How The Raven Died: 1902, From "Wolfville Nights" — John Shaqi
How The Raven Died: 1902, From "Wolfville Nights"Lewis, Alfred Henry
General
How The Raven Died: 1902, From "Wolfville Nights"
Lewis, Alfred Henry
Short stories
Produced by David Widger
HOW THE RAVEN DIED
By Alfred Henry Lewis
From "Wolfville Nights," copyright, 1902, by Frederick A. Stokes Company
"Which 'f you-all is out to hear of Injuns, son," observed the Old
Cattleman, doubtfully, "the best I can do is shet my eyes an' push along
regyardless, like a cayouse in a storm of snow. But I don't guarantee
no facts; none whatever; I never does bend myse'f to severe study of
savages, an' what notions I packs concernin' 'em is the casual frootes
of what I accidental hears an' what I sees. It's only now an' then, as
I observes former, that Injuns invades Wolfville; an' when they does,
we-all scowls 'em outen camp-sort o' makes a sour front, so as to break
'em early of habits of visitin' us. We shore don't hone none to have 'em
hankerin' 'round.
"Nacherally, I makes no doubt that if you goes clost to Injuns an'
studies their little game you finds some of 'em good an' some bad, some
gaudy an' some sedate, some cur'ous an' some indifferent, same as
you finds among shore-enough folks. It's so with mules an' broncos;
wherefore, then, may not these differences exist among Injuns? Come
squar' to the turn, you-all finds white folks separated the same. Some
gents follows off one wagon track an' some another; some even makes a
new trail.
"Speakin' of what's opposite in folks, I one time an' ag'in sees two
white chiefs of scouts who frequent comes pirootin' into Wolfville from
the Fort. Each has mebby a score of Injuns at his heels who pertains to
him personal. One of these scout chiefs is all buckskins, fringes, beads
an' feathers from y'ears to hocks, while t'other goes garbed in a stiff
hat with a little jim-crow rim--one of them kind you deenom'nates as a
darby--an' a diag'nal overcoat; one chief looks like a dime novel on a
spree an' t'other as much like the far East as he saveys how. An' yet,
son, this voylent person in buckskins is a Second Lootenant-a mere boy,
he is-from West P'int; while that outcast in the reedic'lous hat is
foaled on the plains an' never does go that clost to the risin' sun as
to glimpse the Old Missouri. The last form of maverick bursts frequent
into Western bloom; it's their ambition, that a-way, to deloode you into
deemin' 'em as fresh from the States as one of them tomatter airtights.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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