Cogewea seated on the veranda was endeavoring to interest herself in a book. It was a hot, lazy afternoon and she was alone. The family, including the shy-girl Mary, had gone to visit an Indian relative, leaving her with the old grandmother, whose small lodge stood not far from the farm house. Stemteemä never would consent to live in a modern dwelling with a solid roof, so her teepee had been erected, permitting her to continue after the ancient manner of her fading race. She was now sleeping on her blankets, after toiling all the forenoon at basket weaving.

Cogewea had willingly stayed at home. The letter writing under the pines the previous day had had a disquieting effect. What could Densmore have meant? The world should appear more beautiful than she was finding it. She had half expected the Easterner to join her, but he had, immediately after dinner, repaired to the bunkhouse and was indulging in a siesta. The girl, vexed and disappointed, had resorted to reading but with no concentration of thought. The theme, an unjust presentation of Indian sentiment and racial traits; The Brand⁠—stigma of the blood⁠—did not tend towards calming her perturbed mind. In sheer desperation she continued poring through the pages.

At last Cogewea became absorbed⁠—absorbed with rage. The writer, wholly ignorant of her subject, instead of extending a helping hand, had dealt her unfortunate hero a ruthless blow. The girl’s fury increased as she read, but a step on the walk caused her heart to quicken. She refrained from looking up. It must be⁠—

“Sis! do you know where there is an awl? The one at the barn is done-for and I want to mend⁠—”

“Oh! I don’t know!” she broke in with piquant resentment. “Look for it yourself and leave me alone! I’m cross as a bear! I almost hate myself today. Everything is against me, even to this maligning, absurdity of a book. The thing does nothing but slam the breeds! as if they were reptiles instead of humans. You are no good! along with all the rest of us. You are only an Injun!⁠—a miserable breed!⁠—not higher than the dust on your white brothers’ feet. Go away!”

Jim turned without comment, walking towards the bunkhouse. He was biting his mustache, his lips compressed with anger.

“The damn tenderfoot!” he muttered to himself. “I’ll get square with the cuss, if there’s lead throwin’ teachin’ him some sense.”

At the door he almost bumped into Densmore, who was just emerging from the building. In tones ominous with intensity, he accosted him:

“Sis is cross as hell! Gave me the devil; said I was no good, only an Injun and all sorts of things. If I ever find out who is a tellin’ her lies⁠—if I ever know⁠—there’ll be somthin’ doin’ ’round this here ranch; savey? There’ll be hell to pay if old Jim gets wise.”

For a moment he glared at the astounded Easterner, and then strode to the barn; hatred gleaming in his eyes. His muscular hands were clenched with such force that the nails dug into the palms. He now hated “that cussed tenderfoot”; hated him for usurping all of Cogewea’s time. He was willing that she nurse the stranger, but she had treated him with coolness ever since the accident occurred. And now the white sneak must have been throwin’ dirt or she would never have called him a “miserable breed.”

Densmore was still standing where the irate Westerner left him. He had been too surprised to offer any reply. What had Cogewea told Jim, that he was so angry and threatening? He could recall nothing that he had said against him of any consequence. True, Jim had been instrumental in the mishap, but he had tried to forget that, since he had learned more of the western ways. Where was the mistake? He was tempted to go to the girl and learn the trouble, but paused upon second thought. He did not want to quarrel and Jim had said that she was cross-tempered. He would go fishing and wait a more propitious time; until she was in a better mood.

With this determination, Densmore took rod and reel and sauntered towards the river. But he could not forget the bitter words of the foreman. Suddenly he struck the ground impatiently with the butt of his pole! The Injun must be jealous of him!

“Why the copper colored savage!” he muttered aloud. “He can have the squaw for all I care. I like the girl only as any pleasing chattel. As a game, she affords amusement, but hardly a dividend. The wild Brownie will be forgotten when I return to civilization. But I must not cross that hot headed fool too severely.”

Cogewea had not meant to be ugly to Jim when he interrupted her reading. She was out of humor and tried to blame it to the book. It was not suited to her ideals. Inwardly fuming, she had said that which she afterwards regretted. Jim had scarce reached the barn when she experienced remorse for her outburst of ill temper to the one who had always shown her naught but kindness. She liked Jim, the great, big hearted protector that he was. She recalled his devotion and championship of her cause at the recent races and secretly vowed that in future, hers would be more a spirit of reciprocity.

With sudden impulse she threw the hateful volume to the floor and springing up, slipped to the gate. She looked to the bunkhouse, which seemed deserted. She saw Stemteemä, now awakened from repose, sitting at her teepee doorway. For a moment she stood, then hastened to the barn. Jim was nowhere in sight, but a thin trail of dust led over an eminence out on the flat. Densmore with angling rod and basket slung over his shoulder, was disappearing among the river pines.

The girl turned back to the house in disappointment. She had wished to placate Jim by carrying to him the pipe of peace. With a frown, she picked up the book and began perusing it again. The story, interesting to the whites, was wormwood to her Indian spleen. However, she determined to see how much of an ape the author had made of her breed-hero.

By adroit sketching, she had, in a short time the gist of the plot.

The scene opened on the Flathead, where a half-blood “brave” is in love with a white girl; the heroine of the story. He dares not make a declaration of his affection, because of his Indian blood. He curses his own mother for this heritage, hates his American parent for the sake of the girl of his heart. He deems himself beneath her; not good enough for her. But to cap the absurdity of the story, he weds the white “princess” and slaves for her the rest of his life.

Cogewea leaned back in her chair with a sigh. “Bosh!” she mused half aloud. “Show me the Red ‘buck’ who would slave for the most exclusive white ‘princess’ that lives. Such hash may go with the whites, but the Indian, both full bloods and the despised breeds know differently. And, that a ‘hero’ should be depicted as hating his own mother for the flesh and heart that she gave his miserable frame. What a figure to be held up for laudation by either novelist or historian! No man, whether First American, Caucasian or of any other race, could be so beastly inhuman in real life; so low and ungratefully base as to want to hide his own mother. The lower animals respond to this instinct, and can people suppose that the Indian, who is of the heroic, has not the manhood accredited to even the most commercialized of nations? The truth is, he has more love of the undying type than his ‘superior’ brother ever possessed.”

Cogewea reflected bitterly how her race had had the worst of every deal since the landing of the lordly European on their shores; how they had suffered as much from the pen as from the bayonet of conquest; wherein the annals had always been chronicled by their most deadly foes and partisan writers. In the light of unbiased facts, they had been no worse than any other race under similar conditions, and perhaps not so bad; the Caucasian not excepted. Human skins had never been nailed to their places of worship. In the comparison, although a breed, she spurned with resentment the implied inference that she was not the social equal of the most exalted of her self-constituted supermundanes. She felt a native pride in her Red forefathers who had fought so patriotically for home and country. Sterling manhood and womanhood, she was sure, carried with it, the elements of racial vanity; and as a stream cannot rise above its source, the “slaving hero” was doomed to a malarial death amid the brackish pools flowing from the quill of this neoteric writer.

In the meantime, Densmore had fished in vain. The fly went unsnapped. Little did he understand the habits of the finny tribe. The trout were taking their siesta. Disgusted, he reeled in his line and returned to the house.

Cogewea was startled from her reverie by a shadow falling across her lap. The broad shoulders of Densmore barred the rays of the low hanging sun. As she glanced up, he cast his hat at her feet with the challenge:

“If my hat is permitted, I shall regard it as propitious that I may follow.”

“Come in, Shoyahpee!”13 was the not altogether friendly greeting. “I just want to quarrel with somebody and you will do as well as anyone.”

“You can’t quarrel with me! Cage⁠—Cogewea. I am⁠—”

“Yes I can, I must! But I’m not mad at you. It is this book!”

“What is wrong with the inoffensive bundle of paper in board covers?”

“Wrong? It is all wrong; absurdly foolish. It is locoed; crazy! I cannot express my contempt for it; it is so ridiculously low and shamefully shallow.”

“The plot must be a terrible one,” rejoined her companion with a cynical smile. “Is there an author concerned?”

“It is said that ‘the Lord pities a fool,’ ” retorted the girl without apparent notice of his flippancy. “If this is true, then the writer of this volume is entitled to a double share of Divine commiseration. With the Indian, a demented person is supposed to have been deprived of reason through the medium of a medicine man or other occult channels. This author must have met with the same misfortune on a grand scale. The jocose part of the romance is that it contains a few tribal phrases, supposedly the names of birds and animals. These have been conferred on some of the characters, or pet saddle horses; which, if properly translated, would shock the public immeasurably. The ‘production’ would be discarded by all respectable readers.”

Jim, who had returned from a jaunt of inspection over an adjacent field, dismounted at the gate in time to hear the reference to the Indian names. Catching the drift of the conversation, and seemingly forgetful of the recent unpleasantness, he asked with mock gravity:

“Is all names in them there pages un’erstan’able?”

Glad of an opportunity of amendment for her rudeness of a few hours before, Cogewea laughing, replied:

“You ought to know, for you helped supply some of them. We were just having a slight argument, and to help settle it, you better explain your part in the makeup of this book’s contents.”

Rejoiced at being able to aid in the discomfiture of Densmore, the foreman’s eyes twinkled with suppressed amusement, as leaning over the gate, he spoke:

“I was there when the boys was a stuffin’ one poor woman. It was at the first buffalo roundup when lots of people come to see the sight. A bunch of us riders was together when this here lady come up and begins askin’ questions ’bout the buffaloes; and Injun names of flyin’, walkin’ and swimmin’ things and a lot of bunk. Well, you know how the boys are. They sure locoed that there gal to a finish; and while she was a dashin’ the information down in her little tablet, we was a thinkin’ up more lies to tell her. We didn’t savey she was writin’ a real book, or maybe we would a been more careful. Yes, maybe! Why, them there writin’ folks is dead easy pickin’ for the cowpunchers. But I see she took more to the full-blood talk than what I tell her.”

Jim indulged in a low laugh, as Cogewea, turning to Densmore, took up the conversation:

“There, you have it! But that is only a glimpse of the real situation; of what the tribesmen give would-be writers. You now understand why I contend that the whites can not authentically chronicle our habits and customs. They can hardly get at the truth. A promulgator of the law of requital⁠—good and bad⁠—he is aware of how he has ever been deceived and taken advantage of, and he has no scruples in returning, as he thinks, some of the coin. Of course he does not understand the true situation; and when the ridiculous ‘facts’ which he narrates are once in print, he has the worst of it. I have heard the Indian boast of the absurdities told to the white ‘investigator.’ It is practically impossible for an alien to get at our correct legendary lore.”

Densmore, nonplussed at the unaccountable change in the attitude of the foreman towards him, and wishing to fraternize, thought to do so by again resuming the colloquy:

“Well, you must be a truly suspicious people. But has it ever occurred to you that you may be standing in your own light⁠—casting shadows over your own road to progress? Distrust is a fearful barrier to those who would help you. Confidence is conducive to good fellowship, facilitating both social and business interests.”

“Not bein’ in the beatin’ game ourselves,” responded Jim sullenly, “that there ‘confidence’ card has been our undoin’. I ain’t a dyin’ for any more shufflin’ of the bait by any hombre.”

“The world is filled with a great variety of people,” observed the Easterner with a nervous laugh, “but your race must be doubly peculiar, judging from the slight effect that the white-blood has in the mixing.”

“The Indian is a peculiarly mysterious race; differing from all others,” broke in Cogewea. “We breed are half and half⁠—American and Caucasian⁠—and in a separate corral. We are despised by both of our relatives. The white people call us ‘Injuns’ and a ‘good-for-nothing’ outfit; a ‘shiftless,’ vile class of commonalty. Our Red brothers say that we are ‘stuck-up’; that we have deserted our own kind and are imitating the ways of the despoilers of our nationality. But you wait and watch!” exclaimed the girl with animation. “The day will dawn when the desolate, exiled breed will come into his own; when our vaunting ‘superior’ will appreciate our worth. Fate cannot always be against those who strive for self-elevation. But oh! it is hard when the foot of the strong is ever on your neck. Of the hundred million composing this great Christian Nation, how few are our actual friends; working friends. Those we have are mostly in the far East and consequently cannot know of the multitudinous wrongs which we are compelled to suffer. Occasionally a local champion is found who is big enough and strong enough to defy popular sentiment and fight for us, but it is self-sacrifice. He loses social standing with his own race. We may be too sensitive about our blood, but I often don my war bonnet and go scalp hunting.”

“I’m a thinkin’ you must have on your war bonnet now,” interposed Jim with a low laugh. “You sure hand it to the pale faces steamin’ hot. Like a four minute phonograph, when you get started you run to the end of the trail. You keep unwindin’ the lariat till you fetch up at the picket-stake with a jerk. You’ve got to have your spiel. But I hear the boys a comin’! I hear the hoof-drums of their cayuses a comin’! I’ll leave you fellers to fight it out yourselves.”

The foreman turned to his horse in manifestly high spirits at the turn of events. Cogewea was evidently “soured” on the entire white race; the tenderfoot included. It was apparent that she would never forsake her Indian associates; never turn from her own blood.

Densmore in evident displeasure, also rose to go. His voice was cold and unsympathetic, as he spoke:

“This is nothing of interest to me. I can not argue with a lady. I do not dare!”

“And I am only an Injun, after all!” she retorted bitterly.

The Easterner laughed derisively at her outburst of temper, and left for the bunkhouse. The throb of hoofs came nearer and nearer, mingled with the silvery jingle of spurs. But for once the stiring chime failed to reach a responsive chord in the bosom of the girl; who, feeling friendless and unhappy, passed into the house. She wondered if Densmore would, in the presence of Jim, have spoken to her as he did.

Cogewea found solace in consigning the maligning volume to the kitchen stove.