Chapter XVII: “pray for My People When the Sun Goes Down!”

Of course, Stella couldn’t put everything into a letter, and one of the things she didn’t mention was a regular proposal of marriage from the old chief, Standing Cloud. She called him “old,” but he was really a rather fine-looking man of something over fifty. He had “thrown away” one wife in obedience to the law of the white man, and had then lost the other soon afterward, and he had missed no detail of the appearance of the young school girl on that fateful evening when she had gone after Blue Earth to the dance house. For the minute that she had stood there, framed in the open window, the light of the fire had struck full upon her winsome face and tall, supple figure, bringing out every line and feature with almost startling distinctness.

Standing Cloud was not a particularly progressive chief, but he knew a pretty girl when he saw her. This was a girl of his own people, after all, and an orphan at that; everybody knew her history, and such a man as he was not to be daunted by a few years of schooling. She had sense enough, probably, to appreciate the honor he intended to do her.

His offer came in round-about fashion, first through the grandmother, as was fitting, and finally through Blue Earth, who, with many giggles and much tossing of the head, managed at last to convey some inkling of it to the astonished and indignant girl.

“That old man!” she exclaimed, in disgust. “I don’t see how you can have the face to repeat such a thing. Why, how many wives has he had?”

“Only two; and he hasn’t _any_ now; and he’s a _chief_, you know.”

“That’s quite enough. I don’t wish to hear another word about him as long as I live!”

And Grandmother was left to smooth over the affair as best she might, inventing all manner of humble excuses to cover the unheard-of rejection of a man of such importance.

Then there was Moses Blackstone, a serious young man who had passed some years in the mission boarding-school as its prize scholar, and was now a lay reader in the village, and a regular caller at the field matron’s home. In default of an evening school, she innocently encouraged him to sit by the hour at a corner of her table, poring over some old school-book, or stumbling over the long words in the illustrated magazines that came from her eastern friends. Occasionally he would even write letters on her stationery and frankly “borrow” her stamps; but Moses was really such a good young man, and so earnest and humble, that she lent him a helping hand whenever she could, with scarcely more self-consciousness than if he had been Chaskay’s age.

If he took unusual pains with his dress of late, the fact had escaped her, as also that he was not at all a bad speaker in his native Dakota. His English was inadequate, and she always made him talk to her in English, thus cruelly putting him at a disadvantage.

Therefore Stella was honestly shocked when one day Grandmother slyly pressed into her hand a little folded note, and upon carelessly opening it, she found a regular love-letter, signed “Moses.”

To tell the truth, it was very prettily and poetically expressed. “I am thinking of something,” it began in the native tongue. “I think of it night and day. It will not let me rest nor sleep. It is always of you that I think and of my longing to be near you, and my wish that we two might be one.”

Stella was really most unreasonable. Her cheeks glowed and her black eyes snapped. She tore the pleading little note into tiny bits, and strewed it on the floor before Grandmother’s astonished old eyes. That was her answer.

* * * * *

The missionary from the east who had stepped into Father Waring’s old shoes was far from finding them a fit. Though he had been there for several years, people still called him “the new minister,” a circumstance which tells its own story to the discerning. Certainly his manner was a trifle dry, even when his intentions were most kind.

It seemed to our heroine, who we know was sensitive to a fault, that everybody looked at her critically, even coldly, when she came to the agency church in her trim, tailor-made suit and tasteful little hat, and modestly took her seat among the shawled and hatless Indian women, or when, innocently conspicuous, she walked the one street on “Issue Day,” with business-like intentness upon her various errands.

She was fairly happy, upon the whole, among her own people at Cherry Creek, but with the “white people,” who should have welcomed her in all sincerity as a fellow-worker, she felt lonely and ill at ease. It was just as if the agent and his employees, the minister, and most of all their wives, were continually saying among themselves:

“How long do you suppose she’ll keep it up? Too well-dressed and too self-possessed for an Indian girl, anyway; looks as if she thought too much of herself—needs taking down a peg.”

This note of patronage and suspicion was so unlike the general attitude toward her in her New England home that Stella couldn’t help resenting it, and accordingly held her well-groomed head a trifle higher than before. There was only the little day-school teacher in Ring Thunder’s camp, Chaskay’s teacher—a simple, good-hearted girl, not much older or more experienced than Yellow Star herself—these two got on together from the first. Stella fell into the habit of going over there on “Old Soup” to spend her Sundays, since she had actually come to dread meeting any of the agency people, and after poor Moses’ unwelcome pretensions she no longer cared to attend the rather primitive but always reverent little service in his large log cabin.

Long before September came round again, Stella had learned that the annual church convocation would meet at “our agency” this year. This meant a great gathering of perhaps a thousand Indians who came from agencies hundreds of miles distant, traveling overland, for the most part, in picturesque canvas-topped wagons loaded with camp equipage, toward the appointed meeting-place. It was the event of the year to all good Christian Indians, bringing social as well as spiritual inspiration, comfort, and cheer.

Most of all, Stella looked forward to meeting the Bishop, whose face of lofty calm and sweetness, under its silvery crown of hair, floated high like a white cloud among dear memories of childhood days. In those days, he had been from time to time a guest under their roof, giving to the very food he shared a sacramental savor, and as a small, shrinking, black-eyed maid she had never lost the sense of a grave and gentle Presence in the little white guest-chamber they called the “Bishop’s Room.”

And now the simple, loving preparations were all complete. Not without self-sacrifice, a feast had been provided for the visitors, forage for the visitors’ horses, fresh vestments for the clergy, and candles for the plain little altar. Near the little Gothic church at the agency rose a wide circle of teepees, looking as if a flight of great, white birds had suddenly alighted upon the sunburned grass. Children ran joyously to and fro, men gathered in groups, matronly women bent over their camp-fires, and the soft music of their greetings was in the air.

Before the church bell should ring to summon the dark-skinned congregation to their first service under the open sky, the Bishop sat at meat in the modest rectory, reaping the year’s harvest of rewards and perplexities, and now and then dropping a quiet seed of counsel, or straightening a tangled skein of anxiety.

“And where is my little Stella?” he asked presently, with a smile. “I understand that she has come back to Cherry Creek as a field matron.”

“I have heard no complaints of her work, Bishop,” the missionary acknowledged, frowning slightly nevertheless. “I—a—I believe she is quite efficient; however, we do not see her at church as often as I could wish. Certainly I expected her to-day, but we have seen nothing of her.”

“The truth is,” his wife added, rather sharply, “it isn’t easy to get into touch with Stella Waring. She—well—she’s almost too much the lady for Cherry Creek. Too well-dressed, even; I fancy people think she puts on airs. That good Moses Blackstone was quite seriously interested at one time; I really think Stella treated him badly. Don’t you think, Bishop, it’s apt to spoil them a little—this going east for an education?”

“Spoil them? Why, yes, my dear lady; for hewers of wood and drawers of water no doubt it may spoil them. We must not expect them to slip back into quite the old place,” suggested the Bishop, mildly. “It may even be possible that she has outgrown our good Moses. Stella was always a dear child; let me see—it’s just six years since I confirmed her. I should like very much to see her again.”

The missionary parlor had quickly filled, meantime, with the Bishop’s friends and disciples of both races, among them Stella herself, her lithe, girlish figure half hidden behind a window curtain, her soft eyes fastened eagerly upon the closed door. At last a quick, decided step was heard, and the gracious form of the Bishop, as erect as of old but looking to the girl much frailer and older than she had remembered him, entered the crowded room. His keen, kind eyes, darting rapidly from one face to another, flashed instant recognition into her own, and almost before she knew it, Stella found herself standing before him, all a-tremble with timid happiness, and both slim, brown hands drawn into the Bishop’s strong clasp.

“Can this tall girl be my little Stella?” she heard him say, while over a face in repose a little sad and stern there broke that smile like winter sunshine—a spirit radiance that none who saw it can ever forget. The rest fell back instinctively, or else the Bishop drew her into a quiet corner, and for a minute they two were alone together.

“I hope I may hear that you are happy in your work for our poor people?” began the Bishop, very gently.

The quick tears shone in Stella’s expressive eyes.

“I’m sorry for them—I love them,” she murmured; “but oh, Bishop! I do so miss dear Mother and Father Waring!”

“I miss them, too,” the Bishop responded, with such delicate sympathy in his tones that she found the courage to go on.

“I miss my—my friends in Laurel, too, Bishop! I—I’m afraid I don’t know enough for the work either; and yet I do truly want to help.”

“Of course you do, my child,” responded the Bishop. “Why, the very name we gave you in baptism signifies a star—a light unto the Gentiles—a candle that shall be set upon a candle-stick to give light to all that are in the house. That is what we have always expected of you. And even the name the old women gave you when they saved you from the sad fate that overtook your father’s people—The-One-who-was-left-Alive! You must have been kept alive for some good purpose; always remember that, Stella. Have you ever thought that you might like to go back to the East for more training—perhaps for the training of a nurse?” he went on, the keen eyes searching her grave, downcast face.

Stella blushed more and more as it flashed upon her for the first time that the Bishop knew a good deal about the last six years of her life—had doubtless been in correspondence with Laurel friends.

“I—I think I would, Bishop; only not just yet. You see, I promised Blue Earth. And besides,” she went on, with desperate honesty, “the white people here seem to think I know too much already. They seem not to like me because I—I suppose I am different from the other Indian girls.”

A sudden sternness drove the smile from the Bishop’s face, and for a moment or two he was quite silent, while the sweet-toned bell in the church tower began its call to sunset prayer.

“We will talk of this again,” he said, very gently. “God bless you, my dear child!” And he was gone.

With blurred eyes and dizzy brain Stella blindly followed the throng of gayly dressed, yet most quiet and reverent worshipers, young men and maidens, old men and children, mothers with babes in arms, and took her place in the great circle upon the bare prairie sod. In the center of the ring the Bishop and his ministers, many of whom showed earnest dark faces above the snowy surplices, read the prayers of the church and gave utterance to the Christian hymns that rose in a great wave of devotion to the skies. The soft syllables of her native Dakota tongue seemed to fit the dear, familiar words, and no one who looked upon that scene could ever have guessed that only eighteen years before those tawny hills had been black with armed men, and that peaceful plain strewed with the tortured forms of the dead and dying.

That needless, unpremeditated, pitiful slaughter of helpless children and women, so recklessly thrust in the way of the all-conquering white man! Stella tried not to dwell upon it; but whenever she was deeply moved the prostrate figure of the nameless mother would appear before her eyes—an ample womanly form shrouded in a dark blanket, and always with the face hidden.

To-night the crowd and the music and the beauty of the sunset and the Bishop’s words together had so wrought upon her, that the mother who sheltered her from the bullets seemed very near, and, forgetting pride and resentment and a certain secret longing, Stella gave herself up wholly to the deep magic of the hour. In her soul there reverberated that phrase Father Waring had once repeated to them, as coming from the lips of one of his native helpers:

“Pray for my people when the sun goes down!”