The Girl at the Halfway House: A Story of the PlainsHough, Emerson
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The Girl at the Halfway House: A Story of the Plains
Hough, Emerson
Great Plains -- Fiction; Historical fiction, American
"Them Cheyennes was plenty hot at us fer comin' in on their huntin'
grounds," said Curly, "an' they shore had it in fer us. I don't think
it was what their chief said to them that kep' them back from jumpin'
us, ater the fight was over. It's a blame sight more likely that they
got a sort o' notion in their heads that Juan was bad medicine. It
they get it in their minds that a man is _loco_, an' pertected by
spirits, an' that sort o' thing, they won't fight him, fer fear o'
gettin' the worst of it. That's about why we got out of there, I
reckon. They'd a-took our hosses an' our guns an' our meat, an' been
blame apt not to a-fergot our hair, too, if they hadn't got the idee
that Juan was too much fer 'em. I'll bet they won't come down in there
again in a hundred years'"
"I felt sad for them," said Franklin soberly.
Curly smiled slowly. "Well, Cap," said he, "they's a heap o' things
out in this here country that seems right hard till you git used to
'em. But what's the ust carin' 'bout a dead Injun here or there? They
got to go, one at a time, or more in a bunch. But now, do you know
what they just done with ole Mr. White Calf? Why, they taken him out
along with 'em a ways, till they thought we was fur enough away from
'em, an' then they probably got a lot of poles tied up, or else found a
tree, an' they planted him on top of a scaffold, like jerked beef, an'
left him there fer to dry a-plenty, with all his war clothes on and his
gun along with him. Else, if they couldn't git no good place like
that, they likely taken him up on to a highish hill, er some rocky
place, an' there they covered him up good an' deep with rocks, so'st
the wolves wouldn't bother him any. They tell me them buryin' hills is
great places fer their lookouts, an' sometimes their folks'll go up on
top o' them hills and set there a few days, or maybe overnight,
a-hopin' they'll dream something. They want to dream something that'll
give 'em a better line on how to run off a whole cavvie-vard o' white
men's hosses, next time they git a chanct."
"Ye're a d----d Philistine, Curly," said Battersleigh calmly.
"I'm sorry for them," repeated Franklin, thoughtfully, as he sat idly
fingering the lump of clay that lay between his feet. "Just think, we
are taking' away from these people everything in the world they had.
They were happy as we are--happier, perhaps--and they had their little
ambitions, the same as we have ours. We are driving them away from
their old country, all over the West, until it is hard to see where
they can get a foothold to call their own. We drive them and fight
them and kill them, and then--well, then we forget them."
Curly had a certain sense of politeness, so he kept silence for a time.
"Well," said he at length, "a Injun could tan hides better'n a white
man kin--at least some white men."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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