Densmore’s declaration under the pines had thrilled Cogewea, as no words ever had. Could he really love her and was he sincere? She questioned herself. Perhaps after all she was to come into the life she had ofttimes pictured⁠—a home⁠—a husband who loved books and who would appreciate her efforts at making their domicile a place of endearment and happiness. Refined, he was so particular about his dress and he never ate with his knife, where, in the free, wild range, table manners were given but slight consideration. Somehow she wished that he could throw a rope like Jim⁠—and⁠—swear a bit on provocation. Perhaps he would learn.

But why did he harp on the tribal marriage ritual, rather than that of the white man’s law? Surely he must know that this custom was being fought by those in authority and that it would not be recognized by either court or society, as legal. If he was aware of these facts, then perhaps he was trying to trap her. The warning of the grandmother came to her with deepening force. But, she reflected, he had been in the country only a short time and naturally would be ignorant of the true situation. Anyway, he had declared his love for her. When he should find the Indian rite to be obsolete⁠—impossible in the premises⁠—he would think differently, she argued. In the meantime, by forgetting that he was not her blood, the happiness of the hour was hers.

It was the middle of the afternoon, when the two rode away from the ranch, Bringo skulking in the rear. Cogewea did not scold him. She was too happy. They proceeded slowly, until they reached the crest of the first ridge; the girl leading over the narrow trail. Here she paused as if uncertain of her own mind. It struck Densmore that she was unusually silent and meditative.

“Where to?” he asked.

“I hardly know,” she answered dreamily. “Guess we’re on our way somewhere. S’pose we go to Buffalo Butte, my favorite roostin’ place. There is something that always draws me there.”

“You are the guide! It is mine only to follow.”

For a moment Cogewea sat her horse motionless, her eyes fastened on the distant butte. Suddenly the smouldering fires of an unusually moody nature seemed to leap into flame, as she exclaimed:

“Then come along, Mr. Shoyahpee; for we are goin’ do a little ridin’! The spirits are callin’ and I dare not lag.”

As she spoke, this girl of elemental mystery, turned Wanawish, and touching him with the spur, raced down the slope and across the expanse of lower level with a reckless daring born of the range. Her companion, attempting to speed, could seemingly maintain no cohesion with his saddle. Mentally cursing, Densmore held to the chase for a mile or so, thinking that she would stop. But there was no slack to the mad dash.

Characteristic of the Indian, Cogewea did not once glance back to see how fared her escort. The Easterner noticed with what rhythmical ease she sat her courser. Her graceful form, bending slightly over the saddle bow, appeared an integral part of the flying steed. A great brilliant handkerchief billowed above the shapely shoulders like a silken banner in a gale. Caught by a sportive gust, her sombrero went sailing out into the sage. Describing a circle and with no check to Wanawish’s velocity, she swooped down like a hawk and snatching the erratic headgear from the ground, was again off over the trail. On she sped, across the big flat like a falcon loosed from bars; this free girl of the outdoors. The wild blood of a wilder ancestry was calling, and the wine of youth was strong.

Soon, Cogewea had passed from sight and her convoy plodded gingerly on. Aggrieved, he was tempted to turn back. Had she not wilfully ran away from him? But upon reflection, he determined to continue on to the tryst. The anticipation of an uninterrupted evening with this strangely fascinating girl of such diversity of temperament, was predominant. Perhaps the goal of his aspirations was within reach. Why had she selected this lonely, isolated height for their outing?

Reaching the butte, Cogewea slipping the bit, left Wanawish to crop the sparse bunch-grass, while she climbed to her old perch on the summit of the rock. There she sat dreaming. Her forbears had, in other snows, come from the now state of Washington, to contend with the dominant resident tribes for the privilege of hunting the buffalo for meat and robes. The far stretching prairies, the flats and coulees now decorated by the six-by-ten shacks of homesteaders, were once this animal’s domain. Was it any wonder that the old Indians were soul-weary, preferring to go the shadowy way, where again the buffalo may roam unmolested by the invasion of the white man.

True, she reasoned, those poor settlers must live, the wild places subdued; but should it be at the expense of the helplessly weak? The unalterable edict had gone forth: “Civilize or go under!” but where had there ever been a primitive hunter-race able, ultimately to survive a sudden and violent contact with a highly developed agricultural civilization? The native American could be no exception to this most inexorable of nature’s laws. Development along any line, like the growth of the sturdiest tree must be methodically slow; coordinate with an Intelligence beyond the most vivid comprehension. A few more generations at most, and the full-blooded Indian shall have followed the Buffalo⁠—not those sold to the Canadians⁠—but those of the sunset trail. The bleaching relic of the Prairie Chief, with the broken arrow point at her feet, constituted a fitting monument to the past primitive life of the Flathead. Woe! to the Governmental structure builded on the ruins of devastated homes. For how long had any such ever survived?

But bloody though the subjugation, it did not compare with the deadly effects of the benevolent manner in which her race had been ruled since the enactment of the various treaties. The Indian Bureau was a blighting curse; its officials, with an army of employees, when not down right thieves conniving with favor-currying politicians and grafters, were, in the main, blundering incompetents, who could not for one day make good in any well regulated and honest business channel. Habits, the building of untold centuries of wilderness life, were sought to be changed within a single generation. It had taken the Caucasian thousands of years to climb to his present state, even with the utility of the various animals suited for domestication and so very essential to the progress of any people. The Indian had had none of this great advantage. Aside from the fierce wolf-dog, the llama of far off South America was the only quadruped of the New World that could be utilized in this respect, even had it been known to her people and its importation possible. Charity and common sense had not marked the white man’s dealings with the various tribes.

Skilled in the art of white washing, brooded the girl, the Indian Bureau was an octopus, with life extracting tentacles reaching into every Indian reservation of the Union. A vampire! whose wing cools with the breeze of never-to-be-filled promises, the wound of its deadly beak, while it drains the heart’s blood of its hapless “ward.” Where rested the wrong? The Bureau! a branch of the Government. The Government? the dollar-marked will of the politician. The politician? the priest, and the Levite, who “pass on the other side” from the bruised, and robbed victim of systematized plunder-lust, lying naked by the trail. Should an occasional Samaritan stoop to minister to the sufferer’s wants, he is rebuked by the Bureaucrats, and warned that such charity is ill advised; wasted where not an exigency. Surely, had the Indian been driven to drink of the waters of Marah, nor had there risen a Moses to cast into the embittered flood, a branch from the tree of sweetening properties.25

Heedless of passing time, Cogewea still sat meditating. There were the Blackfeet, many of whom she knew. From a vast territory “given” them from their own lands reaching down to the banks of the Yellowstone, they were now crowded into a cramped area on the frosty confines of the National Glacier Park; their more habitable domain taken from them without their consent, and without the least of compensation. In their case, as with other tribes, a treaty with the conqueror, had proven subservient to the supercilious will of the dictator. From a once virile, self-supporting people, they had, through massacres by United States troops, and starvation because of thieving, pilfering Bureau agents⁠—ofttimes selected from the ranks of ministers of the gospel⁠—dwindled to a pitiful, diseased remnant of their former independent greatness.26

But the Blackfeet tragedy was not the only bundle of somber facts to rise specter-like on the girl’s vision. There were the few remaining warriors of the Nez Perce martyr, Chief Joseph. Heroes, patriots! Victims of plutocratic chicanery, and broken faith on the part of the “powers that be!” Justice, bound and gagged, still weeping on the mountain tops of the romantic Wallowa.27 Not an Indian reservation in the land, where loot, robbery, and general malfeasance did not overshadow all the beneficence claimed for the natives through contact with an advanced civilization. Unqualified for the new conditions thrust upon him, no voice in affairs most vital to his very existence, the tribesman is obliged to accept a pottage mixed for him in the kitchenry of a political pap-fostered Bureau of more than six thousand salaried guardians (?) of his interests, paid for out of his own tribal funds. Overwhelmed by pent-up feelings, Cogewea murmured aloud:

“And all this in the land of the freebooter, and the home of the slave! Prate not to me of the superiority of a philosophy which tolerates such conditions, over that of my savage ancestors. In my agony, with uplifted hands, I cry to the stars as the torch-lights set by the Great Spirit: ‘How long! Oh! Night Watches of the Ages, must this injustice endure! Woe is my people! Surely, have the Four Riders of the Apocalypse passed through the valleys, over the plains and mountain ranges of our former possessions.’ ”

Densmore reached the summit of the butte to find Cogewea seated on the rim of the table-like rock, swinging a shapely foot, and listlessly tapping the cliffy wall with her quirt. She had removed her sombrero, and as he approached from below, her form was cast in sharp silhouette against a limpid skyline, where it appeared as much in place as when in saddle. At sight of the Easterner, her mood changed and she called mischievously:

“Hell‑o, Sir Shoyahpee! From whence, my gallant knight-errant of the wilderness way?”

“Why did you run away from me?” he asked with a degree of petulance, ignoring her innocent flippancy.

“You are too slow for me,” was the laughing reply.

“Too slow? In what way?”

“Why, in heeding the call of the morning to speed the sunlit trail.”

“Oh! I heard no call! Heard nothing but the hot, dust-ladened wind rustling the desert sage. I came nearly misunderstanding you.”

“Aw, quit kidding! This is a time for sociability. Leave that cayuse with Wanawish, and come on my grandstand. Help take care of this scenery. It is a bit more than one pair of optics can do with justice.”

Densmore mounted the rock and settled himself at her side. He manifested but slight interest in the great panorama unrolled to the eastward. His unpoetic nature was not visibly impressed by the picture so soul-inspiring to the girl.

“Isn’t it grand?” she questioned. “These are my prairies, my mountains, my Eden. I could live here always! I shall hate to leave them when the final summons comes. Wherever I go, I recall every outline of those embattled ranges, nor can the vision close at the grave. When away, I grow lonesome, as a child for its mother. I become heartsick for a sight of those snow-shrouded peaks, so rich in legendary lore.”

“Would you not leave these sandy wastes, those piled up stones of chilly bleakness for a life of social elegance and untrammeled gayety?”

“Leave this”⁠—she exclaimed with outstretched hand⁠—“where our forefathers fought, where they hunted the buffalo? Leave the land where our braves rest in their last sleep? Never! I could not be content elsewhere. Do you see that?” indicating a half concealed object at the base of their perch. “It is the skull of a former mighty buffalo bull; horns time-roughened, and all bleached and grey with age. It is the last piteous wreck of a once ‘Monarch of the Plains.’ Colleague of my race, with him went our hopes, our ambition, and our life. A gift from the source of all existence, the buffalo was valued by the tribes above all animals. My nation was ruined when this, its larder, was destroyed by the invader. I can not forgive the wrong.”

This lofty sentiment received scant consideration in the calculating reply of the covetous Densmore.

“It may appear harsh, but the day has come when the Indian must desist from his wild, savage life. The Government is working hard for his betterment, and he should respond with a willingness to advance by adjusting himself to the new order of things. The opening of this reservation to settlement, tends to mingle him with his white brother, leading to an inter marriage of the two races. The tribesman will learn wisdom from his new neighbors, who will teach him how best to wrest his food supplies from the soil. The change was inevitable, and why should you go on the warpath? You are too broad minded for such antiquated ideas. Educated, you should put improbable concepts aside.”

“I believe you mean well,” was the impatient reply, “and a few whites do try to uplift my race. They purpose right, but they do not understand the Indian mind; never will, it would seem. Had a tribesman gone to your European homes with the ultimatum: ‘Desert your heavy houses; come into the open and adopt our mode of life,’ I am sure you Caucasians would have regarded him as an unreasonably brainless arrogant. Preposterous as such analogy may be, it adequately expresses the native conception of foreign intolerance. But I suppose that what is, was to be, and we must accept the inevitable.”

“Obviously the transition from savagery to the civilized state has been a stormy one for the Red man, but the voyage having been accomplished, he will, under the beneficent guidance of a liberal and just Government, steadily advance to the highest plane of mental, and physical development. Doubtless he endured some hardships during the days of warfare, but all that is compensated by his present day treatment.”

“Compensated by present day treatment!” repeated Cogewea scornfully. “Such density is excusable, since your sojourn has been in the North-country, for not one in twenty thousand of true citizenry are informed on the ‘Indian Problem,’ past and present. Partisan writers have chronicled the story of conquest, and political stranglers see to it that the public is kept blinded to actual conditions. And the Indian’s ‘mental and physical development!’ What a joke, if it were not so pathetically tragic.”

“But, my little war-maid,” expostulated the obdurate Easterner, “are you not a bit over zealous, and therefore mistaken in your contentions in this respect? While I came from Canada directly, I was raised in the Atlantic states, and have seen reports from the Indian Commissioner covering the administrations on all the reservations. From the statements therein contained, the Indian Bureau is.⁠ ⁠…”

“A nasty smear on the Government escutcheon,” broke in the girl fiercely. “A stagnant cesspool swarming with political hatched vermin! Stenchful with the fumes of avarice and greed; selfishly indifferent to the Macedonian cry of its victims writhing under the lash wielded by the hand of Mammon! Pitch is a fastidious cosmetic, compared with the Bureau slime.”

“Now, you are surveying the situation through colored lenses,” persisted Densmore. “It can not be that the tribes in general are grossly mishandled. Doubtless there are occasional mistakes in the appointment of Indian agents, as in any other branch of business, but these are removed. In the North-country you would hardly dare criticise the administrative government so severely.”

“I know! I have been in the North-country, in fact have lived across the border. But I am not there now, nor am I criticising our Government. It is of the Indian Bureau that I am speaking. A child of unnatural parentage, fostered by undemocratic principals, it has no legitimate place under a flag claiming to stand for all that is embodied in the word ‘Liberty.’ If you think that I am prejudiced, that I am unfair in statements, look up the facts for yourself, but do not depend too strongly on information emanating from the Bureau. Its reek can be found on any of the reservations. It is here with the Flatheads, with the Crows, with the Nez Perces, the Colvills, the Yakimas, and the Chipewas of the White Earth. The Pueblos have their troubles, their Crandall’s, but the California tribes should not be cursed with agents. They have no reservations, all their lands having been stolen from them.”28

“Cogewea, I can not agree with you on that score. The public would not tolerate such conditions.”

“Easy there! for the ice is thin. The great mass of people who have to struggle for existence, have not the time nor ability to investigate or fight other than their own battles. The wealthy, churchgoing Christians, have irons in the fire and are too busy with their prayer bribes⁠—ofttimes coming up on the collection plate, whereby they are to squeeze through the celestial gate⁠—to bother casting a crust to the underdog of an ‘inferior’ race. This leaves the business man and politician a free hand with the ‘Indian Problem.’ Although brought up in the tenets of Christianity, do you wonder that at times I revert to the more simple beliefs of my ancient people?”

“Perhaps not, but does not the Indian’s taciturn and solitary nature stand in the way of his assimilating the highest standards of life?”

“If you refer to the white man’s highest standards, I do not know. There has never been an adequate test of his ability along that line, never having come in general contact with them. He has been kept too busy absorbing the lower standards so bounteously thrust upon him, to ponder on the possibility that perhaps his white brother was not treating him to his best in stock. The tendency to measure your neighbor by your own code of morals, holds good with the Red man, and, since his gifts are always the best that he possesses, he judges the pale face accordingly; by the goods which he delivers.”

“Well, the native excelled in the art of refined hair-lifting if nothing more,” interjected Densmore with a forced laugh. “Nor was he altogether a failure at kindling torture fires, though averse to supplying the ember-fuel for his own teepee hearthstone.”

“Scalping was not an exclusive American fashion,” parried Cogewea. “The ancient Scythians, at least were addicted to this pastime, who also used enemy skulls for drinking cups. The stake roasting, however cruel and revolting, was never mixed with religious creeds and the worship of a God whose chief attributes, we are taught, are love, justice and mercy. A born fighter, the Indian preferred death to ignominious servitude; and these qualities, instead of being detrimental may yet prove his redemption, if only he can survive the imbecilities and harsh supervision of an obsolete Department. Once secure in his battle for a square deal, he will go forward, and his racial affinities⁠—the product of climatic and celestial influences⁠—will stamp themselves on the entire Nation. This characteristic at times urges me on. I like to contend for that which I deem to be my rights. I must go on the war path and have my say or I’ll bust! Savey?”

The Easterner regarded his companion with open amusement, as he rejoined:

“Yes! you are evidently right in that. Are you in the scalping mood today, my little Joan of Arc?”

“If I were, the subject material immediately available would hardly suffice for the appeasement of my warlike proclivities,” was the spirited retort. “But it seems that every time I come to this butte of hidden mysteries, sympathy for my trampled race⁠—the once dignified native American⁠—throbs my very being. When I remain here till nightfall, I can hear the death chant and wailing of the spirit-Indians whose bones are being disturbed by the homesteader’s plow. I can see the teepeed villages melting before the blaze of conquest and the shattered nations sweeping desolately towards the ocean-laved portals of the sunset.”

“Where did you get that old buffalo skull and the fragmentary arrow point?” queried Densmore, abruptly changing the subject.

“I found the skull in a small canyon away out on the big flat to our right. I was riding at the time, sort of sightseeing in the last buffalo roundup; corralling of the bunch taken to Canada. The herd was owned by Meschell Pablo, the ‘Buffalo King of the Flathead.’ He has a well regulated home on the creek some miles from here, where he lives in state. Almost a full-blood Indian, his ancestors hunted buffalo on these same grounds, as did mine of the Swa-net^k-qha, who made annual trips here.

“The broken jasper arrow head I picked up on the main Indian trail, now unused, where it winds over the ridge you see yonder; where the cloud-shadows are so thick. Both are relics of an era gone with the sunset of other snows. I brought them here where my Indian nature loves the solitude; where there is yet a lingering semblance of the wild.”

“It must have been exciting, the corralling of the buffaloes,” said Densmore. “I wish that I could have witnessed that sport.”

“It was a grand and never to be forgotten sight,” replied Cogewea sadly. “But it was pitiful to see the animals fight so desperately for freedom. Although I participated in a way, it brought a dimness to my eyes. They seemed to realize that they were leaving their native haunts for all time. To the Indian, they were the last link connecting him with the past, and when one of the animals burst through the car, falling to the tracks and breaking its neck, I saw some of the older people shedding silent tears. But what else could the owner do than sell them? The reservation had been thrown open to settlement and the range all taken by homesteaders. Pablo had to make some kind of disposition, so he sold his herd to the Canadian Government. The few too wild to corral, were killed. They were considered too dangerous for the white settlers, but we never found them dangerous when we were here alone.”

“I suppose that the animals were regarded as unprofitable, compared with other possibilities; and as standing in the way of the progressive development of the country.”

“Yes, they were killed for the benefit of the ‘Missourians.’ The United States Government has a few corralled at Mission Hill, where there is a reserve for them. Some have been there for many years and the final stragglers were brought in last spring shortly before you came. People were here from all over the country to see the first general chasing. It took the best horses and riders of the range to do the work.”

Cogewea then told of an amusing incident in that connection. The irrepressible camera man was there and he thought to obtain a rare picture of a band of stampeding buffaloes, bearing directly down upon him. He secured his negative alright, but with lowered horns the animals charged and he had scant time to spring into the branches of a nearby tree, where he hung, thus narrowly escaping with his life. A noted “Cowboy Artist” was in close proximity and he drew a sketch of the discomfited man swinging to the tree with the rushing buffaloes passing under him. It was, perhaps, a more interesting picture than the camera could have secured.

Thus the hours glided and the sun was bending to the western horizon, when Densmore, murmuring an endearment attempted to place an arm about the girl. Cogewea avoiding the embrace, exclaimed with a start:

“It is growing late! See how the shadows are lengthening eastward and here I have not made medicine over my old grey companion that I love so well.”

“Why don’t you love someone human, instead of that grizzled buffalo skull? A man, I should think, would be far more interesting.”

“I have yet to find him!” was the evasive answer, in pathos tones. “My field of conquest is a limited one.”

“In what way is it limited?”

“To my own kind: the breed.”

“You do not mean that! Would you not marry outside your own kind?”

“No! Never! I do not dare.”

There was a perceptible quiver in the voice and the girl felt Densmore’s grip tighten on her arm. His eyes were burning into her own and to hide her confusion, she turned her gaze to the distant peaks of the Rockies, now glowing in the sunset. The Easterner spoke warmly:

“Cogewea! I do not believe you! Is not the pure white race just as good? Why erect an imaginary barrier about your life? A true mate is one who has sympathy for your ideals; who understands and is willing to adapt himself to your ways. Don’t you think that I would make a good half-breed? I like the customs for which you have declared, and⁠—and I am anxious to learn more about that marriage ceremony.”

“If I thought you were in earnest⁠—that you really wanted to know?”

Cogewea had turned on her companion, wondering questioning eyes. The breed girl was reaching where there were thorns.

“Cogewea! little darling!” Densmore whispered as his arm stole about her. “I love you! and yesterday you promised⁠—”

“It is late!” she exclaimed slipping from the rock. “We had better go!”

“But listen! my very own! I want to say many things to you; that of which I wished to speak yesterday. Stay just a little longer! It is not late! Suppose it does grow dark? We can follow the trail. I must hear the ghosts!”

“I don’t believe they would be abroad where there is a Shoyahpee. They would frighten you if they did come. Let’s vamoose!”

“Cogewea! Tell me that you care for me! that you⁠—”

“Aw! let up! This love makin’ is hell! Let’s ride!”