“So Rodeo is hittin’ the breeze!” with a twinkling eye. “Well, that is too bad! The ranch is to lose its only blond cowpuncher. How will it do to bring you a light haired substitute?”
“Now Cogewea! don’t start some of your absurd stunts!” he rejoined impatiently. “I need an extra rider and he should be an expert. Do you know one when you see him?”
“Sure! They are always—”
“Then get a man who can ride without ‘choking’ the horn. You know the great number of horses we have to break in compliance with my sales contract, and I want a rider of experience. Look around and secure a man and show the kind of boss you will make. Maybe I will create you foreman, when Jim becomes my partner.”
Cogewea caught the wink that was intended for Jim only, and the mantling blood suffused her olive cheek to a darker hue. Her eyes flashed as she retorted:
“And, understanding the basic conditions of such partnership, I agree to accept the foreman’s place when proffered.”
Jim’s heart sank, but his bronzed face betrayed no emotion as he turned and silently walked away.
Silent Bob dashed from the barnyard with the prancing bays champing at the bit. It taxed the skill and strength of the sturdy driver to hold them in check. Cogewea climbed to the seat at his side, bringing up Wanawish by the hackamore. They were soon spinning miles behind them, Bringo skulking forbidden in the wake. They struck the sloping wagon grade up the gulch, leading to the little town of some five hundred inhabitants, consisting of both whites and half-bloods. The outskirts of this reservation “city” was dotted with Kootenai Indian7 camps, where the cowboys and the “breeds” played monte with the tribesmen on the quiet; where also the irrepressible bootlegger was busy selling the natives an inferior grade of firewater at from five to ten dollars the quart. The penalty for this is a fine and possible imprisonment, when caught, but the lure of excessive profit is strong and there are always unscrupulous whites who engage in this debauchery of the child-minded Indian. Despite the efforts of the usually alert officers of the U.S. Special Indian Service, whose business it is to ferret out these miserable law-defying creatures, the traffic flourishes. Ofttimes the victim of appetite will give his last pony for a single drink. When drunk, his family suffers. The wife with her little papooses deserts the teepee for the brush, or any place where she may find protection. Well does she know his beastly nature when under the crazing effects of rum. He is more brute than human. His inherent fighting spirit seems to possess his every emotion. He will toy with any deadly weapon he may find and will use it without hesitation. Only occasionally are there exceptions to this rule. A few become maudlin and cry over fancied or actual grievances. This is the heritage of the white men’s civilization, forced—like the opium traffic of China—upon a weaker people by the bayonets of commercial conquest. It overshadows all of the good resultant from the “higher” life.
The sun mounted higher in a hot, brazen sky, beating down upon the travelers with ever increasing intensity. The hack came in view of the Flathead Lake, shimmering in the distance like molten glass.
Cogewea, though happy in the expectation of meeting her near kindred, was pensive. She was thinking of the old grandmother, who, like many of her contemporaries, had until this trip, declined riding a railway train. Where there was so much clang and clatter, there must be a corresponding jarring and shaking, which she could not endure. Thus the primitive and the modern are ever at variance; neither comprehending or understanding the other. The Stemteemä knew many interesting tales of the past; legends finer than the myths of the Old World; but few of them known to the reading public and none of them understood. Whether portraying the simple deductive ideals of a primitive mind delving into the shadowy past, or constructive of the hopes of a future yet unborn, the philosophy is a sacred one. Ever suspicious of the whites and guardedly zealous in the secrecy of their ancient lore, seldom do the older tribesmen disclose ancestral erudition, and when they do, their mysteries are not comprehended. The young people, as a rule, are interested in their tribal legends only to the extent of cramming some ardent writer with palpable absurdities. They have progressed beyond the pristine days. The airy teepee has given place to the stuffy houses of their conquerors; their habiliments changed and the native wild foods supplanted by those of commerce.
Over these things Cogewea was meditating. The Stemteemä had adhered to some of the old-time customs—teepee and groundcouch—moccasins and ankle-wraps. But she was lingering pathetically in the sunset of a closing era. The rising generation was educating, while the half-bloods, brought up more like the white children, enjoyed some business advantages over their full-blooded relations. But then, they were just a go-between people, shut within their own diminutive world. There seemed no place for them among either race. The Indians were unduly suspicious of them, while the whites arrogantly ignored them. Their lives darkened by the mixing of the two peoples closed all avenues to social attainments.
The Silent one, his hands full with the bays, was non-communicative and Cogewea began musing half-aloud:
“Yes, we are between two fires, the Red and the White. Our Caucasian brothers criticize us as a shiftless class, while the Indians disown us as abandoning our own race. We are maligned and traduced as no one but we of the despised ‘breeds’ can know. If permitted, I would prefer living the white man’s way to that of the reservation Indian, but he hampers me. I appreciate my meagre education, but I will never disown
