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Read Ebook: Members of the Family by Wister Owen Dunn Harvey Illustrator
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Ebook has 1338 lines and 61975 words, and 27 pages
PAGE
FACING PAGE
"High Bear galloped away into the dusk" 56
"Out of the door he flew,--squaws and bucks flapped after him like poultry" 66
"'Is Sistah Stone heah?' Leonidas inquired" 108
"'If that I was where I would be, then should I be where I am not'" 126
"The stage rattled up as I sat" 171
"I found nothing new--the plain, the sage-brush, the dry ground--no more" 188
"He shuffled the shells straight at the freighter as if he were making love to him" 216
"How could he know that Bellyful had only become a road-agent in the last ten minutes?" 226
"'My, but it's turrable easy to get married'" 284
"'Well, Jimsy, are you going to get me any wood for this stove--or ain't you?'" 296
HAPPY-TEETH
Scipio Le Moyne lay in bed, held together with bandages. His body had need for many bandages. A Bar-Circle-Zee three-year-old had done him violent mischief at the forks of Stinking Water. But for the fence, Scipio might have swung clear of the wild, rearing animal. When they lifted his wrecked frame from the ground one of them had said:--
"A spade's all he'll need now."
Overhearing this with some still unconquered piece of his mind, Scipio made one last remark: "I ain't going to die for years and years."
Upon this his head had rolled over, and no further statements came from him for--I forget how long. Yet somehow, we all believed that last remark of his.
"Since I've known him," said the Virginian, "I have found him a truthful man."
"Which don't mean," Honey Wiggin put in, "that he can't lie when he ought to."
Judge Henry always sent his hurt cow-punchers to the nearest surgical aid, which in this case was the hospital on the reservation. Here then, one afternoon, Scipio lay, his body still bound tight at a number of places, but his brain needing no bandages whatever; he was able to see one friend for a little while each day. It was almost time for this day's visitor to go, and the visitor looked at his watch.
"Oh, don't do that!" pleaded the man in bed. "I'm not sick any more."
"You will be sick some more if you keep talking," replied the Virginian.
"Thinkin' is a heap more dangerous, if y'u can't let it out," Scipio urged. "I'm not half through tellin' y'u about Horacles."
"Did his mother name him that?" inquired the Virginian.
"Do you understand girls?" the Virginian interrupted.
"Better'n Horacles. Well, now it seems he can't understand Indians. Here he is sellin' goods to 'em across the counter at the Agency store. I could sell twiced what he does, from what they tell me. I guess the Agent has begun to discover what a trick the Uncle played him when he unloaded Horacles on him. Now why did the Uncle do that?"
But the Virginian had seen the pain transfix his friend's face, and though that face had instantly smiled, it was white. He stood up. "I'd ought to get kicked from here to the ranch," he said, remorsefully. "I'll get the doctor."
Vainly the man in bed protested; his visitor was already at the door.
"I've not told y'u about his false teeth!" shrieked Scipio, hoping this would detain him. "And he does tricks with a rabbit and a bowl of fish."
But the guest was gone. In his place presently the Post surgeon came, and was not pleased. Indeed, this excellent army doctor swore. Still, it was not the first time that he had done so, nor did it prove the last; and Scipio, it soon appeared, had given himself no hurt. But in answer to a severe threat, he whined:--
"Oh, ain't y'u goin' to let me see him to-morro'?"
"You'll see nobody to-morrow except me."
"Well, that'll be seein' nobody," whined Scipio, more grievously.
The doctor grinned. "In some ways you're incurable. Better go to sleep now." And he left him.
Scipio did not go to sleep then, though by morning he had slept ten healthful hours, waking with the Uncle still at the centre of his thoughts. It made him again knit his brows.
"No, you can't see him to-day," said the doctor, in reply to a request.
"But I hadn't finished sayin' something to him," Scipio protested. "And I'm well enough to see my dead grandmother."
"That I'll not forbid," answered the doctor. And he added that the Virginian had gone back to Sunk Creek with some horses.
"Oh, yes," said Scipio. "I'd forgot. Well, he'll be coming through on his way to Billings next week. You been up to the Agency lately? Yesterday? Well, there's going to be something new happen. Agent seem worried or anything?"
"Not that I noticed. Are the Indians going on the war-path?"
"Nothing like that. But why does a senator of the United States put his nephew in that store? Y'u needn't to tell me it's to provide for him, for it don't provide. I thought I had it figured out last night, but Horacles don't fit. I can't make him fit. He don't understand Injuns. That's my trouble. Now the Uncle must know Horacles don't understand. But if he didn't know?" pursued Scipio, and fell to thinking.
"Well," said the doctor indulgently, as he rose, "it's good you can invent these romances. Keeps you from fretting, shut up here alone."
"There'd be no romances here," retorted Scipio. "Uncle is exclusively hard cash." The doctor departed.
At his visit next morning, he was pleased with his patient's condition. "Keep on," said he, "and I'll let you sit up Monday for ten minutes. Any more romances?"
"Been thinkin' of my past life," said Scipio.
The doctor laughed long. "Why, how old are you, anyhow?" he asked at length.
"Oh, there's some lovely years still to come before I'm thirty. But I've got a whole lot of past life, all the same." Then he pointed a solemn, oracular finger at the doctor. "What white man savvys the Injun? Not you. Not me. And I've drifted around some, too. The map of the United States has been my home. Been in Arizona and New Mexico and among the Siwashes--seen all kinds of Injun--but I don't savvy 'em. I know most any Injun's better'n most any white man till he meets the white man. Not smarter, y'u know, but better. And I do know this: You take an Injun and let him be a warrior and a chief and a grandfather who has killed heaps of white men in his day--but all that don't make him grown up. Not like we're grown up. He stays a child in some respects till he's dead. He'll believe things and be scared at things that ain't nothin' to you and me. You take Old High Bear right on this reservation. He's got hair like snow and eyes like an eagle's and he can sing a war-song about fights that happened when our fathers were kids. But if you want to deal with him, you got to remember he's a child of five."
"I do know all this," said the doctor, interested. "I've not been twenty years on the frontier for nothing."
"Horacles don't know it," said Scipio. "I've saw him in the store all season."
"Well," said the doctor, "see you to-morrow. I've some new patients in the ward."
"Soldiers?"
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