News and citizen. [volume] (Morrisville, Vt. ;) 1881-current, 1893-07-20
CHAPTER III.

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"Cdptain Rolfe, it Is question refuse
to GnslCer"
The northwest winds that had finally
banked up the southern clouds and
squeezed down dismal drizzle the
night of Miss Guthrie's departure now
veered and whisked away the moist and
FLASHING veil, and the afternoon sun
shine of the day that followed streamed
across the broad mesa in !: Z, I'd of CRATE
ful warmth and radiance The colonel
ordered out the entire command, to the
utter COnsteraation of Miss Winifred
Berrien and the supreme disgust of some
half Il dozen Junior officers, who, count
ing on the weather indications at nine
a. m, had eagerly accepted Mrs. Ber-
riens suggestion that they spend their
rainy afternoon at the majors hospita-
bic quarters, by way of making it pleas
ant for two young damsels from town
and three or four from the fort itself,
all of whom were supposed to be deeply
interested and engaged in the embroidery
of certain altar cloths, lecturn and pull
pit adornments, with which to rejoice
the eyes of their amiable chaplain at
Christmastide. Here it was well along
in November, and beyond Il vast amount
of chatter and conjecture over the pros
pective pleasure of the reverend dominic,
nothing had been done.
True, the colonel had astonished every
body by ordering out the entire regi-
ment, ut least the eight companies there
of present at the post, to parade for in
spection and review, equipped for field
service, at nine-thirty that morning, and
only reluctantly recalled the order when
the persistent FLASHING of the rain
warned him that it would take day ol
two of sunshine to dry out the clothing
and equipments subjected to such T;
downpour. And then if anything shoulC
ndDDcu anu lUtl SuOulOA 'D0 SuNutIllD
called upon to bundle everything right
into the waiting train But, pshaw!
the thing wasn't possible; the idea could
not be entertained. OF course matters
were looking squally, very squally, up
there in the Dakotas, and everybody
from Missouri to the mountains and
north of the Platte was already out in
the field, and in little detachments from
the scattered posts even far away in
Montana, even far in southern Wyom-
ing, the soldiery were converging to-
ward those swarming agencies where
thousands of truculent warriors of the
great Dakota nation were drawing ra-
tiOns for every man, woman, child and
pappoose they possessed. Be it known
to the reader that paternalism is ram
pant in the land-that while peace So
cieties and Indian rights associations
and prayerful congregations away at
the Atlantic seaboard are deluging the
press with diatribes upon the wrongs of
the red man and the criminal neglect of
the nation, and declaring that
Mans inhumanity to Lo
Makes countless Indians mourn,
in this last century of dishonor" Uncle
Sam has disbursed millions upon mil
lions in the desperately hopeless task of
filling the aboriginal stomach, and in
striving by means of honest census to re-
duce the number of the countless" so
pathetically referred to. Indians would
make splendid ward politicians, and how
it is that the sachems of Tammany have
not long since possessed themselves of
so available IA means of swelling their
ranks passeth all understanding. After
the Indian had had himself, several
wives and his blooming olive branches,
"oksheelah, wicincha," boys and girls,
and such pappoOses as his better halves
had at the back (either of home produc-
ton or borr owed for the moment from
the tepee of Two-Bricks-in-h -his-Hat), duly
enumerated, would he not swell the cen
sus of his tribe by judicious distribution
of all his wives relations among those
tepees not already checked off? Oh, if
the truth could ever reach the ears of
the general public what tales of Indian
ragacity might not yet be in store for
them! What annals might not be un-
folded! Dealing with his own, his white
children, who are nonvoters, Uncle Sam
serves out one ration day to each en-
listed soldier.
The wife and the lads and lasses that
tumbled about the married mems quar-
tiers i'll the queer old days were all to be
fed from that one ration, unless, per-
chance, mamma was Il laundress. But
when dealing with the wronged and in
Jured red man he could not be too mag
nanimous. Every head counted. The
mumbling old beldam, great-grand-
mother of countless thousands, braced
up from the edge of the grave for the
occasion. The big bellied little four
year-olds, reveling in the dirt about the
reeking shambles, the tiny hour-old
papoose, even many puppy, blanket
swathed and slung squaw back, passing
for wee baby, anything he could show
as possessing Il spark of Indian life was
duly credited to the warrior lord OF the
lodge for another ration, full one
Cattle might and did shrink, but to the
Indian there is more meat in II lean COW
than i'm the stall fed OK to the white, for
the reason that everything goes"
Horns and hoofs are the only things the
indian doesn't eat.
Agents might and did cheat and steal,
but SO did the Indian, and many re-
1oicing old sinner has been credited with
afamily of twelve when his sole avail
able domestic assets consisted OF two
siquaws and three children, the papooses
having been borrowed or personated
by bundled up doggies, the grandmother
being public property passed around for
The occasion: the others, pickaninnies
painted so as to look entirely unlike the
grinning urchins counted in the flock of
brother Stab-in-the-Dark whose people
had just been enumerated. There were
agents who lent themselves to that sort
OF thing because the more Indians they
could show as their especial wards, the
more barrels and boxes and bales were
invoiced to that agency and deity