Chapter VIII: Front Matter (8)

"No one."

She regarded him with fixed hostility. "I came down to see your rehearsal. You don't object, I hope?"

"Why should I object?" Phillips turned away with a shrug. "I'm surprised, that's all--after what you said this morning. Isn't your interest in the play a trifle--tardy?"

"No! I've been greatly interested in it all the time. I read it several times in manuscript."

"Indeed! I didn't know that. It won't be much of a rehearsal this morning; I'm merely going to run over the third act with Mr. and Mrs. Francis."

"You can rehearse her forty years and she'll never play the part."

"The critics don't agree with you; they rave over her. If Francis himself--"

Mrs. Phillips uttered an exclamation of anger. "Oh, of course, _she_ is perfect! You wouldn't give me the part, would you? No. You gave it to her. But it's mine by rights; I have the personality."

"I wrote it for her," said the husband, after a pause. "I can't see you in it."

"Naturally," she sneered. "Well, _I_ can, and it's not too late to make the change. I'll replace her. My name will help the piece."

"Léontine!" he exclaimed, in amazement. "What are you talking about? The play is a tremendous success as it is, and Miss Berwynd is a big hit. I'd be crazy to make a change."

"You won't give me the part?"

"Certainly not. You shouldn't ask it."

"Doesn't Léontine Murat mean more to the public than Norma Berwynd?" she demanded.

"Until last night, yes. To-day--well, no. She has created this rôle. Besides--you--couldn't play the part."

"And why not, if you please?"

"I don't want to hurt your feelings, Léontine."

"Go on!" she commanded, in a voice roughened by passion.

"In the first place you're not--young enough." The woman quivered. "In the second place, you've grown heavy. Then, too, your accent--"

She broke out at him furiously. "So! I'm old and fat and foreign. I've lost my beauty. You think so, eh? Well, other men don't. I'll show you what men think of me--"

"This is no time for threats," he interrupted, coldly.

"Bah! I don't threaten." Seizing him by the arm, she swung him about, for she was a large woman and still in the fullest vigor of her womanhood. "Listen! You can't fool me. I know why you wrote this play. I know why you took that girl and made a star of her. I've known the truth all along."

"You have no cause to--"

"Don't lie!" she stormed at him. "I can read you like a book. But I won't stand for it." She flung his arm violently from her and turned away.

"I think you'd better go home," he told her. "You'll have the stage hands talking in a minute."

She laughed disagreeably, ignoring his words. "I watched you write this play! I have eyes, even if Irving Francis is blind. It's time he knew what is going on."

"There is nothing going on," Phillips cried, heatedly; but his wife merely shrugged her splendid shoulders and, opening her gold vanity case, gave her face a deft going over with a tiny powder puff. After a time the man continued: "I could understand your attitude if you--cared for me, but some years ago you took pains to undeceive me on that point."

Léontine's lip curled, and she made no answer.

"This play is a fine piece of property; it will bring us a great deal of money; it is the thing for which I have worked years."

"I am going to tell Francis the truth about you and his wife!" she said.

"But there's nothing to tell," the man insisted, with an effort to restrain himself. "Besides, you must know the result if you start a thing like that. He'll walk out and take his wife with him. That would ruin--"

"Give me her part."

"I won't be coerced," he flared up, angrily. "You are willing to ruin me, out of pique, I suppose, but I won't permit it. This is the biggest thing I ever did, or ever will do, perhaps; it means honor and recognition, and--you're selfish enough to spoil it all. I've never spoken to Norma Berwynd in any way to which her husband or you could object. Therefore I resent your attitude."

"My attitude! I'm your wife."

He took a turn across the stage, followed by her eyes. Pausing before her at length, he said, quietly: "I've asked you to go home and now I insist upon it. If you are here when I return I shall dismiss the rehearsal. I refuse to allow our domestic relations to interfere with my business." He strode out to the front of the house and then paced the dark foyer, striving to master his emotions. A moment later he saw his wife leave the stage and assumed that she had obeyed his admonitions and gone home.

The property-man appeared with an armful of draperies and mechanical appliances, interrupting his whistling long enough to call out.

"Here's the new hangings, Mr. Phillips, and the Oriental rugs. I've got the dagger, too." He held a gleaming object on high. "Believe me, it's some Davy Crockett. There's a newspaper guy out back and he wants your ideas on the American drama. I told him they were great. Will you see him?"

"Not now. Tell him to come back later."

"Say! That John Danton is some character. Why don't you let him have the gal?"

"Because--well, because it doesn't happen in real life, and I've tried to make this play real, more than anything else."

When Norma Berwynd and her husband arrived Phillips had completely regained his composure, and he greeted them cordially. The woman seemed awed, half-frightened, by her sudden rise to fame. She seemed to be walking in a dream, and a great wonder dwelt in her eyes. As for Francis, he returned the author's greeting curtly, making it plain that he was in no agreeable temper.

"I congratulate you, Phillips," he said. "You and Norma have become famous overnight."

The open resentment in his tone angered the playwright and caused him to wonder if their long-deferred clash was destined to occur this morning. He knew himself to be overwrought, and he imagined Francis to be in no better frame of mind; nevertheless, he answered, pacifically:

"If that is so we owe it to your art."

"Not at all. I see now what I failed to detect in reading and rehearsing the piece, and what you neglected to tell me, namely, that this is a woman's play. There's nothing in it for me. There's nothing in my part."

"Oh, come now! The part is tremendous; you merely haven't got the most out of it as yet."

Francis drew himself up and eyed the speaker coldly. "You're quoting the newspapers. Pray be more original. You know, of course, how I stand with these penny-a-liners; they never have liked me, but as for the part--" He shrugged. "I can't get any more out of it than there is in it."

"Doubtless that was my fault at rehearsals. I've called this one so we can fix up the weak spot in the third act."

"Well! We're on time. Where are the others?" Francis cast an inquiring glance about.

"I'll only rehearse you and Mrs. Francis."

"Indeed!" The former speaker opened his mouth for a cutting rejoinder, but changed his mind and stalked away into the shadowy depths of the wings.

"Please make allowances for him," Norma begged, approaching Phillips in order that her words might not be overheard. "I've never seen him so broken up over anything. He is always unstrung after an opening, but he is--terrible, this morning."

There was trouble, timidity, and another indefinable expression in the woman's eyes as they followed the vanishing figure of her husband; faint lines appeared at the corners of her mouth, lines which had no place in the face of a happily married woman. She was trembling, moreover, as if she had but recently played some big, emotional rôle, and Phillips felt the old aching pity for her tugging at his heart. He wondered if those stories about Francis could be true.

"It has been a great strain on all of us," he told her. "But you? How do you feel after all this?" He indicated the pile of morning papers, and at sight of them her eyes suddenly filled with that same wonder and gladness he had noticed when she first arrived.

"Oh-h! I--I'm breathless. Something clutches me--here." She laid her hand upon her bosom. "It's so new I can't express it yet, except--well, all of my dreams came true in a night. Some fairy waved her wand and, lo! poor ugly little me--" She laughed, although it was more like a sob. "I had no idea my part was so immense. Had you?"

"I had. I wrote it that way. My dreams, also, came true."

"But why?" A faint flush stole into her cheeks. "There are so many women who could have played the part better than I. You had courage to risk your piece in my hands, Mr. Phillips."

"Perhaps I knew you better than you knew yourself." She searched his face with startled curiosity. "Or better at least than the world knew you. Tell me, there is something wrong? I'm afraid he--resents your--"

"Oh no, no!" she denied, hastily, letting her eyes fall, but not before he had seen them fill again with that same expression of pain and bewilderment. "He's--not himself, that's all. I--You--won't irritate him? Please! He has such a temper."

Francis came out of the shadows scowling. "Well, let's get at it," said he.

Phillips agreed. "If you don't mind we'll start with your entrance. I wish you would try to express more depth of feeling, more tenderness, if you please, Mr. Francis. Remember, John Danton has fought this love of his for many years, undertaking to remain loyal to his wife. He doesn't dream that Diane returns his love, for he has never spoken, never even hinted of his feelings until this instant. Now, however, they are forced into expression. He begins reluctantly, frightened at the thing which makes him speak, then when she responds the dam breaks and his love over-rides his will power, his loyalty, his lifelong principles; it sweeps him onward and it takes her with him. The truth appals them both. They recognize its certain consequences and yet they respond freely, fiercely. You can't overplay the scene, Mr. Francis."

"Certainly I can overplay it," the star declared. "That's the danger. My effects should come from repression."

"I must differ with you. Repressive methods are out of place here. You see, John Danton loses control of himself--"

"Nonsense!" Francis declared, angrily.

"The effectiveness of the scene depends altogether upon its--well, its savagery. It must sweep the audience off its feet in order that the climax shall appear logical."

"Nonsense again! I'm not an old-school actor, and I can't chew scenery. I've gained my reputation by repressive acting, by intensity."

"This is not acting; this is real life."

Francis's voice rose a tone in pitch, and his eyes flashed at this stubborn resistance to his own set ideas.

"Great heavens, Phillips! Don't try to tell me my own business. People don't behave that way in real life; they don't explode under passion--not even jealousy or revenge; they are reserved. Reserve! That's the real thing; the other is all make-believe."

Seeing that it was useless to argue with the man, Phillips said nothing more, so Francis and his wife assumed their positions and began their lines.

It was a long scene and one demanding great force to sustain. It was this, in fact, which had led to the choice of Irving Francis for the principal rôle, for he was a man of tremendous physical power. He had great ability, moreover, and yet never, even at rehearsals, had he been able to invest this particular scene with conviction. Phillips had rehearsed him in it time and again, but he seemed strangely incapable of rising to the necessary heights. He was hollow, artificial; his tricks and mannerisms showed through like familiar trade marks. Strangely enough, the girl also had failed to get the most out of the scene, and this morning, both star and leading woman seemed particularly cold and unresponsive. They lacked the spark, the uplifting intensity, which was essential, therefore, in desperation, Phillips finally tried the expedient of altering their "business," of changing positions, postures, and crosses; but they went through the scene for a second time as mechanically as before.

Knowing every line as he did, feeling every heart throb, living and suffering as John Danton was supposed to be living and suffering, Phillips was nearly distracted. To him this was a wanton butchery of his finest work. He interrupted, at last, in a heart-sick, hopeless tone which sorely offended the already irritated Francis.

"I'm--afraid it's no use. You don't seem to get it."

"What is it I don't get?" roughly demanded the actor.

"You're not genuine--either of you. You don't seem to feel it."

"Humph! We're married!" said the star, so brutally that his wife flushed painfully. "I tell you I get all it's possible to get out of the scene. You wrote it and you see a lot of imaginary values; but they're not there. I'm no superman--no god! I can't give you more than the part contains."

"Look at it in this light," Phillips argued, after a pause. "Diane is a married woman; she, too, is fighting a battle; she is restrained by every convention, every sense of right, every instinct of wifehood and womanhood. Now, then, you must sweep all that aside; your own fire must set her ablaze despite--"

"I? _I_ must do all this?" mocked the other, furiously. "Why must _I_ do it all? Make Norma play up to me. She underplays me all the time; she's not in my key. That's what's the matter--and I'm damned tired of this everlasting criticism."

There was a strained silence, during which the two men faced each other threateningly, and a panic seized the woman.

She managed to say, uncertainly: "Perhaps I--should play up to you, Irving."

"On the contrary, I don't think the fault is yours," Phillips said, stiffly.

Again there was a dramatic silence, in which there was no element of the make-believe. It was the clash of two strong men who disliked each other intensely and whose masks were slipping. Neither they nor the leading woman detected a figure stealing out from the gloom, as if drawn by the magnetism of their anger.

"My fault, as usual," Francis sneered. "Understand this, Phillips, my reputation means something to me, and I won't be forced out of a good engagement by a--well, by you or by any other stage manager."

Phillips saw that same fearful look leap into the woman's eyes, and it checked his heated retort. "I don't mean to find fault with you," he declared, evenly. "I have the greatest respect for your ability as an actor, but--"

The star tossed his massive head in a peculiarly aggravating manner. "Perhaps you think you can play the part better than I?"

"Irving! _Please_!" breathed his wife.

"Show me how it should be done, if you feel it so strongly."

"Thank you, I will," Phillips answered, impulsively. "I'm not an actor, but I wrote this piece. What's more, I lived it before I wrote it. It's my own story, and I think I know how it should be played."

Francis smiled mockingly. "Good!" said he; "I shall learn something."

"Do you mind?" The author turned to the real Diane, and she shook her head, saying, uncertainly:

"It's--very good of you."

"Very well. If you will hold the manuscript, Mr. Francis, I'll try to show what I feel the scene lacks. However, I don't think I'll need any prompting. Now, then, we'll begin at John Danton's entrance."

With the mocking smile still upon his lips, Francis took the manuscript and seated himself upon the prompter's table.

It was by no means remarkable that Henry Phillips should know something about acting, for he had long been a stage manager, and in emergencies he has assumed a good many divergent rôles. He felt no self-consciousness, therefore, as he exchanged places with Francis; only an intense desire to prove his contentions. He nerved himself to an unusual effort, but before he had played more than a few moments he forgot the hostile husband and began to live the part of John Danton as he had lived it in the writing, as he invariably lived it every time he read the play or saw it acted.

Nor, as he had said, did he need prompting, for the lines were not the written speeches of another which had been impressed upon his brain by the mechanical process of repetition; they were his own thoughts expressed in the simplest terms he knew, and they came forth unbidden, hot, eager. Once he began to voice them he was seized by that same mighty current which had drawn them from him in the first place and left them strewn upon paper like driftwood after a flood. He had acted every part of his play; he had spoken every line many times in solitude; but this was the first time he had faced the real Diane. He found himself mastered by a fierce exultation; he forgot that he was acting or that the woman opposite him was playing a rôle of his creation; he began to live his true life for the first time since he had met the wife of Irving Francis. Clothed in the make-believe, the real Henry Phillips spoke freely, feelingly. His very voice changed in timbre, in quality; it became rich, alive; his eyes caressed the woman and stirred her to a new response.

As for Irving Francis, he watched the transformation with astonishment. Grudgingly, resentfully, he acknowledged that this was indeed fine acting. He realized, too, that his blind egotism had served merely to prove the truth of the author's criticism and to emphasize his own shortcomings. The idea enraged him, but the spectacle held him enthralled.

Norma Berwynd was not slow to appreciate the truth. Accustomed thoroughly to every phase of the make-believe world in which she dwelt, she recognized unerringly in the new John Danton's words and actions something entirely unreal and apart from the theatrical. The conviction that Henry Phillips was not acting came to her with a blinding suddenness, and it threw her into momentary confusion, hence her responses were mechanical. But soon, without effort on her part, this embarrassment fell away and she in turn began to blaze. The flame grew as Phillips breathed upon it. She realized wildly that her heart had always hungered for words like these, and that, coming from his lips, they carried an altogether new and wondrous meaning; that they filled some long-felt, aching want of which she had been ignorant until this moment. The certainty that it was Phillips himself who spoke, and not a mere character of his creation, filled her with an exultant recklessness. She forgot her surroundings, her husband's presence, even the fact that the lines she spoke were not of her own making.

Never had the scene been played like this. It grew vital, it took on a tremendous significance. No one could have observed it and remained unresponsive. Francis let fall the manuscript and stared at the actors wonderingly. Since he was an actor, nothing was so real to him, nothing so thrilling, as the make-believe. He realized that this was indeed a magnificent exhibition of the artificial. With parted lips and pulse athrob he followed the wooing of that imaginary John Danton, in whom he could see no one but himself.

After a time he became conscious of a presence at his side, and heard some one breathing heavily. Turning with a start, he found Léontine Phillips at his shoulder. She, too, was aroused, but in her sneering visage was that which brought the actor abruptly out of his spell. She had emerged from the shadows noiselessly, and was leaning forward, her strong hands gripping the edge of the table littered with its many properties.

Mrs. Phillips had played emotional scenes herself, but never with such melodramatic intensity as she now unconsciously displayed. Her whole body shook as with an ague, her dark face was alive with a jealous fury which told Irving Francis the story he had been too dull to suspect. The truth, when it came home, smote him like a blow; his hatred for the author, which had been momentarily forgotten--momentarily lost in his admiration of the artist--rose up anew, and he recognized this occult spell which had held him breathless as the thrall of a vital reality, not, after all, the result of inspired acting. Instantly he saw past the make-believe, into the real, and what he saw caused him to utter a smothered cry.

Léontine turned her face to him. "You fool!" she whispered through livid lips.

Francis was a huge, leonine man; he rose now to his full height, as a cat rises. But the drama drew his gaze in spite of himself; he could not keep his eyes from his wife's face. Léontine plucked at his sleeve and whispered again:

"You _fool_!"

Something contorted the actor's frame bitterly, and he gasped like a man throttled. Léontine could feel his muscles stiffen.

But the two players were in Elysium. They had reached the climax of the scene; Danton had told his love as only a great, starved love can tell itself, and with swimming eyes and fluttering lids, with heart pounding beneath her folded hands, Diane swayed toward him and his arms enfolded her. Her body met his, yielded; her face was upturned; her fragrant, half-opened lips were crushed to his in a fierce, impassioned kiss of genuine ecstasy.

Up to this moment the intensity of Francis's rage had held him paralyzed, despite the voice which was whispering so constantly at his ear; but now, when he saw his wife swooning upon the breast of the man who had played his part, he awoke.

"She knows he loves her," Léontine was saying. "You let him tell her in front of your face. He has taken her away from you!"

Mrs. Phillips's eyes fell upon the working fingers of the man as they rested beside her own. They were opening and closing hungrily. She also saw the naked knife which lay upon the table, and she moved it forward cautiously until the eager fingers twined about it. Then she breathed, "Go!" and shoved him forward fiercely.

It was Irving Francis's cry of rage as he rushed upon them which aroused Norma Berwynd from her dream, from her intoxication. She saw him towering at Phillips's back, and with a scream she tried to save the latter.

The husband's blow fell, however; it was delivered with all the savage fury that lay in Irving Francis's body, and his victim was fairly driven to his knees beneath it. The latter rose, then staggered, and, half sliding through the woman's sheltering embrace, crumpled limply into a massive upholstered chair. He, too, was dazed by the sudden transition from his real world to his make-believe.

When his eyes cleared he saw Norma Berwynd struggling with her husband, interposing her own slender body in his path. Francis was cursing her foully for her unfaithfulness; his voice was thick and brutal.

"Yes! It's true!" she cried, with hysterical defiance. "I never knew till now; but it's true! It's _true_!"

"You've killed him!" Léontine chattered, shrilly, and emerged from the shadows, her dark features ashen, her eyes ringed with white. Mrs. Francis turned from her husband and flung her arms about the recumbent man, calling wildly to him.

The dénouement had come with such swiftness that it left all four of them appalled at their actions. Seeing what his brief insanity had led him into, Francis felt his strength evaporate; his face went white, his legs buckled beneath him. He scanned the place wildly in search of means of escape.

"My God! My God!" Léontine was repeating. "Why doesn't somebody come?"

Now that his brain had cleared, and he knew what hand had smitten him, and why, Phillips was by far the calmest of the four. He saw the knife at his feet and smiled, for no steel could rob him of that gladness which was pulsing through his veins. He was still smiling when he stooped and picked up the weapon. He arose, lifting Norma to her feet; then his hand slid down and sought hers.

"You needn't worry," he said to Francis. "You see--this is the new dagger I got for the end of the act."

He held it out in his open palm for all of them to see, and they noted that it was strangely shortened--that the point of the sliding blade was barely exposed beneath the hilt.

Francis wiped his wet face, then shuddered and cursed weakly with relief, meanwhile groping at the prompter's table for support. "Sold! A prop knife!" he cried.

"You--you're not really--" Norma swayed forward with eyes closed.

Léontine laughed.

"By God! I meant it," the star exclaimed, uncertainly. "You can't deny--" He gasped and tugged at his collar.

"I believe there is nothing to deny," the author said, quietly. He looked first at his wife, then at his enemy, and then down at the quivering, white face upturned to his. "There is nothing to deny, is there?" he inquired of Norma.

"Nothing!" she said. "I--I'm glad to know the truth, that's all."

Francis glared first at one, then at the other, and as he did so he began to realize the full cost of his action. When it came home to him in terms of dollars and cents, he showed his true character by stammering:

"I--I made a frightful mistake. I'm--not myself; really, I'm not. It was your wife's fault." In a panic he ran on, unmindful of Léontine's scorn. "She did it, Mr. Phillips. She gave me the knife. She whispered things--she made me--I--I'm very sorry--Mr. Phillips, and I'll play the part the way you want it. I will, indeed."

Léontine met her husband's look defiantly; hence it was as much to her as to the cringing actor that the playwright said:

"Your salary will go on as usual, under your contract, Mr. Francis--that is, until the management supplies you with a new play; but I'm the real John Danton, and I shall play him tonight and henceforth."

"Then, I'm--discharged? Norma--d'you hear that? We're canceled. Fired!"

"No, Miss Berwynd's name will go up in lights as the star, if she cares to stay," said Phillips. "Do you wish to remain?" He looked down at the woman, and she nodded.

"Yes, oh yes!" she said. "I _must_ stay. I daren't go back." That hunted look leaped into her eyes again, and Phillips recognized it now as fear, the abject physical terror of the weaker animal. "I want to go--forward--not backward, if there is any way."

"I'll show you the way," he told her, gently. "We'll find it together."

He smiled reassuringly, and with a little gasping sigh she placed her hand in his.

RUNNING ELK

Up from the valley below came the throb of war drums, the faint rattle of shots, and the distant cries of painted horsemen charging. From my vantage-point on the ridge I had an unobstructed view of the encampment, a great circle of tepees and tents three miles in circumference, cradled in a sag of the timberless hills. The sounds came softly through the still Dakota air, and my eye took in every sharp-drawn detail of the scene--ponies grazing along the creek bottom, children playing beneath the blue smoke of camp-fires, the dense crowd ringed about a medicine pole in their center, intent on a war-dance.

Five thousand Sioux were here in all their martial splendor. They were painted and decked and trapped for war, living again their days of plenty, telling anew their tales of might, and repeating on a mimic scale their greatest battles. Five days the feasting had continued; five mornings had I been awakened at dawn to see a thousand ochered, feathered horsemen come thundering down upon the camp, their horses running flat, their rifles popping, while the valley rocked to their battle-cries and to the answering clamor of the army which rode forth to meet them. Five sultry days had I spent wandering unnoticed, ungreeted, and disdained, an alien in a hostile land, tolerated but unwelcome. Five evenings had I witnessed the tents begin to glow and the campfires kindle until the valley became hooped about as if by a million giant fireflies. Five nights had I strayed, like a lost soul, through an unreal wilderness, harkening to the drone of stories told in an unfamiliar tongue, to the minor-keyed dirges of an unknown race, to the thumping of countless moccasined feet in the measures of queer dances. The odors of a savage people had begun to pall on me, and the sound of a strange language to annoy; I longed for another white man, for a word in my own tongue.

It was the annual "Give-away" celebration, when all the tribe assembles to make presents, to race, to tell stories, and to recount the legends of their prowess. They had come from all quarters of the reservation, bringing their trunks, their children, and their dogs. Of the last named more had come, by far, than would go back, for this was a week of feasting, and every day the air was heavy with the smell of singeing hair, and the curs that had been spared gnawed at an ever-increasing pile of bones.

I had seen old hags strangle dogs by pulling on opposite ends of a slip-noose, or choke them by laying a tent-pole on their throats and standing on the ends; I had seen others knock them down with billets of wood, drag them kicking to the fires, and then knock them down again when they crawled out of the flames. All in all, I had acquired much information regarding the carnival appetites of the noble red man, learning that he is poetic only in the abstract.

It was drawing on toward sunset, so I slipped into my camera strap and descended the slope. I paused, however, while still some distance away from my tent, for next to it another had been erected during my absence. It was a tiny affair with a rug in front of it, and upon the rug stood a steamer-chair.

"Hello, inside!" I shouted, then ran forward, straddling papooses and shouldering squaws out of my way.

"Hello!" came an answer, and out through the flap was thrust the head of my friend, the Government doctor.

"Gee! I'm glad to see you!" I said as I shook his hand. "I'm as lonesome as a deaf mute at a song recital."

"I figured you would be," said the doctor, "so I came out to see the finish of the feast and to visit with you. I brought some bread from the Agency."

"Hoorah! White bread and white conversation! I'm hungry for both."

"What's the matter? Won't the Indians talk to you?"

"I guess they would if they could, but they can't. I haven't found one among the whole five thousand who can understand a word I say. Your Government schools have gone back in the betting with me, Doc. You must keep your graduates under lock and key."

"They can all speak English if they want to--that is, the younger ones. Some few of the old people are too proud to try, but the others can talk as well as we can, until they forget."

"Do you mean to say these people have been fooling me? I don't believe it," said I. "There's one that can't talk English, and I'll make a bet on it." I indicated a passing brave with an eagle-feather head-dress which reached far down his naked legs. He was a magnificent animal; he was young and lithe, and as tall and straight as a sapling. "I've tried him twice, and he simply doesn't understand."

My friend called to the warrior: "Hey, Tom! Come here a minute." The Indian came, and the doctor continued, "When do you hold the horse-races, Thomas?"

"To-morrow, at four o'clock, unless it rains," said the fellow. He spoke in an odd, halting dialect, but his words were perfectly understandable.

"Are you going to ride?"

"No; my race-horse is sick."

As the ocher-daubed figure vanished into the dusk the old man turned to me, saying, "College man."

"What?"

"Yes. B.A. He's a graduate."

"Impossible!" I declared. "Why, he talks like a foreigner, or as if he were just learning our language."

"Exactly. In another three years he'll be an Indian again, through and through. Oh, the reservation is full of fellows like Tom." The doctor heaved a sigh of genuine discouragement. "It's a melancholy acknowledgment to make, but our work seems to count for almost nothing. It's their blood."

"Perhaps they forget the higher education," said I; "but how about the Agency school, where you teach them to farm and to sew and to cook, as well as to read and to write? Surely they don't forget that?"

"I've heard a graduating class read theses, sing cantatas, and deliver sounding orations; then I've seen those same young fellows, three months later, squatting in tepees and eating with their fingers. It's a common thing for our 'sweet girl graduates' to lay off their white commencement-day dress, their high-heeled shoes and their pretty hats, for the shawl and the moccasin. We teach them to make sponge-cake and to eat with a fork, but they prefer dog-soup and a horn spoon. Of course there are exceptions, but most of them forget much faster than they learn."

"Our Eastern ideas of Mr. Lo are somewhat out of line with the facts," I acknowledged. "He's sort of a hero with us. I remember several successful plays with romantic Indians in the lead."

"I know!" My friend laughed shortly. "I saw some of them. If you like, however, I'll tell you how it really happens. I know a story."

When we had finished supper the doctor told me the story of Running Elk. The night was heavy with unusual odors and burdened by weird music; the whisper of a lively multitude came to us, punctuated at intervals by distant shouts or shots or laughter. On either hand the campfires stretched away like twinkling stars, converging steadily until the horns joined each other away out yonder in the darkness. It was a suitable setting for an epic tale of the Sioux.

"I've grown gray in this service," the old man began, "and the longer I live the less time I waste in trying to understand the difference between the Indian race and ours. I've about reached the conclusion that it's due to some subtle chemical ingredient in the blood. One race is lively and progressive, the other is sluggish and atavistic. The white man is ever developing, he's always advancing, always expanding; the red man is marking time or walking backward. It is only a matter of time until he will vanish utterly. He's different from the negro. The negro enlarges, up to a certain limit, then he stops. Some people claim, I believe, that his skull is sutured in such a manner as to check his brain development when his bones finally harden and set. The idea sounds reasonable; if true, there will never be a serious conflict between the blacks and the whites. But the red man differs from both. To begin with, his is not a subject race by birth. Physically he is as perfect as either; Nature has endowed him with an intellect quite as keen as the white man's, and with an open articulation of the skull which permits the growth of his brain. Somewhere, nevertheless, she has cunningly concealed a flaw, a flaw which I have labored thirty years to find.

"I have a theory--you know all old men have theories--that it is a physical thing, as tangible as that osseous constriction of the cranium which holds the negro in subjection, and that if I could lay my finger on it I could raise the Indian to his ancient mastery and to a dignified place among the nations; I could change them from a vanishing people into a race of rulers, of lawgivers, of creators. At least that used to be my dream.

"Some years ago I felt that I was well on my way to success, for I found a youth who offered every promise of great manhood. I studied him until I knew his every trait and his every strength--he didn't seem to have any weaknesses. I raised him according to my own ideas; he became a tall, straight fellow, handsome as a bronze statue of a god. Physically he was perfect, and he had a mind as fine as his body. He had the best blood of his nation in him, being the son of a war chief, and he was called Thomas Running Elk. I educated him at the Agency school under my own personal supervision, and on every occasion I studied him. I spent hours in shaping his mind and in bending him away from the manners and the habits of his tribe. I taught him to think like a white man. He responded like a growing vine; he became the pride of the reservation--a reserved but an eager youth, with an understanding and a wit beyond that of most white boys of his age. Search him as rigorously as I might, I couldn't find a single flaw. I believed I was about to prove my theory.

"Running Elk romped through our school, and he couldn't learn fast enough; when he had finished I sent him East to college, and, in order to wean him utterly away from the past, instead of sending him to an Indian school I arranged for him to enter one of the big Eastern universities, where no Indian had ever been, where constant association with the flower of our race would by its own force raise him to a higher level. Well, it worked. He led his classes as a stag leads a herd. He was a silent, dignified, shadowy figure; his fellow-students considered him unapproachable, nevertheless they admired and they liked him. In all things he excelled; but he was best, perhaps, in athletics, and for this I took the credit--a Jovian satisfaction in my work.

"News of his victories on track and field and gridiron came to me regularly, for his professors were interested in my experiment. As for the boy himself, he never wrote; it was not his nature. Nor did he communicate with his people. He had cut himself off from them, and I think he looked down upon them. At intervals his father came to the Agency to inquire about Running Elk, for I did not allow my protégé to return even during vacations. That was a part of my plan. At my stories of his son's victories the father made no comment; he merely listened quietly, then folded his blanket about him and slipped away. The old fellow was a good deal of a philosopher; he showed neither resentment nor pleasure, but once or twice I caught him smiling oddly at my enthusiasm. I know now what was in his mind.

"It was in Running Elk's senior year that a great thing came to him, a thing I had counted upon from the start. He fell in love. A girl entered his life. But this girl didn't enter as I had expected, and when the news reached me I was completely taken aback. She was a girl I had dandled on my knees as a child, the only daughter of an old friend. Moreover, instead of Running Elk being drawn to her, as I had planned, she fell desperately in love with him.

"I guess the gods were offended at my presumption and determined by one hair's-breadth shift to destroy the balance of my whole structure. They're a jealous lot, the gods. I didn't understand, at that time, how great must have been the amusement which I offered them.

"You've heard of old Henry Harman? Yes, the railroad king. It was his daughter Alicia. No wonder you look incredulous.

"In order to understand the story you'll have to know something about old Henry. You'll have to believe in heredity. Henry is a self-made man. He came into the Middle West as a poor boy, and by force of indomitable pluck, ability, and doggedness he became a captain of industry. We were born on neighboring farms, and while I, after a lifetime of work, have won nothing except an underpaid Government job, Henry has become rich and mighty. He had that indefinable, unacquirable faculty for making money, and he became a commanding figure in the financial world. He's dominant, he's self-centered, he's one-purposed; he's a rough-hewn block of a man, and his unbounded wealth, his power, and his contact with the world have never smoothed nor rounded him. He's just about the same now as when he was a section boss on his own railroad. His daughter Alicia is another Henry Harman, feminized. Her mother was a pampered child, born to ease and enslaved to her own whims. No desire of hers, however extravagant, ever went ungratified, and right up to the hour of her death old Henry never said no to her--partly out of a spirit of amusement, I dare say, and partly because she was the only unbridled extravagance he had ever yielded to in all his life. Well, having sowed the wind, he reaped the whirlwind in Alicia. She combined the distinguishing traits of both parents, and she grew up more effectively spoiled than her mother.

"When I got a panicky letter from one of Running Elk's professors coupling her name vaguely with that of my Indian, I wavered in my determination to see this experiment out; but the analyst is unsentimental, and a fellow who sets out to untangle the skein of nature must pay the price, so I waited.

"That fall I was called to Washington on department business--we were fighting for a new appropriation--and while there I went to the theater one night. I was extremely harassed, and my mind was filled with Indian matters, so I went out alone to seek an evening's relief, not caring whither my feet took me.

"The play was one of those you spoke of; it told the story of a young Indian college man in love with a white girl. Whether or not it was well written I don't know; but it seemed as if the hand of destiny had led me to it, for the hero's plight was so similar to the situation of Running Elk that it seemed almost uncanny, and I wondered if this play might afford me some solution of his difficulty.

"You will remember that the Indian in the play is a great football hero, and a sort of demi-god to his fellows. He begins to consider himself one of them--their equal--and he falls in love with the sister of his chum. But when this fact is made known his friends turn against him and try to show him the barrier of blood. At the finish a messenger comes bearing word that his father is dead and that he has been made chief in the old man's place. He is told that his people need him, and although the girl offers to go with him and make her life his, he renounces her for his duty to the tribe.

"Well, it was all right up to that point, but the end didn't help me in shaping the future of Running Elk, for his father was hale, hearty, and contented, and promised to hang on in that condition as long as we gave him his allowance of beef on Issue Day.

"That night when I got back to the hotel I found a long-distance call from old Henry Harman. He had wired me here at the Agency, and, finding I was in Washington, he had called me from New York. He didn't tell me much over the 'phone, except that he wanted to see me at once on a matter of importance. My work was about finished, so I took the train in the morning and went straight to his office. When I arrived I found the old fellow badly rattled. There is a certain kind of worry which comes from handling affairs of importance. Men like Henry Harman thrive upon it; but there's another kind which searches out the joints in their coats of mail and makes women of them. That's what Henry was suffering from.

"'Oh, Doc, I'm in an awful hole!' he exclaimed. 'You're the only man who can pull me out. It's about Alicia and that damned savage of yours.'

"'I knew that was it,' said I.

"'If you've heard about it clear out there,' Harman declared, with a catch in his voice, 'it's even worse than I thought.' He strode up and down his office for a few moments; then he sank heavily into his chair and commenced to pound his mahogany desk, declaring, angrily:

"'I won't be defied by my own flesh and blood! I won't! That's all there is to it. I'm master of my own family. Why, the thing's fantastic, absurd, and yet it's terrible! Heavens! I can't believe it!'

"'Have you talked with Alicia?'

"'Not with her, _to_ her. She's like a mule. I never saw such a will in a woman. I--I've fought her until I'm weak. Where she got her temper I don't know.' He collapsed feebly and I was forced to smile, for there's only one thing stubborn enough to overcome a Harman's resistance, and that is a Harman's desire.

"'Then it isn't a girlish whim?' I ventured.

"'_Whim!_ Look at me!' He held out his trembling hands. 'She's licked me, Doc. She's going to marry that--that--' He choked and muttered, unintelligibly: 'I've reasoned, I've pleaded, I've commanded. She merely smiles and shrugs and says I'm probably right, in the abstract. Then she informs me that abstract problems go to pieces once in a while. She says this--this--Galloping Moose, this yelping ghost-dancer of yours, is the only real man she ever met.'

"'What does he have to say?'

"'Humph!' grunted Harman. 'I offered to buy him off, but he threatened to serve me up with dumplings and wear my scalp in his belt. Such insolence! Alicia wouldn't speak to me for a week.'

"'You made a mistake there,' said I. 'Running Elk is a Sioux. As for Alicia, she's thoroughly spoiled. She's never been denied any single thing in all her life, and she has your disposition. It's a difficult situation.'

"'Difficult! It's scandalous--hideous!'

"'How old is Alicia?'

"'Nineteen. Oh, I've worn out that argument! She says she'll wait. You know she has her own money, from her mother.'

"'Does Running Elk come to your house?'

"At this my old friend roared so fiercely that I hastened to say: 'I'll see the boy at once. I have more influence with him than anybody else.'

"'I hope you can show him how impossible, how criminal, it is to ruin my girl's life.' Harman said this seriously. 'Yes, and mine, too, for that matter. Suppose the yellow newspapers got hold of this!' He shuddered. 'Doc, I love that girl so well that I'd kill her with my own hands rather than see her disgraced, ridiculed--'

"'Tut, tut!' said I. 'That's pride--just plain, selfish pride.'

"'I don't care a damn what it is, I'd do it. I earned my way in the world, but she's got blue blood in her and she was born to a position; she goes everywhere. When she comes out she'll be able to marry into the best circles in America. She could marry a duke, if she wanted to. I'd buy her one if she said the word. Naturally, I can't stand for this dirty, low-browed Injun.'

"'He's not dirty,' I declared, 'and he's not as low-browed as some foreigner you'd be glad to pick out for her.'

"'Well, he's an Injun,' retorted Harman, 'and that's enough. We've both seen 'em tried; they all drop back where they started from. You know that as well as I do.'

"'I don't know it,' said I, thinking of my theories. 'I've been using him to make an experiment, but--the experiment has gotten away from me. I dare say you're right. I wanted him to meet and to know white girls, but I didn't want him to marry one--certainly not a girl like Alicia. No, we must put a stop to this affair. I'll see him right away.'

"'To-morrow is Thanksgiving,' said Henry. 'Wait over and go up with us and see the football game.'

"'Are you going?'

"Harman grimaced. 'Alicia made me promise. I'd rather take her than let her go with friends--there's no telling what she might do.'

"'Why let her go at all?' I objected.

"The old fellow laughed mirthlessly. 'Why _let_ her? Running Elk plays full-back! How _stop_ her? We'll pick you up at your hotel in the morning and drive you up in the car. It's the big game of the year. You'll probably enjoy it. I won't!'

"Miss Harman seemed glad to see me on the following day. She must have known that I was in her father's confidence, but she was too well schooled to show it. As we rode out in the big limousine I undertook to study her, but the reading of women isn't my game. All I could see was a beautiful, spirited, imperious girl with the Harman eyes and chin. She surprised me by mentioning Running Elk of her own free will; she wasn't the least bit embarrassed, and, although her father's face whitened, she preserved her quiet dignity, and I realized that she was in no wise ashamed of her infatuation. I didn't wonder that the old gentleman chose to accompany her to this game, although he must have known that the sight of Running Elk would pain him like a branding-iron.

"It was the first great gridiron battle I had ever seen, and so I was unprepared for the spectacle. The enthusiasm of that immense crowd astonished me, and in spite of the fact that I had come as a tired old man, it got into my veins until my heart pounded and my pulses leaped. The songs, the shouts, the bellows of that multitude were intensely thrilling, for youth was in them. I grew young again, and I was half ashamed of myself until I saw other people of my own age who had also become boys and girls for the day. And the seriousness of it! Why, it was painful! Not one of those countless thousands was a disinterested spectator; they were all intensely partisan, and you'd have thought life or death hung on the victory.

"Not one, did I say? There was one who held himself aloof from all the enthusiasm. Old Henry sat like a lump of granite, and out of regard for him I tried to restrain myself.

"We had a box, close to the side lines, with the _élite_ of the East on either hand--people whose names I had read. They bowed and smiled and waved to our little party, and I felt quite important.

"You've probably seen similar games, so there's no need of my describing this one, even if I could. It was my first experience, however, and it impressed me greatly. When the teams appeared I recognized Running Elk at a distance. So did the hordes of madmen behind us, and I began to understand for the first time what it was that the old man in the seat next to mine was combating.

"A dancing dervish in front of the grandstand said something through a megaphone, then he waved a cane, whereupon a tremendous barking, 'Rah! Rah! Rah!' broke out. It ended with my Sioux boy's name, and I wished the old chief back in Dakota were there to see his son and to witness the honor done him by the whites.

"Quite as impressive to me as this demonstration was the death-like silence which settled over that tremendous throng when the teams scattered out in readiness. The other side kicked off, and the ball sailed high and far. As it settled in its downward flight, I saw a lithe, tall shadow of a man racing toward it, and I recognized my boy. I'd lost his position for the moment, but I knew that hungry, predatory stride which devoured the yards as if he were a thing of the wind. He was off with the ball in the hollow of his arm, right back into the heart of his enemies, dodging, darting, leaping, twisting, always advancing. They tore his interference away from him, but, nevertheless, he penetrated their ranks and none of them could lay hands upon him. He was running free when tackled; his assailant launched himself with such savage violence that the sound of their impact came to us distinctly. As he fell I heard Alicia Harman gasp. Then the crowd gave tongue.

"From that time on to the finish of the game my eyes seldom left Running Elk, and then only long enough to shoot covert glances at my companions.