Chapter XXI
Never-Laughs Goes East
OWING TO THE ensuing stiffness and soreness of Ashton's leg, we deferred for a few days our departure from the camp. A Piegan who had been wounded in the fight on the previous day died during the night. The attacking party proved to be Assiniboins, and in all they lost seven of their number, the pursuing party which left our camp overtaking and killing two who were riding slow horses.
Nät-ah'-ki constituted herself protector and guardian of the orphan. The girl had two aunts, sisters of her dead mother, but they were married to a Blackfoot and were far away in the North. In the Piegan camp she had not a remaining relative. She was a shy, quiet slip of a girl, about thirteen or fourteen years of age. Just now she was more than usually quiet, never speaking except to answer a question, silently crying most of the time. Nät-ah'-ki remodeled some of her own clothes for her. The Crow Woman gave her a shawl. When she appeared dressed in a neat calico dress, her hair nicely braided and bound with a deep red ribbon, even Ashton's aesthetic sense was pleased. "She is a very comely girl," he remarked. "Poor thing! Whatever will become of her?"
"Well," I reminded him, "this is not a civilized community; she will be welcomed and provided for by any and every family in the camp."
Such was, indeed, the case. Many a woman came to our lodge and asked that the girl might live with her, each one saying that the mother had been her particular friend, or that her own daughter was the friend and playmate of the orphan, and for that reason she wished to give the lone one a home. Nät-ah'-ki invariably told them that the girl was free to go, or remain, and then the latter would say that they were all very kind, but she preferred to stay where she was for a time.
When I told Ashton what these visitors were asking, he seemed to be surprised, and said that he had rather doubted my view of their kindliness and charity. He sat silently musing and smoking a long time and then, more in the way of a joke than seriously, told me to say to the girl that as he had saved her from the Assiniboins, he thought that she belonged to hirn; that he was now her father, as it were. But this was no joke to her; she took it very seriously indeed, and replied: "I know it; he is now my chief; I take his words."
This unexpected answer certainly surprised Ashton, and made him very thoughtful.
In about a week we packed up and moved into the fort, Nät-ah'-ki's uncle accompanying us to drive the horses back to the herd, as we had no way of caring for them. We ought to have remained longer in camp, for the ride reopened Ashton's wound, and retarded his complete recovery. After reaching the fort, he kept pretty close to his lounge for a couple of weeks, and the young orphan waited on him, highly pleased when she could save him a few steps. To pass the time, he taught her simple English words, and short sentences. It was really laughable sometimes to hear her mix them up, as for instance, when she would say, "The cow he is water drink." But we didn't laugh, for if we had, there would have been an end to the lessons. Many a promising Indian scholar has been lost by the thoughtless ridicule of his teacher.
Berry returned to the fort a day or two after we arrived, and we began to plan for the winter's trade and to make lists of the goods needed. Whether we should make a camp trade, or build a post, and at what point, would depend entirely on the Indians' plans for the winter. Ashton intended to winter, with us wherever we went, but one day he received a letter that changed his plans. He did not tell us more than the fact that it was necessary for him to return to the States soon. In fact, he had never spoken of his affairs, nor his family. All we knew was that he had proved to be a good companion, a man of kindly nature, a wholly dependable man.
"I am not very inquisitive, I hope," said Berry to me; "but I'd just like to know what our friend's trouble is, what he is always grieving about, and what it is that causes him to go back. it's plain to be seen that he doesn't want to go."
I felt as Berry did, but no more than he could I say anything to Ashton about it.
Several steamboats were yet to arrive before the close of the season, and he deferred his departure. One evening, when we were all congregated in the front room, the conversation turned to his impending departure, and he said that he would return to us as soon as possible; if not sometime during the winter, then by the first boat in the spring. "And now," he continued, "say this to my little girl; tell her that I wish to take her with me, and put her in school down there with a lot of other nice little girls, where kind, black-robe women will care for her, and teach her to read, and write, and sew, and many other good and useful things."
This proposition certainly surprised Berry and me, and Nvhen it had been interpreted, the women were simply lost in astonishment. A long silence ensued; we all waited for the girl to speak; all certain that she would refuse to leave us. We were still more astonished, if that were possible, when she at last replied that she would go. And then she ran to Nät-ah'-ki, hid her face in her lap, and cried. We men got our hats and strolled out.
"I have been thinking of this for some time," Ashton said to us, after we had sat down on the riverbank and lighted our pipes. "I am curious to know what effect a really first-class education will have upon the girl, and what use she will make of it. Do you think it a good plan?"
"God only knows," Berry replied. "It may make her very unhappy; it certainly will if, in spite of high education and all accomplishments, the whites shall still avoid and despise her because she is an Indian. Again, it might make of her a noble and useful woman. I advise you to try it, anyway."
"But, Berry, old man!" I exclaimed, "the white people do not despise Indians. On the other band, I am sure that they highly respect those of them who are really men."
"I guess I know what they think, what they do," he rejoined. "I am only half Indian, but I have been abused by them in my time."
"Who were 'they'?" I asked. "Were they men fairly representative of the white people? Or were they the ignorant and low-down ones?"
He acknowledged that he had ever been kindly and respectfully treated by the former class.
"Well, " Ashton concluded, "the girl goes with ine. I'll take her to St. Louis and place her in some good institution, preferably one managed by the Sisters. All that money can pay for shall be done for her; moreover, I'll make my will and provide for her in case of my death. I'd rather she should have what I leave than anyone else."
Early one morning we went to the levee to see them off. On the previous evening the girl had cried bitterly while the few things that we could provide for her were being packed, and Nät-ah'-ki told her that if she did not wish to leave us, she need not do so, that Never Laughs would not think of taking her away against her will, The girl replied that she would do as he wished. "He saved me," she said, "and I belong to him. I know that he means well."
The boat had steam up, the whistle blew, and the passengers went aboard. The young one was very quiet, and dry-eyed. She followed Ashton up the gangplank, shawl thrown over her head and partly concealing her face, and they went up on the upper deck. The boat drew out into the stream, slowly turned, and then swiftly disappeared around the bend. We went thoughtfully home.
"I do not like it at all," said the Crow Woman. "What have we to do vith white peoples' ways and learning? The Sun gave us these plains, and these mountains and rivers, the buffalo and the deer. They are all we need."
"You speak truth," old Mrs. Berry said to her. "Yet I am glad that my son went down to the far white men's country, for what he learned there is of use. He can make their writing and read it. He is a trader, knoving how to buy and sell. He is above the chiefs, for they come to him for advice."
"I think," I said., "that I ought to have sent Nät-ah'-ki along with them."
"Just hear him!" she cried, seizing me by the shoulder and pushing me out of the trail. "As if he couldn't teach me himself. But he will not, although I have asked him to do so more than a hundred times."
That was one thing Nät-ah'-ki always rather regretted, her inability to speak English. I did not teach it to her, for I early realized that she would never be able to master some of our consonants, especially b, f, l, and r, the sounds of which are wholly foreign to the Blackfoot language. Rather than hear her speak our tongue incorrectly, I preferred that she should not speak it at all. And then, I spoke her language, more and more fluently as time went by, and I thought that we were sufficient unto ourselves. I did not think that we would ever be much in the company of white people, especially white women. The majority of the latter, those who lived upon the frontier, hated the Indian women, especially those married to white men, and equally they hated, despised, the whites who had married them, and they lost no opportunity to show their ill-will.
Berry keenly realized this, and at times was actually sick at heart over the slights, real and imagined, but mostly the latter, put upon him, Once, and once only—it was soon after Ashton's departure with his protégée—he told me of an experience he had gone through, which, I think, was in many ways the most peculiar and pathetic one I ever heard. It so burned itself into my memory that I can repeat it word for word as he related it.
"When I was only a child," he said, "I can remember my father frequently mentioning the property, a farm, he owned in Missouri. After he left the service of the American Fur Company, he became an independent trader, and made almost yearly trips to St. Louis to dispose of his furs. He gradually made longer and longer stays down there, and finally gave up trading altogether, remaining down on his farm, and visiting us only occasionally. Young as I was, I had a great desire to become a trader myself, and worked hard for the men with whom he successively placed me, beginning with Major Dawson, the company's factor here. Dawson himself, as well as the clerks, seemed to like me, and they all helped me when they saw that I was trying to read and write. If I do say it, I believe that I made pretty rapid progress, more rapid than my father thought I would. He intended, when the time came, to send me to school in the States.
"There came a time when he had been away from us for two years, and my friends thought that they would take the matter into their own hands and send me to a school they knew about in St. Joe, Missouri. They gave me a pocketful of money, and shipped me on a batteau which pulled out early in September. The fare down, by the way, was three hundred dollars, but I was deadheaded through. it was a long and tedious trip, especially in the lower part of the river, where the current was slow and head winds delayed us. We arrived in St. Joe late in the fall, and I went at once to the place selected for me, a boarding school which also took in day scholars. Right there my troubles began. While a few of my schoolmates liked me and were very kind, most of them abused me and made fun of me, calling me 'low-down Injun' and many other names which hurt. I stood it as long as I could, until, in fact, they began calling me coward. Me a coward, when I'd already been in two battles where men were killed, and done my share of the shooting! Well, when they called me a coward, I just waded in and gave three or four of them a good pounding, although I was in no way used to that style of fighting. After that they left me alone, but all the same they hated me.
"I had not written my father where I was, as I had planned a little surprise for him. When the Christmas vacation came, I started to pay him a visit, I went for some distance on a train, and thought that a grand experience. Then I got on a stage, and one evening was set down a couple of miles from his home. I went on, inquiring my way, and about dusk I came in sight of his house, a very nice, trim, white-painted one, surrounded by fine fruit and other trees. Someone was coming along the road, and I saw that it was my father. When he recognized me, he ran and threw his arms around me, and kissed me, and said that he loved me best of all. I didn't understand what he meant by best of all, but I soon learned. After asking me all manner of questions, how I had come, how my mother and all his friends were, he stood silent for some little time, leaning on my shoulder, and then he said: 'My boy, I hoped you would never learn what I have to say, at least not until after my death. But now I must tell you all: in that house yonder is a woman to whom I am married, and there are a boy and a girl, our children. I can introduce you there only as a friend, as the son of an old-time Montana friend. Oh, shame on me that I have to say such a thing! Will you come?'
"'Yes,' I said, 'I will go with you,' and we went in.
"She was a very kind woman that, and the children, younger than I, were, as well as she, very good to me. I couldn't help but like them, and at the same time I felt very sad about it all. I believe that I cried about it nights after I had gone to my room and to bed.
"My father and I had many talks in private, and he told me over and over again that he loved me best, that I was first in his thoughts. Of course, I could not remain there long: the situation was too trying. In the last talk we had there, he asked me if I intended to tell my mother what I had learned, and I replied that I had no intention of doing so. And so we parted, and I returned to school. To this day my mother does not know anything about his other life. He comes and stays with us, sometimes for a whole summer, and she loves him so that I am sure it would kill her to learn what he has done, as it would also kill the other woman to know it. And he is my father. I love him, too. I cannot do anything but love him, no matter what he has done."
I may add that the old gentleman was true to his word. So long as he was able, he continued to visit his Montana son and wife, and when he died, we found that his will, executed several years previous to the time Berry visited him, bequeathed the greater part of his property to the first and favorite son. He was a man of good education, and interested in everything that pertained to the West. He entered the service of the American Fur Company when it was organized, in 1822 or 1823, and rose to be one of its prominent factors. For many years he kept a diary of the daily occurrences in his active life, which included much regarding the Indians he met, their customs and traditions. He was preparing them for publication when they were destroyed in a fire which burned down his house. That was a loss which many of us regret.