Chapter II: The Girl From Dakota

Lucy Waring had no warriors’ blood that she knew of to fall back upon, so perhaps it was partly her long association with the stoics of the plains that made it possible for her to turn over her little girl to the “new teacher,” the very next day, with the stiff smile of her New England forebears under social duress—to drag her eyes away from the wild, despairing courage of Yellow Star’s great black ones—to walk quite steadily out of the door and down the long flight of wooden steps and along the drowsy village street, without even a backward look to share or soften the imaginary terrors of School.

These took no worse form, just at first, than the curious but not unfriendly stares of forty-two pairs of critical young eyes, and the penetrating susurrus of forty-two edged voices, all of which the Indian girl felt with a pricking and tingling anguish in every fiber of her sensitive body, as she sat rigid in a front seat, directly facing the teacher’s desk.

Then the second bell rang, and there was a hush. As soon as she could, after opening exercises, Miss Morrison supplied the new pupil with pen and ink and the usual blank for the school record. It looked something like this:

Your name in full.
Date of birth. Year, month and day.
Name of father.
Father’s occupation.
School previously attended.
What grade were you in?

A wild glance down the length of the paper made it certain that her worst fears had been promptly realized, and poor Stella, after setting down her new name, Stella Waring, sat staring at the other five questions, fairly tense with nervous dread, until her busy teacher had found time to note the situation. Then she bent over the girl from Dakota and asked very kindly, in a low voice:

“Why don’t you put down your age and your father’s name, Stella?”

“I do not know my date of birth, year, month and day; I do not know my father’s name and occupation, and I never went to school before,” she replied in tones sharpened by fright, so that they rang through the crowded school-room, causing an audible gasp of astonishment.

“Why, I was certainly told that you belonged here,” wondered Miss Morrison; then, with ready tact divining something of the girl’s embarrassment:

“Never mind about the questions just now. This is our lesson for to-day; look it over, please, and be prepared to stand and read when I call upon you.”

This Stella could do, and knew she could. Abundant time was given to recover herself; then the paragraph assigned was read, if somewhat slowly and with the faintest trace of foreign accent, yet distinctly, and with more delicacy of modulation than perhaps any other in that room could command.

“Very good, indeed,” approved Miss Morrison; and this time the slight buzz sounded almost like encouragement, and the pricking and tingling were less agonizing than before.

When the others passed out at recess, Stella remained in her seat at a sign from the teacher, who sat down beside her and bent her violet-scented brown head sympathetically toward her singular but far from unattractive new pupil.

“About the age, dear,” she began, tentatively, “surely you must know…”

“I am supposed to be thirteen years old, Miss Morrison, but I have not any birthday. Mother—I mean Mrs. Waring—always makes me a birthday cake on the nineteenth of February, because she says it is so sort of lonesome not to have a birthday. But I do not know _really_, so of course I could not put it down on the paper. You see, I … I was _found_! I never heard my father’s name or my mother’s name either—nobody knows who they were.”

Here the clear voice got somehow muffled, and the warm-hearted teacher hastily assured her that it didn’t matter one bit about the questions—she had had no idea—and impulsively she took the hated paper out of the little girl’s sensitive brown hand.

It might have been as well if Lucy Waring had explained matters somewhat before her abrupt departure; but the truth was that she had strung her difficult courage to the necessary point of leaving the child to her own resources in this strange, and possibly unfriendly, new environment. The effort had carried her to a really unnecessary extreme; she had forgotten that Yellow Star’s personal history was as yet quite unknown in Laurel.

Miss Morrison felt the incident to be a touching one. She even reproached herself for thoughtless adherence to routine, and during the rest of the morning gave a quite unusual degree of attention to her new charge. It appeared that Stella had the correct eye and delicate hand of her race; she was an excellent penman; she had been well drilled in the essentials. More: she was eager, alert, intense—quick to spring upon an idea as a cat upon its prey.

Most of the children went home at noon, and no sooner was school dismissed than Cynthia Parker, whose near-sighted brown eyes had been turned anxiously, half maternally toward the stranger, at the cost of frequent, though not unusual, blunders in her own recitations, darted to her side and began to speak rapidly.

“I know who you are; Doris Brown told me; she’s that yellow-haired girl in pink—see! she’s looking this way. My name’s Cynthia Parker and I hope we’ll be friends—I read everything I can get hold of about Indians—mother says I’m just like one. Do you like dogs?” And almost before Stella could find breath to reply, in her pretty, precise English, that she did, Sin had taken up the tale.

“I’ve got two—that’s the big one waiting for me outside—his name’s Sir Walter Scott, but we call him Scotty for short. Here, Scotty, old fellow!” And as the gaunt hound rushed upon them both, nearly knocking them down in his eagerness, she threw her arms around his homely neck and hugged him with an unaffected ardor that quite warmed the new girl’s heart.

“Let’s walk slowly and get behind; can we?” she whispered, shyly. “They do look at us so!” In fact, there was unwonted lingering that day, and much open whispering, which the three pretended to ignore. Doris had waited, as usual, and joined them at the door.

“Of course we can; nobody has dinner till half past twelve, and it’s only five minutes’ walk to your house,” she assented, pleasantly, while Cynthia bluntly remarked:

“They’re awfully disappointed, you know, because you didn’t wear your Indian suit to-day—a blanket and feathers in your hair. Why, you look almost exactly like anybody else, in that nice, brown linen.”

“Indian girls don’t wear feathers; only the men do that,” smiled the new girl, who much preferred to “look like anybody else,” and found personalities a bit embarrassing. Still, she was feeling a good deal better in the company of her new-found friends.

“Then do they all wear pretty blouses and stylish hats?” Sin unblushingly inquired.

“Well, there aren’t many of the old-style dresses left among the Sioux—my people. Why, a blanket robe trimmed with real elks’ teeth, or one of beaded doeskin, is worth a hundred dollars! Besides, nearly all the girls go to school nowadays, and wear dresses and hats like mine,—only not quite so pretty, perhaps, because my dear mother made these and she has such good taste,” ended Stella, loyally and lovingly.

“Mrs. Waring is perfectly lovely, I think,” began Doris, tactfully, but suddenly broke off with a little cry of dismay.

“Oh, Sin! whose dog is that? Hadn’t you better get the chain on Scotty?”

Alas, the warning came too late! The strange dog had already offered some nameless canine impertinence to Sir Walter, whose temper was none of the most patient. Instantly he hurled himself upon the new-comer, and the fight was on.

The three girls had purposely loitered, and the quiet street was almost deserted. It was the universal dinner hour, and boys and girls were rapidly disappearing down various side streets, urged homewards by the double spur of sharp young appetites and savory odors of “mother’s cooking.”

“Help! help!” screamed Sin, and forthwith flung herself with more valor than discretion upon the wallowing mass in the middle of the dusty road.

Doris grew very white, as she set her back to the hedge, drew her spotless skirts tightly around her, and earnestly begged her friend to “be careful!” But heedless, brave, loving Sin, crying loudly now and terribly alarmed for Scotty’s safety, persisted in wild and none too prudent attempts to drag him bodily forth from the fray. The strange dog had fastened viciously upon his throat, and the fight began to look serious. Why _didn’t_ some one come?

In that very minute some one did, and the “some one” was no other than the girl from Dakota. She had broken a stout switch from an apple-tree that overhung the sidewalk near at hand, and was belaboring the strange dog in a steady, business-like fashion, at the same time calling him off in ringing tones, and in a language that he evidently understood, if her astonished classmates did not.

“Kigelá! kigelá!” they thought they heard her say, over and over; and whether the strange words composed a sort of charm or secret incantation for dogs, or whether it was some compelling power in the personality of the black-haired girl, or merely the flail-like regularity of her vigorous blows, it is certain at any rate that he soon let go his hold, and ran yelping away.

Sir Walter, gallantly scrambling to his long legs and shaking his bleeding but still warlike head, would gladly have followed, but was forcibly restrained by his disheveled mistress, who had contrived at last to snap the chain upon his collar, and while breathlessly dragging him homewards, did not forget to call back over her shoulder in broken phrases her admiring gratitude to Yellow Star.