The Daily Ardmoreite. [volume] (Ardmore, Okla.) 1893-current, 1911-03-29
Who Calls? F?
BY SIR GILBERT PARKER
Author Of "The Right of Way" Etc.
Copyright by The Red Book Corpo-
ration)

But I'm white; I'm not an Indian.
My father was a white man. I've
been brought up as a white girl. I've
had a white girls schooling"
Her eyes flashed as she sprang
to her feet and walked up and down
the room for a moment, then stood
still, facing her mother-a dark
faced, pock-marked woman, with
heavy somnolent eyes-and waited
for her to speak The reply came
slowly and sullenly.
Il am a Blackfoot woman. / lived
on the Muskwat River among the
braves for thirty years. i have killed
buffalo. | have seen battles. Men,
too, | have killed when they came to
steal our horses and stole in on
our lodges in the night-the Crees!
| am Blackfoot. You are the daugh-
ter of a Blackfoot woman. No med
icine can cure that. Sit down. You
have no sense. You are not white.
They will not have you. Sit down.
The girls hadsome face flushed;
she threw up her hands in an agony
of protest. A dreadful anger was in
her painting breast, but she could not
speak. She seemed TO shake with
excess of feeling. For an instant
she stood still, trembling with agita-
tion, then she sat down suddenly
on a great couch covered with soft
deerskins and buffalo robes. The hab-
it of obedience to this somber but
striking woman before her was
strong in her. She had ben ruled
firmly, almost oppressively, and she
had not yet revolted. Seated on the
couch, she gazed out of the window
at the flying snow, her brain too
much on fire for thought, passion
beating like pulse in all her 1.-THE
and graceful young body, which had
known the storms of life and time
for only twenty years.
The wind shrieked and the snow
swept past in clouds of blinding
drift, completely hiding from sight
the town below them, whose civili-
zation had built itself many habita-
tions and was making roads and
streets on the green-brown plain,
where herds of buffalo, shaking the
earth with their tread, had stamped
and streamed not long ago. The
town was mile and half away,
and these two were alone in a great
circle of storm, one of them battling
against a tempest which might yet
overtake her, against which she had
set her face almost ever since she
could remember, though it had only
come to violence sice her father died
two years before-a careless, strong,
willful white man, who had lived
the Indian life for many years, but
at last had been swallowed by the
great wave of civilization streaming
westward and northward, wiping out
the game and the Indian, and over,
whelming the rough, fighting. hunt
ing, pioneer life forever. He had
made money, by good luck chiefly,
having held land here and there
which he had got for nothing, and
had then almost forgotten about it,
and, when reminded of it, still held
on to it with defiant stubbornness
which often possesses improvident
and careless natures. He had never
had any real business instinct, and
to swagger a little over the land he
held and to treat offers of purchase
with contempt was the loud assertion
of a capacity he did not possess. SO
it was that his vanity and stubborn
ness, beneath which his angry pro-
test against the prejudice felt by the
new people of the West for the
Squaw-man-the white pioneer who
married an Indian, and lived the In
dian life, giving it, however, some
thing it never had before-so it was
that this gave him competence and
a comfortable home after the old
trader had been driven out by the
railway and the shopkeeper. With
the first land he said he sent his
daughter away to school in a town
farther east and south. where she
had been brought in touch with a
life that at once cramped and at
tracted her; where, too. she had
felt the first chill of racial ostra-
cism land had proudly fought it to
the end, her weapons being talent,
industry, and a hot, defiant ambi-
ton.
There had been three years of bit
ter, almost half-sullen, struggle, light
-