Chapter XV
I Return to My People

THE LONG SUMMER days went one by one, lingeringly, peacefully, happily. No war parties attacked us, and the young men who went out to war upon other tribes returned spoil-laden, without loss to their numbers. Perhaps in those times I was not much given to thinking about things; but I knew when I was content, was fully satisfied with the returns of each day and hour, and looked not to the future nor what it might have in store for me. But one thing troubled me, the insistent letters from home, commanding me to return. Thev were several months old when I got them, as were my New York Tribunes and other papers. I ceased reading any more than the headlines of the papers; they had no more interest to me, but I could not help worrying about the contents of the letters. There were grave reasons why I should heed them, should go home on or before the date that I became of age. Many an unpleasant half hour I passed after breaking their seals, and then, consigning them to the flames of the lodge fire, I would go out with Nät-ah'-ki for a ride, or to some feast or social gathering. It was interesting to note the extreme care with which my mail was handled. It was securely bunched up by my Fort Benton friends, and then those to whom it was entrusted rewrapped and rebound it in various coverings. The Blackfeet ever regarded the arts of writing and reading as the greatest of accomplishments. Some of them would sit for hours inspecting the pictures in my magazines and papers, and although they persisted in holding them sideways, or even upside down, they seemed, nevertheless, to grasp their significance. Nät-ah'-ki was wont to spread out my letters and endeavor to learn what they told, although, of course, she knew not even a letter of the alphabet. She early came to know my mother's handwriting, and when I received letters from others written in characteristically feminine style, she would watch me closely as I read them and then question me as to the writers. "Oh," I would carelessly answer, "they are from relatives, women of our house, just telling me the news and asking if I am well and happy."

And then she would shake her head doubtfully, and exclaim: "Relatives! Oh, yes, relatives! Tell me truly how many sweethearts you have in the land from whence you came?"

Then I would truthfully answer, swearing by the Sun, calling upon him to bear witness that I had but the one sweetheart, she there present, and she would be content—until I received another bundle of letters. As the summer wore on these letters became more frequent, and I realized with ever-increasing regret that my days of happy, irresponsible wandering were about over, that I must go home and begin the career which was expected of me.

We left the Marias not long after the death of the Snake woman, moved south by the way of the Pend d'Oreille Coulée and the Knees, and camped on the Teton River, the stream which Lewis and Clark named the Tansy, and which the Blackfeet rightly call Un'-i-kis-is-i-si-sak-ta, Milk River, for its waters in its lower course are ever of a milky color. Late in August we moved to a point on this stream only three miles north of Fort Benton, and every day or so I used to ride in there, often accompanied by Nät-ah'-ki, whose desire for various brightcolored prints, ribbons, shawls, and beads, was well nigh insatiable. There we found Berry and his good wife, his mother, and the Crow woman, the two latter recently returned from a sojourn with the Mandans. And thither, one day, came Sorrel Horse and his outfit. He and Berry were making preparations for the winter trade. I was beginning to feel pretty blue. I showed them my letters, told them what was expected of me, and declared that I must return east. They both laughed long, loudly, uproariously, and slapped each other on the back, and I gazed solemnly, reproachfully at them. I could not see that I had joked or said anything funny.

"He's goin' home," said Sorrel Horse, "and he's goin' to be a good, quiet little boy ever after."

"And go to church," said Berry.

"And walk the straight and narrer path, world without end, and so forth," Sorrel Horse concluded.

"Well, you see how it is," I said. "I've got to go—much as I would like to remain here with you; I simply must go."

"Yes," Berry acquiesced; "you have to go all right—but you'll come back. Oh, yes! you'll come back, and sooner than you think. These plains and mountains, the free life have you, and they'll never let go.

I've known others to return to the States from here, but unless they died back there right quick, they soon came back. They couldn't help it. Mind you, I've been back there myself; went to school there, and all the time old Montana kept calling me, and I never felt right until I saw the sun shining on her bare plains once more and the Rockies looming up sharp and clear in the distance."

"And then," Sorrel Horse put in, speaking Blackfoot, which was as easy to him as English, "and then, what about Nät-ah'-ki? Can you forget her, do you think?"

He had, indeed, touched the sore spot. That was what was worrying me. I couldn't answer. We were sitting in a comer of Keno Bill's place. I jumped tip from my chair, hurried out, and mounting my horse, rode swiftly over the hill to camp.

We ate our evening meal: dried meat and back fat (o-sak'i), stewed dried apples—how good they were—and yeast powder bread. In due time I went to bed, and for hours I rolled and tossed uneasily on my couch. "Nät-ah'-ki," I finally asked, "are you awake?"

"Ah."

"I want to tell you something: I must go away for a time; my people call me."

"That is not news to me. I have long known that you would go."

"How did you know?" I asked. "I told no one."

"Have I not seen you read the little writings? Have I not watched your face? I could see what the writing told you. I know that you are going to leave me. I have always known that you would. You are no different from other white men. They are all unfaithful, heartless. They marry for but a day,"

She began to cry; not loud, just low, despairing, heartbroken sobs. Oh, how I hated myself. How I did hate myself. But I had opened the subject. I felt that I must carry it through, and I began to lie to her, hating myself more and more every moment. I told her that I was now twenty-one, at which time a white youth becomes a man. That there were papers about the property which my father had left that I must go home to sign. "But," I said, and I called on the Sun to witness my words, "I will return; I will come back in a few moons, and we will once more be happy. While I am away Berry will look out for you and your good mother. You shall want for nothing."

And thus, explaining, lying, I drove away her fear and sorrow, and she fell peacefully asleep. But there was no sleep for me. In the morning I again rode in to the Fort and talked long vith Berry. He agreed to look after the girl and her mother and keep them supplied A4tb all necessary food and clothing until such a time, I explained, "as Nät-ah'-ki will forget me and become some other man's woman." I nearly choked when I said it.

Berry laughed quietly. "She will never be another man's woman," he said. "You vill be only too glad to return. I shall see you again inside of six months."

The last steamboat of the season was discharging freight at the levee, and was to leave for St. Louis in the morning. I went back to camp and prepared to leave on it. There was not much to do, merely to pack up a few native things I wished to take home. Nät-ah'-ki rode back with me, and we passed the night with Berry and his family. It was not a festive time to me. Berry's mother and the faithful old Crow woman both lectured me long and earnestly on the duty of man to woman, on faithfulness—and what they said hurt, for I was about to do that which they so strongly condemned.

And so, in the morning, Nät-ah'-ki and I parted, and I shook hands with everyone and went on board. The boat swung out into the stream, turned around, and we went flying down the swift current, over the Shonkin Bar and around the bend. The old Fort, the happy days of the past year, were now but a memory.

There were a number of passengers aboard, mostly miners from Helena and Virginia City, returning to the States with more or less dust.

They gambled, and drank, and in a vain effort to get rid of my thoughts, I joined in their madness. I remember that I lost three hundred dollars at one sitting, and that the bad liquor made me very ill. Also, I nearly fell overboard near Cow Island. We had run into a large herd of buffalo swimming the river, and I tried to rope a huge old bull from the bow of the boat. The loop settled fairly over his head, but we had not counted on such a shock as I and the three others helping me got when the rope tightened. In an instant it was jerked from our hands. I lost my balance, and would have followed it into the water had not the next man behind happened to catch me by the collar and draw me back.

We tied up to the shore each night; there were constant head winds after we entered Dakota, and when early in October we arrived at Council Bluffs, I was glad to leave the boat and board a train of the Union Pacific. In due time I arrived in the little New England town where was my home.

I saw the place and the people with new eyes; I cared for neither of them any more. It was a pretty place, but it was —all fenced up, and for a year I had lived in the beyond, where fences were unknown, The people were good people, but, oh! how narrow-minded. Their ways were as prim and conventional as were the hideous fences which marked the bounds of their farms. And this is the way most of them greeted me: "Ah! my boy, so you've come home, have you. Been a hull year in the Indian country. It"s a wonder you wasn't scalped, Those Indians are terrible bad people, so I've heard. Wall, you've had your fling; I suppose you'll steady down now and go into business of some kind."

To only two men in the whole place could I tell anything of what I bad seen or done, for they were the only ones who could understand. One was a humble painter, ostracized by all good people because he never went to church, and would occasionally enter a saloon in broad daylight. The other was a grocer. Both of them were fox and partridge hunters, and loved the ways of the wild. Night after night I would sit with them by the grocery stove, long after the staid villagers had retired, and talk of the great plains and the mountains, of the game and the red people. And in their excitement, as their minds pictured that wonderful land and its freedom, they would get up and pace the floor, and sigh, and rub their hands. They wanted to see it all, to experience it all as I had, but they were "bound to the wheel." It was impossible for them to leave home, and wife, and children. I felt sorry for them.

But even to them I said nothing about a certain other tie which bound me to that land of sunshine. There was not a moment of my waking hours in which I did not think of Nät-ah'-ki and the wrong I had done her. Across the several thousand miles which separated us, I could see her in my mind's eye, helping her mother in the various occupations of the lodge, and her manner was listless; no more her hearty infectious laughter rang out, and in her eyes there was an expression which was far from happy. Thus I pictured her by day, and in my dreams at night, awakening to find myself talking Blackfoot to her, and trying to explain away my faithlessness. The days passed for me in deadly monotony, and I was in constant strife with my relatives. Not with my mother, I am thankful to say. I think that she rather sympathized with me. But there were uncles and aunts, and others, old friends of my long-dead father, all well-meaning, of course, who thought that it was incumbent on them to advise me, and shape my future. And from the start we were antagonistic. They brought me to task for refusing to attend church. To attend church! To listen to a sermon, forsooth, upon predestination, and the actual hell of fire and brimstone awaiting all who lapsed from the straight and narrow path. I no longer believed that. My year with old Mother Nature, and ample time to think, had taught me many things. Not a day passed but what I got a lecture from some of them, because, for instance, I drank a harmless glass of beer vith some trapper or guide from the North Woods. There was more real human kindliness, more broad-mindedness in one of those simple men of the woods, than there was in the hearts of all my persecutors.

Diagonally across the way from us lived a good old Methodist. It was his habit to ascend to the attic of a Sunday and pray. On a suminer day, when windows were open, one could hear him for hours at a time, entreating his God to forgive his many and grievous sins—he had never committed one—and to grant him an humble place in the life hereafter. He also came and besought me to change my ways. To change my ways! What had I done, I wondered, that made all these people so anxious about me? Was this man's life a happy one? No: he lived in constant fear of a jealous God. What had I done? I had been friendly to certain black sheep who longed for a pleasant word. I had entered the hotel bar and in broad daylight clinked glasses with them. These were not, in my estimation, sins. But, deep down in my heart, there lay a heavy load. One wrong thing I had done, a grievous one. What of Nät-ah'-ki?

There came a certain night when all the well-meaning ones were gathered at our home. They had decided that I should buy out a retiring merchant, who, in the course of forty or fifty years, had acquired a modest competency. That was the last straw. I arose in my wrath, and tried to tell them what I thought of the narrow life they led; but words failed me, and, seizing my hat, I fled from the house. It was past midnight when I returned, but my mother was waiting for me. We sat down by the fire and talked the matter out. I reminded her that from earliest youth I had preferred the forests and streams, rifle and rod, to the so-called attractions of society, and that I felt I could not bear to live in a town or city, nor undertake a civilized occupation of any kind, especially one which would keep me confined in a store or office. And she, wise woman, agreed that as my heart was not in it, it would be useless to attempt anything of the kind. And she also admitted that, since I had come to love the plains and mountains so well, it was best that I should return to them. I said nothing about Nät-ah'-ki. Some time in the future, I determined, when I had done the right thing, she should learn all. For the first time in weeks I went to bed with a light heart. Two days later I boarded a train, and in due time, arriving in St. Louis, put up with genial Ben Stickney of the Planters' Hotel. There I fell in touch with things once more. I met men from Texas and Arizona, from Wyoming and Montana, and we talked of the fenceless land, of the Indians and the buffalo trade, of cattle and miners, and various adventures we had experienced. We would congregate in the lobby of an evening and sit there talking and smoking until long after midnight, or we would go out in a body and see the town in true Western style. If we were a trifle hilarious, the police were good, and kindly looked the other way when our sombreroed crowd tramped by, singing perchance, at the top of our voices.

Also, I did not forget Nät-ah'-ki. I bought another trunk, and prowling around among the stores picked up various washable things of quaint and pretty pattern, strings of beads, a pair of serpent bracelets, a gold necklace, and various other articles dear to the feminine heart. At last the trunk was so full that 1 could barely lock it, and then, gathering up my things, I boarded a train for Corinne, Wyoming. We were, I believe, four days and nights en route. From there by stage to Helena, a week, and on to Fort Benton, two days more. My first inquiry was for Berry. He was down at the mouth of the Marias, the trader told me, with the Piegans, but his mother and the Crow woman were living in the little cabin above, and, with a knowing wink, he added that he believed a certain young woman named Nät-ah'-ki was with them.

It was very early in the morning. I hurried out and up the dusty trail. A faint smoke was beginning to arise from the chimney of the little cabin. I pushed open the door and entered. Nät-ah'-ki was kneeling before the fireplace blowing the reluctant flame. "Alh," she cried, springing up and running to me, "he has come! My man has come!" She threw her arms around my neck and kissed me, and in another instant she was in the next room crying out: "Awake, arise; my man has returned!"

Berry's mother and the Crow woman hurried out and also embraced and kissed me, and we all tried to talk at once, Nät-ah'-ki hanging to my arm and gazing at me with brimming eyes. "Ah," she said, over and over, "they kept telling me that you would not come back, but I knew that they were wrong. I knew that you would not forget me."

Truly, these were my people. I had returned to my own. Comewhat might, I vowed never to even think of leaving the little woman again, and I kept my word. Kept it, say I—I never had cause nor wish to do anything else.

That was a queer breakfast Nät-ah'-ki and I had; in fact, no breakfast at all. We gave up attempting to eat, and she recounted all that had happened during my absence. Then she questioned me: What had I been doing all this time? What had I seen? Was my good mother well? I had nothing to relate. I wanted to hear her talk, to watch her happiness, and in that I was happy, too. In due time my trunks were brought over, and handing her the key of one, I said that it and its contents were all hers. What exclamations of surprise, of admiration there were as she unwrapped and unfolded the various things and spread them out here and there on table and couch and chairs. She threw the necklace on over her head, clasped on the bracelets, ran over and gave me a silent kiss, and then laid them away. "They are too nice, too good," she said. "I am not handsome enough to wear them."

Then she came back and whispered: "But all these are too many for me. May I give some of them to my grandmothers?"—meaning Mrs. Berry and the Crow woman.

In the lot there were several quiet dress patterns, a couple of shawls, which I had intended for them, and I said that they would be appropriate gifts for women of advanced age. How happy she was as she picked them up and presented them to the faithful friends. I look back upon that morning as the pleasantest one of my life.

After a while I strolled out and down to Keno Bill's place. It was December, but there was no snow on the ground. The sun shone warm, a gentle chinook was bloving. I thought of the far-a-way New England village shrouded in three feet of snow, and shivered.

I found the usual crowd in Keno's place. judge D., a brilliant lawyer and an ex-commander in the Fenian war, was playing the marshal a game of seven-up for the drinks. Some bull-whackers and muleskinners were bucking faro. A couple of buckskin-clad, kit-foxcapped, moccasined trappers were arguing on the best way to set a beaver trap in an ice-covered dam. They were all glad to see me, and I was promptly escorted to the bar. Several asked casually, what was new in the States? Not that they cared anything about them; they spoke of them as of some far-off and foreign country.

"Hm!" said judge D., "you didn't remain there long, did you, my boy?"

"No," I replied, "I didn't; Montana is good enough for me."

"Montana!" cried the judge, lifting his glass. "Here's to her and her sun-kissed plains. Here's to her noble mountains; her Indians and buffalo; and to those of us whom kind fortune has given a life within her bounds. Of all men, we are most favored of the gods."

We all cheered the toast—and drank.

So it used to happen in the frontier towns. One man begins in the morning to assuage a suddenly acquired thirst, and one by one, and by twos, and threes, and fours, the rest join in, merchants, lawyers, doctors, and all, until not a sober man is left, until all are hilarious, and half seas over. Judge D.—peace to his ashes—started it; by 4 o'clock in the afternoon things were pretty lively. I left the crowd and went home. The buffalo robe, couch and a pipe, the open fire and Nät-ah'-ki's cheerful presence, were more to my liking.

At sundown, who should roll in but Berry and Sorrel Horse, with their women. How glad I was to see them all again. "You didn't think that I would return?" I hazarded.

They laughed. "Didn't I tell you that you would," said Berry. "I only wonder that you didn't come sooner."

We sat by the fire until late, the women chattering in another room. We went to bed. "Little woman," I said, taking her hand, "pity your man; he is not so good as he might be; there are bad places in his heart—"

"Stop!" she exclaimed. "Stop! You are good, all good. I would not have you different from what you are. You have come back to me. I cannot tell how happy I am—I have not power to do so."

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