Chapter XVIII: Facing the Sunrise

“I don’t see how they can _breathe_, do you?” Stella prettily apologized to the agency doctor, her bright face a pleasant enough sight in his musty old office, its shelves filled with unwholesome drugs reaching from floor to ceiling. Still a “fresh-air” enthusiast, as in the old Laurel days, she had insisted upon holding long consultations with this official, until he had simply been obliged to rouse himself and forsake the old routine of doling out these same drugs to a long line of Indians,—so far, at least, as Cherry Creek was concerned. Curious, how that young woman would take a personal interest in every single case.

Accordingly, he had entrusted to her a shelf of simple remedies, and had fallen into the habit of sending her full written directions for the care of patients in her neighborhood, especially the children. After she had brought the village almost single-handed through an epidemic of measles, with not a single fatality, he did not withhold from her the praise she certainly deserved, for measles had been regarded as generally fatal among the camp children.

Not satisfied with her accomplishments as a nurse, the young field matron had ideas of her own, which, as confidence grew, she imparted to her ally the doctor, and through him they gradually sifted into the office, and sometimes even appeared on official estimates and requisitions. It was, in fact, at her suggestion that the assistant farmers throughout the reservation had been instructed to teach milking and feeding calves by hand, so that there might be milk for young children and motherless babies. An improved brand of vegetable seeds supplied in greater variety had likewise produced good results. Perhaps her best idea was that of building mud and stone chimneys on to the unventilated log cabins—a plan that might have saved many lives if there had been energy enough available to put it into effect. To be sure, there were plenty of tents for tuberculous patients, but to suggest moving from a house into a teepee would have been far too reactionary.

Within eighteen months, she had become quite the autocrat of her own little village—old Standing Cloud being merely the figure-head. She had drilled her small household with infinite patience—and not without a long siege with Grandmother—to such “civilized” habits as regular meal-times, sitting down at table, and a weekly wash-day. The children’s bath night was duly observed, even though the ceremony must take place in a wooden wash-tub beside the kitchen stove.

After all this, it really was hard that when their own darling baby—Little Girl, they called her—came down with acute bronchitis, Grandmother and even Blue Earth suddenly rebelled, and obstinately refused to have anything to do with the “white man’s way.” The little stove was kept constantly stuffed with wood, and the baby lay gasping on the bed, rolled in unsavory quilts, reeking with heat and untouched for days by a drop of water. To all Stella’s pleas for a warm bath, an open window, even in an adjoining room, she received the sullen reply:

“This is no time for fooling. It didn’t matter when Little Girl was well, but now she is very sick. If we are not careful she will die!”

It was the dead of winter, but nevertheless Stella rode the fifteen miles to the agency on her faithful pony, saw the doctor, and even persuaded him to ride back with her. Backed by his authority, she took bodily possession of the sick child, gave it an alcohol rub, air, and medicine, and watched through the long, silent night.

Next morning, Little Girl was plainly worse. Grandmother crawled out-of-doors and tied a rag of red calico to a pole—her pitiful, unspoken prayer to the Powers! Her hoarse voice could be heard in the pauses of the wind, chanting a weird and mournful song.

Stella inwardly trembled at the sound, and all the spirits of her ancestors seemed to upbraid her from the dull, resentful eyes of the tormented mother, who sat huddled on the bed like a crouching animal, staring at the intruder with a look that said plainly:

“You have an Indian skin, but a white heart. If my child dies, _you_ will have killed her!”

The girl shut her eyes and her ears, and she, too, prayed.

But she didn’t forget when the time came to give the doctor’s medicine. Hours passed like a bad dream, until, as she bent over the loved little form, a moment was enough to note the easier breathing, the beads of sweat on the pinched baby face. And that terror had gone by.

* * * * *

It was now late August, and no rain had fallen on the reservation for many weeks. The waving sea of prairie grass, vivid in May as a green gem, was now of a rufous brown. Water-holes were sucked dry; the smaller creeks had quite forsaken their sandy beds, and many of the people had to drive their cattle and horses long miles to water, every morning and evening.

The “Little Father” sat humped up in his office chair, with his coat off, discontentedly signing a batch of official papers and heaping objurgations on the weather, when Blue-Coat unceremoniously made his way in at the wide-open door and thrust a letter under the agent’s nose. The letter was from Cherry Creek.

“There is a large prairie fire to the west of us and the wind is
blowing strong in our direction. I am sure the camp is in danger.
Only the women and two or three old men are at home. Please send
help at once.

“Respectfully,

“STELLA WARING.”

“Umph!” he grunted, rousing himself a trifle, however. “That all so, Lone Bull? Well, tell Pepper to step here a minute. Hello, Jack! here’s a windfall for you. The little field matron out at Cherry Creek wants to be saved from a prairie fire. That’s a Number One allotment she’s picked out—better get a move on at once. I’m looking for a tenderfoot from the East to-day; team’s just gone to the landing after him; may take a drive out that way later on. Good luck to you!”

* * * * *

When Jack Pepper pulled up his steaming span in front of Stella’s home, the girl was out with “Old Soup” and a rusty plow, trying, with the help of Blue Earth and one or two others, to drive a furrow around the threatened camp. But it was evident that their unaccustomed hands were making hard work of it. The advancing line of smoke and flame had drawn perceptibly nearer; a hot blast was blowing directly in their faces, and the red sun swam in an angry haze. The situation looked fairly serious.

“Hey, Stella! so you had to send for me, at last!” was the young man’s familiar greeting.

The girl looked past him with unseeing eyes. “I wrote to the _agent_,” she replied, shortly.

“Scared out of your wits, I’ll bet! Well, if I help you out of this scrape, what am I going to get for it, eh?” he persisted, coming closer.

Stella flashed one glance at the coarse face unpleasantly near her own, then at the winking red line of fire driven straight toward them on the wings of a strong wind. The fire was preferable, so far as she was concerned; but there were Blue Earth and her terrified babies and poor, helpless old Grandmother! There were many others in the same plight. Doubtless they could escape by hasty flight; but these poor huts held their little all on earth, and must they be abandoned? What was to be done?

“Will you take this plow? or shall I?” she blazed out. “You can see for yourself there’s no time to lose.”

“Well, of all the high-an’-mighty airs!—and her nothin’ more than a squaw, when all’s said an’ done,” muttered the man. “Say, Stella, you wait till the Major hears of your goin’s-on; ’tendin’ Injun dances late at night and all that sort of thing! I know more about you than you think I do, and maybe you’ll be sorry yet you tried to turn me down.”

Stella, choking with wrath, caught up the plow-handles again without a word and chirruped to the patient pony. As her eyes mechanically swept the horizon, though without hope of aid, they descried a rapidly driven team approaching from the direction of the agency. Jack saw her face lighten suddenly, and saw, too, what had done it. In hot haste he jerked a plow from the back of his wagon, hitched his waiting team, and started a furrow both wide and deep a few rods from the cabins, whose owners were running hither and thither in helpless terror.

Half-blinded with smoke, and quivering with outraged pride, Stella dropped her plow to confront the agent and another—a tall, well-knit youth who was hurrying forward with both hands outstretched.

“Ethan—why, Ethan!”

“I seem to be just in time, again, Stella,” was all he said, and the plow started with a running jerk as the gray pony felt a man’s hand on the bit.

Two hours later, when the danger was over, and the smoking prairie lay black in the path of the setting sun, two young people stood side by side on a bluff overlooking the Indian camp.

“What was that fellow saying to you just before we came up, anyway? I thought I noticed a spark in somebody’s eye that was considerably hotter than the prairie fire,” Ethan slyly observed.

“He … he doesn’t know any better, I suppose,” Stella murmured.

“Looked to me as though he needed kicking, all right,” the young man cheerfully assented, and something in the set of his jaw and the swing of his athletic shoulders hinted that Jack Pepper would do well to avoid his immediate neighborhood.

“Well, never mind him now. He isn’t worth it,” pursued her old friend. “Don’t you want to hear all the news from home? About the girls—and dear old Uncle Si? And your little ‘wild orphan?’ You know, I’m an orphan myself, Stella.”

“But you’re grown up,” she returned, not looking at him.

“So has the fawn grown up—and taken to the woods,” laughed the young man. “Come, Stella, I’ve brought you a message. Guess who it’s from. No, not Cynthia this time; not even the old Doctor. I’ve brought you a message from—Miss Sophia!”

He paused to observe the effect of his words, in the soft, black eyes that seemed to widen and deepen gloriously under his steady gaze.

“Yes, Miss Sophia isn’t so young as she was—and there’s something in her, after all, that’s stronger than prejudice and pride. It must have been there always, buried so deep down that nobody ever found it out. She simply can’t hold out any longer, all alone so. She wouldn’t write, dear, because she couldn’t; she sent me all this long way to find you, and tell you that she wants you to come home. Stella, will you come?”

“Miss Sophia wants me,” breathed Yellow Star. It seemed impossible—unbelievable. In these few, short years, many people had wanted her, or seemed to want her; but _Miss Sophia_!

For a full minute neither spoke. In the silence, the magical Dakota sunset blossomed rosy-red above the pair, who stood, as it were, cut off from all human companionship, a burned-out world under their feet, their heads in a paradise of color and ecstasy.

“_And all that’s best of dark and bright_
_Meets in her aspect and her eyes!_”

Ethan hummed the old song under his breath.

“Oh!” the Indian girl burst out at last, with something of the old frank impetuosity. “Do you know, Ethan, I seem to be two people again, just as in those first months in Laurel, when you teased me about having so many names”—(Ethan gently shook his head). “I’m pulled two ways at once; I so want to really belong, and I can’t tell where I belong! I know, now, that I can’t do for my people what I once thought I could, here on the reservation; and yet, isn’t it my place? I wonder what the Bishop would say.”

“Well, what _did_ he say?” sturdily responded Ethan.

“He did—yes, he _did_ tell me once I had better go back for more training—to learn to be a nurse.”

“Well, isn’t taking care of Miss Sophia pretty good training? I believe that just now, at any rate, you belong with her,” he answered promptly, with a masculine finality that steadied her swimming thoughts. “A lonely, loveless old woman needs you; you are all she has. Come home, dear; come home!”

“Blue Earth told me yesterday that she’s going to be married again—to Moses Blackstone. _She_ won’t need me any more,” half laughed, half sobbed the girl, recalling the dumb pleading that had so irritated her in those eyes of Moses’. She was all woman—our little Stella, and the personal note would not be denied. “It can’t be just yet, of course; I must take a month or two to wind up everything; but—yes—I’ll come!”

* * * * *

They had turned their backs upon the tiny, primitive village, and were facing the eastern horizon, remote and lovely in the transforming after-glow.

“And you graduate from the medical college when, Ethan? Isn’t it next year? Are you really going to settle down in Laurel?”

“Doctor Brown is anxious to divide his practice, but I haven’t given him my answer yet,” responded Ethan, his serious eyes upon the soft, averted cheek that had at last begun to burn with a delicate consciousness.

“You see, Stella, the _place_ doesn’t matter much,” he went on, with tender confidence. “Any place holds duties to fill a lifetime; it’s the _spirit_ that really counts. A doctor’s heart ought to be as large as all humanity, don’t you think so? I may go east; I may go west. I only know one thing surely … I must follow my Star!”

* * * * *

“I allers sort o’ mistrusted that Injuns was folks.” This was Grandma Brown’s comment, when she heard that Stella had been sent for at last. “Seems like there’s a sight of human nater in most all of us,—even in that Sophi’ Spellman!”