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Page 23
"'Now, you sure don't mean disrespect to the perennial blossom entitled
education?' says I, scandalized, 'because I wear it in the bosom of my
own intellectual shirt-waist. I've had education,' says I, 'and never
took any harm from it.'
"'You lasso us,' goes on Little Bear, not noticing my prose insertions,
'and teach us what is beautiful in literature and in life, and how to
appreciate what is fine in men and women. What have you done to me?'
says he. 'You've made me a Cherokee Moses. You've taught me to hate the
wigwams and love the white man's ways. I can look over into the promised
land and see Mrs. Conyers, but my place is--on the reservation.'
"Little Bear stands up in his chief's dress, and laughs again. 'But,
white man Jeff,' he goes on, 'the paleface provides a recourse. 'Tis a
temporary one, but it gives a respite and the name of it is whiskey.'
And straight off he walks up the path to town again. 'Now,' says I in my
mind, 'may the Manitou move him to do only bailable things this night!'
For I perceive that John Tom is about to avail himself of the white
man's solace.
"Maybe it was 10:30, as I sat smoking, when I hear pit-a-pats on the
path, and here comes Mrs. Conyers running, her hair twisted up any way,
and a look on her face that says burglars and mice and the
flour's-all-out rolled in one. 'Oh, Mr. Peters,' she calls out, as they
will, 'oh, oh!' I made a quick think, and I spoke the gist of it out
loud. 'Now,' says I, 'we've been brothers, me and that Indian, but I'll
make a good one of him in two minutes if--'
"'No, no, she says, wild and cracking her knuckles, 'I haven't seen Mr.
Little Bear. 'Tis my--husband. He's stolen my boy. Oh,' she says,
'just when I had him back in my arms again! That heartless villain!
Every bitterness life knows,' she says, 'he's made me drink. My poor
little lamb, that ought to be warm in his bed, carried of by that
fiend!'
"'How did all this happen?' I ask. 'Let's have the facts.'
"'I was fixing his bed,' she explains, 'and Roy was playing on the hotel
porch and he drives up to the steps. I heard Roy scream, and ran out. My
husband had him in the buggy then. I begged him for my child. This is
what he gave me.' She turns her face to the light. There is a crimson
streak running across her cheek and mouth. 'He did that with his whip,'
she says.
"'Come back to the hotel,' says I, 'and we'll see what can be done.'
"On the way she tells me some of the wherefores. When he slashed her
with the whip he told her he found out she was coming for the kid, and
he was on the same train. Mrs. Conyers had been living with her brother,
and they'd watched the boy always, as her husband had tried to steal him
before. I judge that man was worse than a street railway promoter. It
seems he had spent her money and slugged her and killed her canary bird,
and told it around that she had cold feet.
"At the hotel we found a mass meeting of five infuriated citizens
chewing tobacco and denouncing the outrage. Most of the town was asleep
by ten o'clock. I talks the lady some quiet, and tells her I will take
the one o'clock train for the next town, forty miles east, for it is
likely that the esteemed Mr. Conyers will drive there to take the cars.
'I don't know,' I tells her, 'but what he has legal rights; but if I
find him I can give him an illegal left in the eye, and tie him up for a
day or two, anyhow, on a disturbal of the peace proposition.'
"Mrs. Conyers goes inside and cries with the landlord's wife, who is
fixing some catnip tea that will make everything all right for the poor
dear. The landlord comes out on the porch, thumbing his one suspender,
and says to me:
"'Ain't had so much excitements in town since Bedford Steegall's wife
swallered a spring lizard. I seen him through the winder hit her with
the buggy whip, and everything. What's that suit of clothes cost you you
got on? 'Pears like we'd have some rain, don't it? Say, doc, that Indian
of yorn's on a kind of a whizz to-night, ain't he? He comes along just
before you did, and I told him about this here occurrence. He gives a
cur'us kind of a hoot, and trotted off. I guess our constable 'll have
him in the lock-up 'fore morning.'
"I thought I'd sit on the porch and wait for the one o'clock train. I
wasn't feeling saturated with mirth. Here was John Tom on one of his
sprees, and this kidnapping business losing sleep for me. But then, I'm
always having trouble with other people's troubles. Every few minutes
Mrs. Conyers would come out on the porch and look down the road the way
the buggy went, like she expected to see that kid coming back on a white
pony with a red apple in his hand. Now, wasn't that like a woman? And
that brings up cats. 'I saw a mouse go in this hole,' says Mrs. Cat;
'you can go prize up a plank over there if you like; I'll watch this
hole.'
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