman sitting in their prairie schooner watching for the Indians. And sometimes it seemed to her that they were the last white man and woman, that civilization had died and the hordes were coming down upon them.
Finally two dim figures approached. "All right, Lydia?" asked Amos.
"Oh, yes! Yes!" she cried. "Are either of you hurt?"
"No," replied Levine, "but we stayed till I'd got my half-breeds distributed about to watch that none of the full bloods got out of the meadow."
"Was any one hurt?" asked Billy.
"Oh, two or three broken heads among both Indians and whites. We got hold of Charlie Jackson about eleven and locked him up, then we felt secure."
"You aren't going to hurt Charlie!" cried Lydia.
"No, but we'll shut him up for a week or so," said Amos. "Move over,
Lizzie."
"Goodness," exclaimed Lizzie, "I must have dozed off for a minute!"
In the laughter that followed, Levine started the car homeward.
During the trip, the story was told of Lydia's mishap, Billy and Lydia interpolating each other in the telling. Amos shook hands with Billy silently when they had finished and Levine turned round from the wheel to say,
"I'll not forget this night's work, Bill."
They reached home at daylight. The Celebration made table talk and newspaper space for several days. No real attempt was made to punish the Indians. For once, the whites, moved by a sense of tardy and inadequate justice, withheld their hands.
Kent never ceased to mourn that he had missed the affair. He confided the fact to Lydia one Sunday that he had told Levine of their eavesdropping on him in the woods.
"What did he say?" asked Lydia, flushing.
"Gave me this nice fat job," replied Kent.
Lydia stared, then she sighed. "Well, I don't understand men at all!"
And Kent laughed.
Lydia saw a good deal of Billy during the summer. He never spoke of the accident to her at the Celebration, except to inquire about her bruises which troubled her for a week or so. Lydia wondered if he was ashamed of his wild flame of anger and his tears. She herself never thought of the episode without a thrill, as if she had been close for once to the primal impulses of life.
Margery Marshall and Elviry went to Atlantic City and Newport this summer. John Levine was sure to take supper at the cottage once or twice a week, but he was very busy with his political work and with the enormous sales of mixed-breed lands to the whites.
It was just before college opened that Amos announced that he was going to buy the one hundred and twenty acres John had set aside for him.
"How are you going to pay for it?" Lydia asked.
"Don't you worry, I'll tend to that," replied Amos.
Levine was taking supper with them. "Better tell her all about it,
Amos," he said. "You know Lydia is our partner."
"Well, she'll just worry," warned Amos. "John's going to hold it for me, till I can get the pine cut off. That'll pay for the land."
"How much did you pay for it, Mr. Levine?" asked Lydia.
Levine grinned. "I forget!"
Lydia's gaze was still the round, pellucid gaze of her childhood. She sat now with her chin cupped in her palm, her blue eyes on Levine. To the surprise of both the men, however, she said nothing.
After the supper dishes were washed, and Amos was attending to the chickens, Lydia came slowly out to the front steps where Levine was sitting. He reached up and catching her hand pulled her down beside him on the topmost step. She leaned her head against his arm and they sat in silence, Lydia with her eyes on the dim outline of the pine by the gate.
"Lydia," said John, finally, "how does the Great Search go on? We haven't reported for a long time."
"I don't think I make much headway," replied Lydia. "The older I grow, the less I understand men and I've always felt as if, if there was a God, He was a man."
"You mean male, rather than female," agreed John.
"Lydia, dear, I wish you did have faith."
"But do you believe, yourself?" urged Lydia.
"Yes, I know that the soul can't die," said the man, quietly. "And the thing that makes me surest is the feeling I have for you, I know that I'll have another chance."
"What do you mean?" asked Lydia wonderingly.
"That, you'll never know," he replied.
"Well, I know that you're a dear," said the young girl, unexpectedly, "no matter how you get your Indian lands. And I love you to death."
She patted his cheek caressingly, and John Levine smiled sadly to himself in the darkness.
CHAPTER XIV
THE HARVARD INSTRUCTOR
"The saddest things that I have seen are the burned pine woods and the diseased Indians."—The Murmuring Pine.
The University campus was a huge square of green, elm dotted, that was bordered on one edge for a quarter of a mile by the lake. The other three sides were enclosed by the college buildings, great Gothic piles of gray stone, ivy grown, with swallow haunted eaves. One entered the campus through wide archways, that framed from the street ravishing views of lake and elm, with leisurely figures of seniors in cap and gown in the foreground.
College life was not much unlike High School life for Lydia. She of course missed the dormitory living which is what makes University existence unique. The cottage was nearly three miles from the campus. Lydia took a street-car every morning, leaving the house with her father. She was very timid at first: suffered agony when called on to recite: reached all her classes as early as possible and sat in a far corner to escape notice. But gradually, among the six thousand students she began to lose her self-consciousness and to feel that, after all, she was only attending a larger High School.
It was curious, it seemed to her, in how short a time the real High School dropped out of her life. Miss Towne and the cooking teacher who had had so much to do with her adolescent development, became more or less dreamlike. And though Lydia did try to call on Miss Towne at the High School, her days were very full and little by little she slipped away entirely from the old environment.
Except for flying visits home, John Levine spent the year at Washington. He was returned to Congress practically automatically, at the end of his term. Kent throve mightily as a real estate man. He dashed about in a little "one lung" car with all the importance of nineteen in business for the first time. He continued to call on Lydia at irregular intervals in order to boast, she thought, of his real estate acumen and of his correspondence with Margery and Olga, both of whom were now at boarding-school.
Lydia was taking a general course in college. In a vague way, she was planning to become a teacher and partly because she had no aptitude for foreign languages, and partly because of the deep impression Miss Towne's little lecture on slang had made on her, she decided to teach English. She therefore took not only the required course in Freshman Composition, but an elective in Shakespeare, and was herded with fifty others into the classroom of a young instructor fresh from Harvard. He was a frail looking young man, smooth shaven and thin, with large, light brown eyes behind gold rimmed eyeglasses.
Lydia was deeply impressed from the very first by the young man's culture. He could quote Latin and Greek quite as freely as he could French and German and his ease in quoting the latter seemed as great as in quoting Palgrave's Lyrics, which Lydia was sure he could quote from cover to cover.
If his manner was a trifle impatient and condescending, this only served to enhance his impressiveness. And he knew his Shakespeare. Lydia entered under his guidance that ever new and ever old world of beauty that only the born Shakespeare lover discovers.
The Christmas recess had come and gone before Lydia became vaguely conscious that young Professor Willis called on her always to recite, whether he did on any other girl in the class or not. She did not know that from the first day she had entered his class the young professor had been conscious of the yellow head in the furthest corner of the classroom. It was a nobly shaped head bound round with curly yellow braids above a slender face, red cheeked yet delicate. He was conscious too of the home-made suit and the cheap shirtwaists, with the pathetic attempt at variety through different colored neckties. Little by little he recognized that the bashful young person had a mental background not shared by her mates, and he wondered about her.
It was early in January that he made an attempt to satisfy his curiosity. The snowfall had been light so far and heavy winds had blown the lake clear of drifts. Lydia often brought her skates to class with her and if the wind were favorable skated home after her last recitation.
She had just fastened on her skates one day when a rather breathless voice behind her said,
"Going for a skate, Miss Dudley?" and Professor Willis, skates over his shoulder, bore down on her.
Lydia blushed vividly—"I—I often skate home. I live three miles down the shore."
"Rather thought I'd have a try myself, if you don't mind."
"Heavens!" thought Lydia. "I hope he won't come clear home with me?
The house looks awful!"
Willis fastened on his skates and stood up. "Which way?" he asked.
Lydia nodded homeward and started off silently, the Harvard man close beside her.
"You enjoy your Shakespeare work, Miss Dudley?" he asked.
"Oh, yes!" cried Lydia. "That most of anything. Don't you love to teach it?"
"Er—in some ways! I will admit that the co-educational end of it is very trying to an Eastern college man."
This was such a surprising view to Lydia that she forgot to be bashful.
"Don't you like girls, Professor Willis?" she asked.
"Not in a boys' classroom—that is—at first the situation brought cold sweat to my face. But now, I carry on the work to a great extent for you. You are the only person with a background, don't you know."
Lydia didn't know. The Harvard man's voice, however, was entirely impersonal, so she ventured to explore.
"What do you mean by background?"
"If you wouldn't skate so outrageously fast," he panted, "I could tell you with more—more aplomb."
"But," explained Lydia, "I have to skate fast. There's always so much to be done and old Lizzie isn't well."
She looked at the Shakespeare professor innocently. He looked at his watch.
"Dear me!" he said, "I must be back in the classroom in half an hour.
Supposing we continue this conversation to-morrow, in your own home,
Miss Dudley? May I call to-morrow night?"
"Why yes," replied Lydia, in utter embarrassment again, "if you really want to! It's a dreadful trip,—to the end of the car line and half a mile along the road to a white cottage after that."
"That's nothing," said the Harvard man, gravely. "Till to-morrow night then," and lifting his cap, he skated back, leaving Lydia in a state of mind difficult to define.
She told Lizzie and her father that evening. Amos looked over his paper with a slight scowl. "You're too young to have a college professor calling."
"Well," cried Lydia, "you don't seem to realize how wonderful it is that he wants to take this awful trip out here, just to see me. And don't let it worry you, Daddy! He'll never want to come but once." She looked around the living-room disgustedly.
Amos started to speak, looked at Lizzie, who shook her head, and subsided. The older Lydia grew, the more helpless he felt in guiding her. It seemed to him though that Patience would be pleased to have a professor calling on her daughter, and he let the matter go at that.
The next day was Saturday, and Lydia started an attack on the living-room immediately after breakfast. She re-oiled the floors. She took down the curtains, washed and ironed them and put them up again. She blacked the base burner and gave the howling Adam a bath. The old mahogany worried her, even after she had polished it and re-arranged it until the worst of the scratches were obscured.
Her father's old wooden armchair, a solid mahogany that had belonged to his great-grandfather, she decided to varnish. She gave it two heavy coats and set it close to the kitchen stove to dry. By this time she was tired out. She lay in the dusk on the old couch watching the red eyes of the base burner, when Billy came in.
"Just stopped on my way home to see if you'd go skating to-night," he said. "Tired out? What've you been doing?"
Lydia enumerated the day's activities ending with, "Professor Willis is coming to call this evening."
Billy gave a low whistle. "Of course, I knew they'd begin to take notice sooner or later. But I don't see why you wanted to wear yourself out for a sissy like him."
"He's not a sissy. He's a gentleman," said Lydia, calmly. She was still curled up on the couch and Billy could just distinguish her bright hair in the red glow from the stove.
Billy was silent for a moment, then he said, "It's a shame you have to work so hard. I think of you so often when I see other girls in their pretty clothes, gadding about! Doggone it! and you're worth any ten of them. If I had my way—"
He paused and for a moment only the familiar booming of the ice disturbed the silence.
"I don't mind the work so much as I do going without the pretty clothes," said Lydia. "I suppose you'll think I'm awful silly," she suddenly sat up in her earnestness, "but when I get to thinking about how I'm growing up and that dresses never can mean to me when I'm old what they do now—oh, I can't explain to a man! It's like Omar Khayyam—
"'Yet ah, that Spring should vanish with the rose
That youth's sweet scented manuscript should close—'
and my youth's going to close without the sweet scent of the rose."
Billy made one great stride over to the couch and sitting down beside Lydia he took her thin, work hardened little hands in his. "Lydia, no! You don't see yourself right! All the dresses in the world couldn't make you sweeter or more fragrant to a fellow's heart than you are now. The only importance to the clothes is that you love them so. Don't you see?"
Lydia laughed uncertainly. "I see that you're a dear old blarney, Billy. And I know one thing I have got that not one girl in a thousand has and that is the friendship of some of the best men in the world. In lots of ways, I'm very lucky. Honestly, I am! Trot on home, Billy. I've got to get supper. And I don't have to work so hard, remember that. Half my work is in trying to fix up the house."
Billy rose reluctantly. "I'm leaving you some marshmallows," he said. "I hope if you offer Willis one, it'll choke him, or," as he opened the door, "maybe he'll break his leg or his neck on the way out," and he shut the door firmly behind him.
Amos submitted with some grumbling to being relegated to the dining-room with Lizzie for the evening. He complained somewhat bitterly, however, over the condition of his armchair which had refused to dry and was in a state of stickiness that defied description.
Old Lizzie, who was almost as flushed and bright-eyed over the expected caller as Lydia, finally squelched Amos with the remark, "For the land's sake, Amos, you talk like an old man instead of a man still forty who ought to remember his own courting days!"
Willis arrived, shortly after eight. If the trip had been somewhat strenuous, he did not mention the fact. He shook hands with Amos, who, always eager to meet new people, would have lingered. But Lizzie called to him and he reluctantly withdrew. Lydia established her guest with his back to the dining-room door and the evening began.
The Harvard man was frankly curious. This was his first experience west of New York and he was trying to classify his impressions. The beauty of Lake City had intrigued him at first, he told Lydia, into believing that he was merely in a transplanted New England town. "And you know there are plenty of New Englanders on the faculty and many of the people of Lake Shore Avenue are second and third generation New Englanders. But the townspeople as a whole!" He stopped with a groan.
"What's the matter with them?" Lydia asked, a trifle belligerently. She was sitting on the couch, chin cupped in her hand, watching her caller so intently that she was forgetting to be bashful.
"Oh, you know they're so exactly like my classes in
Shakespeare—raw-minded, no background, and plenty of them are of New
England descent! I don't understand it. It's New England without its
ancient soul, your Middle West."
"I don't know what you mean by background," said Lydia.
"But, Miss Dudley, you have it! Something, your reading or your environment has given you a mental referendum, as it were. You get more out of your Shakespeare than most of your mates because you understand so many of his references. You must have been a wide reader or your father and mother taught you well."
"I—you've got the wrong impression about me," Lydia protested. "I've read always and mostly good things, thanks to Mr. Levine, but so have many other people in Lake City."
Professor Willis looked at Lydia thoughtfully. "Levine? I thought he was a cheap scamp."
Lydia flushed. "He's my best friend and a finely read man. He's kept me supplied with books."
"Finely read, on the one hand," exclaimed Willis, "and on the other robbing Indians. How do you account for it?"
Lydia did not stir. She continued with her crystal gaze on this wise man from the East, struggling to get his viewpoint. There flashed into her mind the thought that perhaps, when she knew him better, he could help her on the Indian question.
"I can't account for it," she said. "I wish I could. Except for a
French Canadian great-grandfather, Mr. Levine's a New Englander too."
"New Englander! Pshaw! Outside of Lake Shore Avenue and the college there are no New Englanders here. They are hollow mockeries, unless," he stared at Lydia through his gold-rimmed glass, "unless you are a reversion to type, yourself."
Lizzie spoke from the dining-room. "The chocolate's all ready, Lydia."
"Oh, I forgot," exclaimed Lydia, flying out of the room and returning with a tray of chocolate and cake. "The cold walk must have made you hungry."
Willis drew up to the table, and over his cup of chocolate remarked, "Ah—pardon me if I comment on the wonderful pieces of mahogany you have."
Lydia set down her cup. "Why, I hate it!" she cried.
"Hate it! It's priceless! Family pieces? I thought so! What delicious cake! How kind of your mother! I'd like to meet her, if I may."
"I made the cake, Professor Willis. My—my mother is not living."
The Harvard man's stilted manner left him. He set down his cup hastily. "Oh, my dear!" he exclaimed. "I was tactless! Forgive me!" Again he looked about the room and back at Lydia's face above the meager dress fashioned the year before from a cheap remnant. Could a mother's death, he wondered, have put the look into her eyes and lips he had often surprised there. "I suppose," he said finally, "that one might explain you, eventually, if one had the privilege of knowing you long enough, I—"
Adam chose this moment to yelp at the dining-room door which was barely ajar.
"Adam, be quiet!" roared Amos. "Liz, did you see my carpet slippers anywhere?" he added in a lower voice.
"I brought you a book," said Willis. "Browning's Dramatic Lyrics."
"I'd like to read them," Lydia spoke eagerly, with one ear on the dining-room.
Amos yawned loudly. "Did you wind the clock, Lizzie? No? Well, I will!" Another loud yawn and Amos was heard to begin on the mechanism of the huge old wall clock which wound with a sound like an old-fashioned chain pump. Lydia set her teeth in misery.
"Yes, you must add Browning to your background," said the Harvard man, appearing undisturbed by the sounds in the next room. "Browning is difficult at times but—" He was interrupted by a great clattering in the dining-room.
"Lizzie!" roared Amos. "Come here and pull this chair off of me. The next time Lydia varnishes anything—"
There was the sound of Lizzie pounding across the floor. The dining-room door was banged and after that the murmur of Lizzie's voice and subdued roars from Amos. Lydia looked at Willis in an agony of embarrassment.
"Well," he said, rising, "it's quite a walk back to the trolley.
Perhaps I'd better be going."
Lydia rose with alacrity. "I'm—I'm glad you like the mahogany," she said awkwardly.
"Er—yes. So am I," returned Willis, making for the door as Amos groaned again. "Good night, Miss Dudley."
"Good night," said Lydia, and closing the door with a gasp of relief she dashed for the dining-room.
"Just when I'm trying to be refined and lady-like!" she wailed. Then she stopped.
"Lydia," roared Amos, "if you ever touch my chair again! Look at my shirt and pants!"
Lydia looked and from these to the chair, denuded of the two coats of varnish. "But you knew it wasn't dry," she protested.
"How could I remember?" cried Amos. "I just sat down a minute to put on my slippers you'd hid."
"I don't see why you couldn't have been quiet about it," Lydia half sobbed. "We were having such a nice time and all of a sudden it sounded like an Irish wake out here. It embarrassed Professor Willis so he went right home and I know he'll never come back."
"I should hope he wouldn't," retorted Amos. "Of course, what a college professor thinks is more important than my comfort. Why, that varnish went through my shirt to my skin. Liz, what are you laughing at?"
Lizzie had suppressed her laughter till she was weak. "At you, Amos! Till my dying day, I'll never forget how you looked prancing round the room with that chair glued to your back!"
"Oh, Daddy! It must have been funny!" cried Lydia, beginning to giggle.
Amos looked uncertainly at his two women folk, and then his lips twisted and he laughed till the tears ran down his cheeks.
"Lydia! Lydia!" he cried, "don't try to be elegant with any more of your callers! It's too hard on your poor old father!"
"I won't," replied Lydia. "He likes the mahogany, anyway. But he'll never come again," she added, with sudden gloom. "Not that I care, stiff old Harvard thing," and she patted Adam and went soberly to bed.
But Professor Willis did come again. Not so frequently, of course, as to compromise his dignity. An instructor who called on freshman girls was always laughed at. But several times during the winter and spring he appeared at the cottage, and talked with Lydia earnestly and intellectually. Nor did he always confine his calls to the evening.
One Sunday afternoon in March Amos was in town with John Levine, who was on one of his hurried visits home, when Billy Norton came over to the cottage.
Lydia, who was poring over "The Ring and the Book," saw at once that something was wrong.
"What's worrying you, Billy?" she asked.
"Lydia," he said, dropping into Amos' chair and folding his big arms, "you know my tract of land—the one I was going to buy from an Indian? I paid young Lone Wolf a ten dollar option on it while I looked round to see how I could raise enough to pay him a fair price. He's only a kid of seventeen and stone blind from trachoma. Well, yesterday I found that Marshall had bought it in. Of course, I didn't really think Lone Wolf knew what an option was, but Marshall and the Indian Agent and Levine and all the rest knew what I was trying to do, so I thought they'd keep their hands off."
"What a shame!" exclaimed Lydia.
"Yes," said Billy grimly, a certain tensity in his tones that made Lydia look at him more closely, "Yes, a shame. The way Marshall did it was this. He looked young Lone Wolf up and gave him a bag of candy. The Indians are crazy for candy. Then he told him to make his cross on a piece of paper. That that was a receipt that he was to keep and if he'd show it at the store whenever he wanted candy, he'd have all he wanted, for nothing. And he had two half-breeds witness it. What Marshall had done was to get Lone Wolf to sign a warranty deed, giving Marshall his pine land. The poor devil of an Indian didn't know it till yesterday when he showed me his 'receipt' in great glee. Of course, they'll swear he's a mixed blood."
Lydia was speechless with disgust for a moment, then she burst out, "Oh, I wish that reservation had never been heard of! It demoralizes every one who comes in contact with it."
"Lydia," said Billy, slowly, "I'm going to expose Marshall."
"What do you mean?" Lydia looked a little frightened.
"I mean that I'm going to show up his crooked deals with the Indians. I'm going to rip this reservation graft wide open. I'm not going to touch an acre of the land myself so I can go in with clean hands and I'm not going to forget that I came pretty close to being a skunk, myself."
"Oh, but, Billy!" cried Lydia. "There's John Levine and all our friends—oh, you can't do it!"
"Look here, Lydia," Billy's voice was stern, "are you for or against
Indian graft?"
Lydia drew a long breath but was spared an immediate answer for there was a knock on the door and Kent came in, followed shortly by Professor Willis.
"Well," said Kent, after Lydia had settled them all comfortably, "I just left Charlie Jackson—poor old prune!"
"Oh, how is he?" asked Lydia eagerly, "and what is he doing?"
"He's pretty seedy," answered Kent. "He's been trying to keep the whites off the reservation by organizing the full bloods to stand against the half-breeds. But after a year of trying he's given up hope. The full bloods are fatalists, you know, and Charlie has gone back to it himself."
"Charlie Jackson is an old schoolmate of ours." Lydia turned to Willis and gave him a rapid sketch of Charlie's life. The Harvard man was deeply interested.
"Can't you get him back to his work with the doctor?" he asked Kent.
Kent shook his head. "The only way to keep an Indian from reverting is to put him where he never can see his people or the reservation. Charlie's given up. He's drinking a little."
"And still you folks will keep on, stealing the reservation!" exclaimed
Billy.
Kent gave Billy a grin, half irritated, half whimsical. "I know it's Sunday, old man, but don't let's have a sermon. You're a farmer, Bill, anyhow, no matter what else you try to be."
"Thank God for that," laughed Billy.
"My word!" ejaculated Willis. "What a country! You spout the classics on week days and on holidays you steal from the aborigines!"
"Oh, here, draw it mild, Professor!" growled Kent.
"Well, but it's true," exclaimed Lydia. "Where's our old New England sense of fairness?"
"That's good too," said Kent. "Who was brisker than our forefathers at killing redskins?"
"Altogether a different case," returned the Harvard man. "Our forefathers killed in self-defense. You folks are killing out of wanton greed."
"That's the point, exactly," said Billy.
Kent gave his cheerful grin. "Call it what you please," he laughed.
"As long as the whites will have the land, I'm going to get my share."
Nobody spoke for a moment. Lydia looked from Billy to Kent, and back again. Kent was by far the handsomer of the two. He had kept the brilliant color and the charming glow in his eyes that had belonged to his boyhood. He dressed well, and sat now, knees crossed, hands clasped behind his head, with easy grace. Billy was a six-footer, larger than Kent and inclined to be raw-boned. His mouth was humorous and sensitive, his gray eyes were searching.
"Let's not talk about it," Lydia said. "Let's go out in the kitchen and pop corn and make candy." This with a little questioning glance at the professor of Shakespeare. He, however, rose with alacrity, and the rest of the afternoon passed without friction. Willis developed a positive passion for making popcorn balls and he left with Kent at dusk proudly bearing off a bag of the results of his labors.
Billy stayed after the rest and helped Lydia to clean up the dishes. Kent would never have thought of this, Lydia said to herself with a vague pang. When they had finished Billy gravely took Lydia's coat from the hook and said, "Come, woman, and walk in the gloaming with your humble servant."
Lydia giggled and obeyed. There was still snow, in the hollows but the road was clear and frozen hard. They walked briskly till a rise in the road gave them a view of the lake and a scarlet rift in the sky where the sun had sunk in a bank of clouds.
"Now, Lydia," said Billy, "answer my question. Are you for or against
Indian graft?"
"I just won't take sides," announced Lydia, obstinately.
Billy stepped round in front of the young girl and put both hands gently on her shoulders. "Look at me, Lydia," he said. "You have to take sides! You can't escape it. You mean too much to too many of us men. You've got to take a perfectly clear stand on questions like this. It means too much to America for you not to. Your influence counts, in that way if in no other, don't you see."
Lydia's throat tightened. "I won't take sides against Mr. Levine," she repeated.
"Do you mean that you don't want me to expose Marshall?" asked Billy.
"You've no right to ask me that." Lydia's voice was cross.
"But I have. Lydia, though you don't want it, my life is yours. No matter whether we can ever be anything else, we are friends, aren't we, friends in the deepest sense of the word,—aren't we, Lydia?"
Lydia stared at Billy in silence. Perhaps it was the glow from the west that helped to deepen and soften his gray eyes, for there was nothing searching in them now. There was a depth and loyalty in them and a something besides that reminded her vaguely of the way John Levine looked at her. A crow cawed faintly from the woods and the wind fluttered Billy's hair.
Friendship! Something very warm and high and fine entered Lydia's heart.
"Yes, we are friends. Billy," she said slowly. "But oh, Billy, don't make me decide that!"
"Lydia, you must! You can't have a friend and not share his problems and you can't live in a community and not share its problems, if you're going to be worth anything to the world."
"But if the problems really meant anything to you," protested Lydia, "you wouldn't depend on some girl to shove you into them."
"But men do. They are built that way. Not some girl but the girl.
Every great cause was fought for some woman! Oh, Lydia, Lydia!"
"Billy," Lydia looked away from him to the lake, "you'll have to let me think about it. You see, it's deciding my attitude toward all my friends, even toward Dad. And I hadn't intended ever to decide."
"And will you tell me, to-morrow, or next day, Lydia?"
"I'll tell you as soon as I decide," she answered.
Amos brought John Levine home with him for supper. It seemed to Lydia that Levine never had been dearer to her than he was that evening. After supper, they drew up around the base burner in the old way, while the two men smoked. Lizzie sat rocking and rubbing her rheumatism-racked old hands and Adam, who snored worse as he grew old, wheezed with his head baking under the stove. Levine did not talk of the Indians, to Lydia's relief, but of Washington politics. As the evening drew to a close, and Amos went out to his chickens as usual after Lizzie had gone to bed, John turned to Lydia.
"What are you reading, these days, young Lydia?"
"Browning—'The Ring and the Book,'" replied Lydia.
John shook his head. "Really grown up, aren't you, Lydia? Do you enjoy being a young lady?"
"Yes, I do, only I miss the old days when I saw so much of you."
"Do you, my dear?" asked Levine, eagerly. "In what ways do you miss me?"
"Oh, every way! No one will ever understand me as you do."
"Oh, I don't know. There are Billy and Kent."
Lydia shook her head, though Billy's face in the moonlight after the graduation party, returned unexpectedly to her memory as she did so.
"There'll never be any one like you." Then moved by a sudden impulse she leaned toward him and said, "No matter what happens, you will always know that I love you, won't you, Mr. Levine?"
John looked at the wistful face, keenly. "Why, what could happen, young Lydia?"
"Oh, lots of things! I'm grown up now and—and I have to make decisions about the rightness and the wrongness of things. But no matter what I decide, nothing can change my love for you."
"Lydia, come here," said Levine, abruptly.
In the old way, Lydia came to his side and he pulled her down to the arm of his chair. For a moment they sat in silence, his arm about her, her cheek against his hair, staring into the glowing stove.
"When you were just a little tot," said Levine at last, "you were full of gumption and did your own thinking. And I've been glad to see you keep the habit. Always make your own decisions, dear. Don't let me or any one else decide matters of conscience for you. 'To thine own self be true and it must follow as the night the day, thou canst not then be false to any man.' Eh, little girl?"
He rose as he heard Amos coming in the back door, and with his hand under Lydia's chin, he looked long and earnestly into her eyes. Then as Billy had done earlier in the evening, he sighed, "Oh, Lydia! Lydia!" and turned away.
CHAPTER XV
THE INVESTIGATION BEGINS
"Nothing is so proud or so brave as the young pine when it first tops the rest of the forest."—The Murmuring Pine.
For several days Lydia was unhappy and absent-minded. At first, in her thoughts she was inclined to blame Billy for forcing this turmoil of mind on her. But, a little later, she admitted to herself that for years, something within her had been demanding that she take a stand on the Indian question something to which Charlie Jackson and Billy had appealed, something which Kent and John Levine had ignored. Yet neither Charlie nor Billy had really forced her to a decision.
Lydia was grown up. All her young life she had carried the responsibilities and had faced the home tragedies that come usually only to grown folk. Now, in her young womanhood it was natural and inevitable that she should turn to the larger responsibilities of the living world about her in order to satisfy the larger needs of her maturity.
Yet, still old affection fought with new clarity of vision. Old loyalty quarreled with new understanding. Bit by bit she went over her thinking life, beginning with her first recollection of Charlie Jackson in the class in Civil Government, and all that was feminine and blind devotion in her fought desperately with all that education and her civic-minded forefathers had given her.
Coming home from her last recitation, one mild afternoon, she stopped at the gate and looked up into the pine tree. Its scent carried her back to the cloistered wood on the reservation and once more the desire for the soil was on her. She leaned against the giant tree trunk and looked out over the lake, steel blue and cold in the March sunshine. And there with the lowing of the Norton herds and the hoarse call of the crows mingling with the soft voice of the pine and the lapping of the lake, she made her decision. For clearly as though the pine had put it into words, something said to Lydia that it was not her business to decide whether or not the Indians deserved to live. It was her business to recognize that in their method of killing the Indians, the whites had been utterly dishonorable. That her refusing to take a stand could not exonerate them. History would not fail to record the black fact against her race that, a free people, the boasted vanguard of human liberty, Americans had first made a race dependent, then by fraud and faithlessness, by cruelty and debauchery, were utterly destroying it. And finally, that by closing her eyes to the facts, because of her love for Levine, she was herself sharing the general taint.
It was Lydia's first acknowledgment of her responsibility to America, and it left her a little breathless and trembling. She turned back to the road and made her way swiftly to the Norton place. She did not go into the house, but down the lane where she could see Billy putting up the bars after the cattle. He waited for her, leaning against the rails.
"Billy," she said, panting, her cheeks bright and her yellow hair blowing, "I'm against the Indian grafting."
Billy put out his hand, solemnly, and the two shook hands. For all Billy was four years older than Lydia, they both were very, very young. So young that they believed that they could fight single-handed the whole world of intrigue and greed in which their little community was set. So young that they trembled and were filled with awe at the vast importance of their own dreams. And yet, futile as they may seem, it is on young decisions such as these that the race creeps upward!
"What are you going to do, Billy?" asked Lydia.
"I'm going to get a government investigation started, somehow," he replied. "It'll take time, but I'll get it."
Lydia looked at him admiringly, then she shivered a little. "I hate to think of it, but I'll stand by you, Billy, whatever you do."
"I'm going into ex-Senator Alvord's law office this June. I'll bet he'll help. He's so sore at Levine. It'll be lovely muckraking, Lyd!"
"I hate to think of it," she said unsteadily. "Lizzie is miserable, to-day. Will you tell your mother, Billy, and ask her to come over to see her this evening? I mustn't stop any longer now."
Poor old Lizzie was miserable, indeed. For years, she had struggled against rheumatism, but now it had bound her, hand and foot. Ma Norton came over in the evening. Lizzie was in bed shivering and flushed and moaning with pain.
"Now, don't bother about me," she insisted. "Lydia's threatening to stay home to-morrow, and I tell you I won't have it," and the poor old soul began to cry weakly.
Ma pulled the covers over the shaking shoulders. "If I were you, Lizzie, I'd think about getting well and let Lydia do what she thinks best. A day or so out of school isn't going to count in the long run with a young thing like her."
She waited till Lizzie slept, then she told Lydia and Amos that Dr. Fulton had better be called, and Amos with a worried air, started for town at once.
Dr. Fulton shook his head and sighed.
"She's in for a run of rheumatic fever. Get some extra hot water bottles and make up your mind for a long siege, Lydia."
And it was a long siege. Six weeks of agony for Lizzie, of nursing and housework and worrying for Lydia. Ma Norton and the neighbors gave what time they could, but the brunt, of course, fell on Lydia. She fretted most about her college work. Sitting by Lizzie's bed, when the old lady dozed in her brief respites from pain, she tried to carry on her lessons alone, but with indifferent success. She was too tired to concentrate her mind. Trigonometry rapidly became a hopeless tangle to her; Ancient History a stupid jumble of unrelated dates. And most of all, as the days went by, she felt the indifference of University folk. Nobody cared that she had dropped out, it seemed to her.
Billy called every evening on his way home to supper. He filled water buckets, chopped wood and fed the chickens, that Amos might be free to take Lydia's place. John Levine sat up two or three nights a week. Kent came out once a week, with a cheery word and a basket of fruit. And at frequent intervals, the Marshall surrey stopped at the gate and Elviry or Dave appeared with some of Elviry's delicious cookery for Lydia and Amos.
One afternoon in April when Lizzie had at last taken a turn for the better, Lydia elected to clean the kitchen floor. She was down on her hands and knees scrubbing when there came a soft tap on the open door. She looked up. Professor Willis was standing on the steps.
"Goodness!" exclaimed Lydia, rising with burning cheeks.
"I—I couldn't make any one hear at the front door. I came to see why you didn't come to class."
Lydia was wearing a faded and outgrown blue gingham. Her face was flushed but there were black rings round her eyes, and she was too tired to be polite.
"I think it's just awful for you to come on me, scrubbing floors! You should have knocked at the front door, till I heard," she said, crossly.
The Harvard man looked at her seriously. "I really never saw a girl playing golf look as pretty as you do, scrubbing floors. May I come in?"
He did not wait for an invitation but stepped over the pail and brush to the chair beside the table. An open book lay on the chair. He picked it up. "'Ancient Rome,'" he read.
"I'm trying to keep up." Lydia was drying her red hands on the roller towel. Her shoulders drooped despondently. "What's the use of trying to be a lady," she said, suddenly, "when you have to fight poverty like this! You oughtn't to have come on me this way!"
The Harvard man looked from the immaculate kitchen to the slender girl, with her fine head, and then at the book in his hand.
"Of course, I've never known a girl like you. But I should imagine that eventually you'll achieve something finer out of your poverty than the other girls at the University will out of their golf and tennis. I don't fancy that our New England mothers were ashamed of scrubbing floors."
He looked at her with a smile on his pale face. Suddenly Lydia smiled in return. "Sit down while I make us some tea," she said. "I'll never try to play lady with you again."
Willis stayed with her an hour, sitting in the kitchen where the open door showed the turquoise lake through a gray-green net of swelling tree buds. He did not leave till Lizzie wakened. He cleared up the tangle in Lydia's trigonometry for her and went over the lost lessons in Shakespeare, all the while with a vague lump in his throat over the wistful eagerness in the blue eyes opposite his, over the thin, red, watersoaked hands that turned the leaves of the books.
When Billy called that evening he found Lydia more cheerful than she had been in weeks. When she told him of her caller he looked at her thoughtfully and growled, "I hope he chokes," and not another word did he say while he finished Amos' chores.
Professor Willis came out regularly after this and when Lydia returned to class work in May, she was able to work creditably through the reviews then taking place and in June to pass the examinations.
During all this time she said nothing to Billy about his muckraking campaign. In spite of her high resolves she half hoped he had given it up. But she did not know Billy as well as she thought she did. He finished his law course in June and entered ex-Senator Alvord's office as he had planned. There was another election in the fall and John Levine was returned to Congress, this time almost without a struggle. So many of the voters of the community were profiting by the alienating of the mixed-blood pines that it would have been blatant hypocrisy on the part of Republicans as well as Democrats to have opposed him. In fact, thanks to Levine, the town had entered on a period of unprecedented prosperity. The college itself had purchased for a song a section of land to be used as an agricultural experiment station.
Like a bomb, then, late in December fell the news that the Indian Commissioner had been called before a senate committee to answer questions regarding the relations of Lake City to the reservation. While following close on the heels of this announcement came word that a congressional commission of three had been appointed to sit at Lake City to investigate Indian matters.
"Billy, how did you do it?" asked Lydia, in consternation. He had overtaken her one bitter cold January afternoon, on her way home from college.
"I didn't do much," said Billy. "I just got affidavits, dozens of them, showing frauds, and gave them to Senator Alvord. He has a lot of influence among the Democratic senators and is a personal friend of the President. It was a wonderful chance, he saw, to hurt the Republicans, even though there were Democrats implicated. The Indian Commissioner and Levine are both Republicans, you know. Then, when he finally got the hearing before the Senate Committee, he smuggled Charlie Jackson and Susie and old Chief Wolf down there. Nobody here knows that."
Lydia's lips were set tightly as she plodded along the snowy road.
"Billy," she said, finally, "are you doing this to get even with Dave
Marshall?"
"Lydia!" cried Billy, catching her arm and forcing her to stop and face him. "Don't you know me better than that? Don't you?"
"Then why are you doing it?" demanded Lydia.
"I'm doing it because I'm ashamed of what New Englanders have done with their heritage. And I'm doing it for you. To make a name for you. Look at me. No, not at the lake, into my eyes. You are going to marry me, some day, Lydia."
"I'm not," said Lydia flatly.
Billy laughed. "You can't help yourself, honey. It's fate for both of us. Come along home! You're shivering."
"When you talk that way, I hate you!" exclaimed Lydia, but Billy only laughed again.
Amos at first was furious when he heard of the investigation. He, with every one else in town, was eager to know who had started the trouble.
"Some sorehead," said Amos, "who couldn't get all the land he wanted, I'll bet. And a sweet time the commission will have. Why, they'll have to dig into the private history of every one in Lake City. It'll ruin Levine! Oh, pshaw! No, it won't either! He can get everything whitewashed. That's the way American investigations always end!"
But Levine could not get everything whitewashed. The group of three commissioners sat for months and in that time they exposed to the burning sun of publicity the muck of thievery and dishonor on which Lake City's placid beauty was built.
By some strange turn of fortune, Congress had chosen three honest men for this unsavory task, three men grimly and unswervingly determined to see the matter through. They sat in rooms in the post-office building. In and out of the building day after day passed the Indians to face the sullen and unwilling whites summoned to hear and answer what these Indians had to say of them. Charlie Jackson acted as interpreter. Lydia saw him once or twice on the street when he nodded coolly. He had dropped his white associates completely.
The local papers refused to report the commission's session. But papers outside the State were voracious for the news and little by little tales were published to the world that made Lake City citizens when out of the city, hesitate to confess the name of their home town.
The leading trustee of the Methodist Church was found to have married a squaw in order to get her pine and her pitiful Government allowance. His white wife and children left him when this was proved to them, and it was proved only when the starving squaw and her starving children were finally acknowledged by the trustee before the commission.
The Methodists were held up to scorn for a few months until a prominent
Presbyterian who was the leading grocer in town was found to have
supplied the Indian Agent for years with tainted groceries for the
Indians.
The most popular dentist in town filled teeth for the Indians whenever they received their allowances. His method of filling was simple. He drove empty copper cartridge caps over the teeth. These when burnished made a handsome showing until gangrene set in. The afflicted Indians were then turned over to a popular young doctor of Lake City who took the next year's allowance from the bewildered patients.
Marriage after marriage of squaws with Lake City citizens was unearthed, most of these same citizens also having a white family. Hundreds of tracts of lands that had been obtained by stealing or by fraud from full bloods were listed. Bags of candy, bits of jewelry, bolts of cotton had been exchanged for pine worth thousands of dollars.
It was a nerve-racking period for Lake City. Whether purposely or not, the net did not begin to close round John Levine till toward the end of the hearing. Nor did Levine come home until late in the summer, when the commission had been sitting for some months.
In spite of a sense of apprehension that would not lift, the year was a happy one for Lydia. In the first place, she went to three college dancing parties during the year. The adaptability of the graduation gown was wonderful and although Lydia knew that she was only a little frump compared with the other girls, Billy, who took her each time, always wore the dress suit! So she shone happily in reflected elegance.
In the second place, three men called on her regularly—Billy, Kent and
Professor Willis.