Chapter XV: The Scene Shifts

Cherry Creek is one of those erratic streams that flow eastward into the brown Missouri across the billowing plains—now a mere wavy line of timber fringing a dry ravine; again an angry yellow flood that drowns box-elder and wild cherry and washes the feet of the slim young cottonwoods.

The sun-brimmed solitude of a September day enfolded the two girls, Blue Earth and Yellow Star—for, although mother of a five-year-old boy, the deserted wife of Young Eagle was in reality not so much older than her friend—as they happily gathered red-and-yellow Dakota plums in the rustling thickets away up the creek. The young mother was quaintly robed in a loose, wide-sleeved “Dakota gown” of Turkey red calico, while the young maid was more trimly clad in one of the plain, indigo-blue prints that she had last worn in Mrs. Sophia’s kitchen. Only the freedom of the new life was symbolized and expressed by sleeves rolled over the dimpled, brown elbows, uncovered, glossy head, and soft, richly embroidered moccasins on the slender feet.

The honey-sweet plums, a peck or more, had been harvested in a wide-mouthed cotton sack. “Let me carry it—you have the baby!” cried Yellow Star, gayly tossing the sack over one shoulder, while the other picked up a placid bundle rolled in a patchwork quilt from under the wild plum tree, and with much maternal cooing and chattering proceeded to secure it on her back, in the folds of the bright shawl she wore.

“Chas-kay! Chas-ka-a-ay! Where is the little rascal?” she scolded, good-humoredly; and Yellow Star took up the musical call and sent it ringing through the ravines. In a minute or so, there came obediently stumbling up the slippery bank a queer little nondescript figure, attired in nothing but a green calico shirt and a pair of tiny moccasins, its two tight braids of black hair tied up with red flannel, and the round face of a shining cinnamon brown set with two black gems, in the shape of a pair of sparkling, mischievous eyes.

“I was only digging medicine,” the elf soberly announced; “good medicine for The-One-who-was-left-Alive!” He held up a long, straggling root, and looked so irresistibly important that both girls burst into peals of tuneful laughter.

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“We’ll take it to show Grandmother,” declared the one so favored, whose botanical studies had already suggested to her to penetrate, if possible, the mysteries of the Dakota herbalist. She seized his little, earth-stained hand and all three set out for the camp—a huddle of log cabins, looking for all the world like the “cob houses” of children, interspersed with an occasional brush arbor or rude corral, and with many of the white, conical teepees of the Sioux.

Glimpsed in the distance, under a sky quivering with heat and against a wide background of sunburnt grass, the whole looked more like a toy village than anything real and serious, at all events to the new-comer, who, with all her earnestness of purpose, had fallen to some degree under the spell of that colorful, elemental existence.

The zest of the open spaces and the free winds, the absence of clocks and bells and whistles and other insistent reminders and regulators of our time-slavery, the fascinating simplicity and friendliness of the dark-faced, smiling people—_her_ people—in their easy, picturesque garb, all these had seemed so restful, so almost intoxicating, after the set tasks of many well-ordered years.

When they reached camp and threw down their burdens under the shade of a large arbor of boughs, where an old woman with gray witch-locks flying loose and a skin like dark-brown parchment looked up from her eternal moccasin-mending, and a long-haired dog not much bigger than a rat flew to greet them with all but articulate cries of joy—then, indeed, they were at home!

“Sh-h-h-Sheka!” Blue Earth was tired and hungry, and drove off the dog with a rush of angry sibilants.

“Here, Sheka, Sheka! Poor little thing,” coaxed Yellow Star, pitifully.

“How many did you get?” demanded Grandmother, reaching greedily for the sack. “The Blue-Coat has been here with a paper; I think it is from the Little Father. I gave him coffee and bread, and he told me all the news. Here is the paper,” and she drew it from her wide sleeve and held it toward the girl.

Yellow Star took the agent’s letter and glanced it over as she stood, while the others, Chaskay and Sheka included, gazed steadily into her thoughtful face with frank curiosity.

“It is only to say that the sewing-machines will not be here until next month. I sha’n’t wait for them; the women are coming to-morrow, and there’s plenty of hand sewing for the present,” and she entered the little house with quite a different air from that of the plum thicket.

Certainly the Indian agent, at his first interview some weeks earlier, had not to complain of any lack of dignity in the young field matron.

“You understand that suitable quarters will be provided for you, Miss—ah!—Miss Waring,” he had drawled, keeping his heavy-lidded eyes upon her face with a persistency that was not altogether pleasant.

(“First Indian girl I ever Miss’d,” he acknowledged later to his grinning cronies in the office, “and it came sort of hard. Nothing else for it, though. She’s considerable of a lady, _she_ is!”

“Considerable to look at, too, I sh’d say,” Jack Pepper mumbled under his breath.)

“I expect to stay with my friend, Young Eagle’s wife, in her house on Cherry Creek,” Stella had replied, simply. “Her grandmother will live with us.”

“Hum-ha … Miss—ah!—Waring, if you have quite made up your mind to that, we shall have to make some improvements on the house. It’s an ordinary log cabin, isn’t it, Mr. Pepper? … one room? … Two? That’s good. Well, I’ll tell you what we’ll do. We will build a frame addition 16 by 20 feet, for the field matron’s private apartment, with three windows and a good floor; lay floors in the other two rooms and put on a good, shingled roof. With these additions, I think you ought to be fairly comfortable.”

“Thank you, Major; that will be quite satisfactory,” Stella had answered, calmly.

“And about the furniture” (still keeping a furtive eye upon her face)—“Mr. Pepper, will you take this—ah!—this young lady to the warehouse and help her make out a list of her needs in that line? We supply only the necessaries, of course: iron beds with mattress and blankets, tables, kitchen chairs, stoves, dishes and so forth. If there is anything more that I can do for you, Miss Waring, I shall be happy to see you at any time.”

Possibly the “Little Father” would not have been quite so bland and accommodating if he had not had in his desk at that moment a letter from Washington, containing very plain instructions as to the conveniences to be supplied and the official courtesies to be extended to the newly appointed field matron, Miss Stella Waring. The good Doctor’s precautions were already justified.

* * * * *

The first meeting of the Cherry Creek sewing circle was a decided success—that is to say, the first ever held there under the civilizing auspices of a paternal Government, since from time immemorial the Sioux women have been accustomed to get together in the fashion common to all other women under the sun. For nobody knows how many hundreds of years they have plied their feminine implements—such as awl of bone and sinew of deer—and with dyed quills of the porcupine and hand-wrought of trader-bought beads, with skins tanned to a velvety softness or costly broadcloth of red and blue, have made and decorated their native finery with no mean skill, the while their tongues were busy with soft syllables of domestic chat and village gossip, after the universal feminine pattern.

The time was now ripe, it seemed, for some advance along these time-honored lines. Indeed, this small settlement on Cherry Creek is still among the most primitive on the whole Sioux reservation, having no day-school or settled mission of its own, and several of the women had expressed a wish to learn of their sophisticated sister the complicated art of the white woman’s dress-making.

So here they were, gathered under the picturesque brush arbor to the number of a score or more, the younger attired as gayly as tropical birds, the elder in sober plumage of dingy browns and grays, all with demurely drooping plaits of hair and shoulders modestly draped in the invariable shawl. Most were primly seated on common wooden chairs, while a few of the older and more conservative preferred a blanket on the hard-trodden earth floor.

Stella had a table full of work cut out and basted; puritanical checked gingham dresses and wide print aprons, together with boxes of thimbles and needles and thread; and the lesson proceeded, at first with some constraint, but soon with a loosening of tongues and a torrent of soft laughter and musical dialect.

Of course, all who had babies had brought them on their patient backs, and several youngsters of Chaskay’s age or younger were tumbling about the floor or running races over the sunshiny prairie. There were almost as many dogs as children, and a certain Miss Day, who had neither, appeared with the pretty, striped face of her pet ’coon peeping coquettishly over one shoulder.

Presently refreshments were served in orderly fashion by the two young hostesses—tea, boiled rice flavored with meat, the plums gathered the day before, and a quantity of small, flaky, biscuit baked that morning by Yellow Star.

“I should like to make biscuit like those,” Miss Day remarked, after an astonishing number had been consumed.

“Can you teach me to make the spongy bread of the white people?” asked another.

“My husband has often asked for the apple-pie he had at school,” chimed in a little bride.

“We will have a cooking-class,” laughed the young field matron, “and learn to make all these and many more. You must all keep chickens and milk a cow or two; then we can have ever so many good things—things fit to build strong bodies for your children.”

“If only the Little Father would not take them all away from us, as soon as they can walk, almost, to fill his school!” mourned an older woman.

“Did you know that the Little Father had given his permission for a dance to-night?” whispered a flighty girl to Blue Earth, whose face lighted up quickly at the news. Then she glanced half guiltily at her friend, justly fearing that the Indian dance might be under a ban. The comfortable house and abundance of food, to say nothing of sympathetic companionship, were too good to risk lightly.

“But you went to the white people’s dances when you were in the East,” she pleaded, after the others had gone, and the slow, teasing throbs of the dance-drum resounded through the village.

“That’s quite different,” Yellow Star explained. “We want our people to forget these exciting customs, and care for better things,” she reasoned, gently.

“But I’m not going to dance; I only want to look on a little while,” begged Blue Earth, as humbly as a child.

“All the white people do that; even the Little Father himself,” pronounced Grandmother.

“Then, will you promise to come home as soon as it is dark?”

“Oh, yes!” cried the other, eagerly.

But, like another Cinderella, she forgot, and lingered near an open window of the large, circular dance-house, her baby asleep on her back, gazing fascinated on the gorgeous, barbaric spectacle of painted, half-clad men executing their wonderful steps and poses, till aroused by a touch on her arm and a sweet, reproachful voice in her ear. And this is the true story of how the field matron chanced to be observed by old Standing Cloud and others, in the outer circle of the Grass Dance after dark of a balmy September evening, a fact which came duly to Jack Pepper’s ears and made her some little trouble, later on.