Peter Atherly was up early the next morning pacing the veranda of the commandant’s house at Fort Biggs. It had been his intention to visit the new Indian Reservation that day, but he had just received a letter announcing an unexpected visit from his sister, who wished to join him. He had never told her the secret of their Indian paternity, as it had been revealed to him from the scornful lips of Gray Eagle a year ago; he knew her strangely excitable nature; besides, she was a wife now, and the secret would have to be shared with her husband. When he himself had recovered from the shock of the revelation, two things had impressed themselves upon his reserved and gloomy nature: a horror of his previous claim upon the Atherlys, and an infinite pity and sense of duty towards his own race. He had devoted himself and his increasing wealth to this one object; it seemed to him at times almost providential that his position as a legislator, which he had accepted as a whim or fancy, should have given him this singular opportunity.

Yet it was not an easy task or an enviable position. He was obliged to divorce himself from his political party as well as keep clear of the wild schemes of impractical enthusiasts, too practical “contractors,” and the still more helpless bigotry of Christian civilizers, who would have regenerated the Indian with a text which he did not understand and they were unable to illustrate by example. He had expected the opposition of lawless frontiersmen and ignorant settlers—as roughly indicated in the conversation already recorded; indeed he had felt it difficult to argue his humane theories under the smoking roof of a raided settler’s cabin, whose owner, however, had forgotten his own repeated provocations, or the trespass of which he was proud. But Atherly’s unaffected and unobtrusive zeal, his fixity of purpose, his undoubted courage, his self-abnegation, and above all the gentle melancholy and half-philosophical wisdom of this new missionary, won him the respect and assistance of even the most callous or the most skeptical of officials. The Secretary of the Interior had given him carte blanche; the President trusted him, and it was said had granted him extraordinary powers. Oddly enough it was only his own Californian constituency, who had once laughed at what they deemed his early aristocratic pretensions, who now found fault with his democratic philanthropy. That a man who had been so well received in England—the news of his visit to Ashley Grange had been duly recorded—should sink so low as “to take up with the Injins” of his own country galled their republican pride. A few of his personal friends regretted that he had not brought back from England more conservative and fashionable graces, and had not improved his opportunities. Unfortunately there was no essentially English policy of trusting aborigines that they knew of.

In his gloomy self-scrutiny he had often wondered if he ought not to openly proclaim his kinship with the despised race, but he was always deterred by the thought of his sister and her husband, as well as by the persistent doubt whether his advocacy of Indian rights with his fellow countrymen would be as well served by such a course. And here again he was perplexed by a singular incident of his early missionary efforts which he had at first treated with cold surprise, but to which later reflection had given a new significance. After Gray Eagle’s revelation he had made a pilgrimage to the Indian country to verify the statements regarding his dead father,—the Indian chief Silver Cloud. Despite the confusion of tribal dialects he was amazed to find that the Indian tongue came back to him almost as a forgotten boyish memory, so that he was soon able to do without an interpreter; but not until that functionary, who knew his secret, appeared one day as a more significant ambassador. “Gray Eagle says if you want truly to be a brother to his people you must take a wife among them. He loves you—take one of his!” Peter, through whose veins—albeit of mixed blood—ran that Puritan ice so often found throughout the Great West, was frigidly amazed. In vain did the interpreter assure him that the wife in question, Little Daybreak, was a wife only in name, a prudent reserve kept by Gray Eagle in the orphan daughter of a brother brave. But Peter was adamant. Whatever answer the interpreter returned to Gray Eagle he never knew. But to his alarm he presently found that the Indian maiden Little Daybreak had been aware of Gray Eagle’s offer, and had with pathetic simplicity already considered herself Peter’s spouse. During his stay at the encampment he found her sitting before his lodge every morning. A girl of sixteen in years, a child of six in intellect, she flashed her little white teeth upon him when he lifted his tent flap, content to receive his grave, melancholy bow, or patiently trotted at his side carrying things he did not want, which she had taken from the lodge. When he sat down to work, she remained seated at a distance, looking at him with glistening beady eyes like blackberries set in milk, and softly scratching the little bare brown ankle of one foot with the turned-in toes of the other, after an infantine fashion. Yet after he had left—a still single man, solely though his interpreter’s diplomacy, as he always believed—he was very worried as to the wisdom of his course. Why should he not in this way ally himself to his unfortunate race irrevocably? Perhaps there was an answer somewhere in his consciousness which he dared not voice to himself. Since his visit to the English Atherlys, he had put resolutely aside everything that related to that episode, which he now considered was an unhappy imposture. But there were times when a vision of Lady Elfrida, gazing at him with wondering, fascinated eyes, passed across his fancy; even the contact with his own race and his thoughts of their wrongs recalled to him the tomb of the soldier Atherly and the carven captive savage supporter. He could not pass the upright supported bier of an Indian brave—slowly desiccating in the desert air—without seeing in the dead warrior’s paraphernalia of arms and trophies some resemblance to the cross-legged crusader on whose marble effigy SHE had girlishly perched herself as she told the story of her ancestors. Yet only the peaceful gloom and repose of the old church touched him now; even she, too, with all her glory of English girlhood, seemed to belong to that remote past. She was part of the restful quiet of the church; the yews in the quaint old churchyard might have waved over her as well.

Still, he was eager to see his sister, and if he should conclude to impart to her his secret, she might advise him. At all events, he decided to delay his departure until her arrival, a decision with which the commanding officer concurred, as a foraging party had that morning discovered traces of Indians in the vicinity of the fort, and the lately arrived commissary train had reported the unaccountable but promptly prevented stampede.

Unfortunately, his sister Jenny appeared accompanied by her husband, who seized an early opportunity to take Peter aside and confide to him his anxiety about her health, and the strange fits of excitement under which she occasionally labored. Remembering the episode of the Californian woods three years ago, Peter stared at this good-natured, good-looking man, whose life he had always believed she once imperiled, and wondered more than ever at their strange union.

“Do you ever quarrel?” asked Peter bluntly.

“No,” said the good-hearted fellow warmly, “never! We have never had a harsh word; she’s the dearest girl,—the best wife in the world to me, but”—he hesitated, “you know there are times when I think she confounds me with somebody else, and is strange! Sometimes when we are in company she stands alone and stares at everybody, without saying a word, as if she didn’t understand them. Or else she gets painfully excited and dances all night until she is exhausted. I thought, perhaps,” he added timidly, “that you might know, and would tell me if she had any singular experience as a child,—any illness, or,” he went on still more gently, “if perhaps her mother or father”—

“No,” interrupted Peter almost brusquely, with the sudden conviction that this was no time for revelation of his secret, “no, nothing.”

“The doctor says,” continued Lascelles with that hesitating, almost mystic delicacy with which most gentlemen approach a subject upon which their wives talk openly, “that it may be owing to Jenny’s peculiar state of health just now, you know, and that if—all went well, you know, and there should be—don’t you see—a little child”—

Peter interrupted him with a start. A child! Jenny’s child! Silver Cloud’s grandchild! This was a complication he had not thought of. No! It was too late to tell his secret now. He only nodded his head abstractedly and said coldly, “I dare say he is right.”

Nevertheless, Jenny was looking remarkably well. Perhaps it was the excitement of travel and new surroundings; but her tall, lithe figure, nearly half a head taller than her husband’s, was a striking one among the officers’ wives in the commandant’s sitting-room. Her olive cheek glowed with a faint illuminating color; there was something even patrician in her slightly curved nose and high cheek bones, and her smile, rare even in her most excited moments, was, like her brother’s, singularly fascinating. The officers evidently thought so too, and when the young lieutenant of the commissary escort, fresh from West Point and Flirtation Walk, gallantly attached himself to her, the ladies were slightly scandalized at the naive air of camaraderie with which Mrs. Lascelles received his attentions. Even Peter was a little disturbed. Only Lascelles, delighted with his wife’s animation, and pleased at her success, gazed at her with unqualified admiration. Indeed, he was so satisfied with her improvement, and so sanguine of her ultimate recovery, that he felt justified in leaving her with her brother and returning to Omaha by the regular mail wagon next day. There was no danger to be apprehended in her accompanying Peter; they would have a full escort; the reservation lay in a direction unfrequented by marauding tribes; the road was the principal one used by the government to connect the fort with the settlements, and well traveled; the officers’ wives had often journeyed thither.

The childish curiosity and high spirits which Jenny showed on the journey to the reservation was increased when she reached it and drew up before the house of the Indian agent. Peter was relieved; he had been anxious and nervous as to any instinctive effect which might be produced on her excitable nature by a first view of her own kinsfolk, although she was still ignorant of her relationship. Her interest and curiosity, however, had nothing abnormal in it. But he was not prepared for the effect produced upon THEM at her first appearance. A few of the braves gathered eagerly around her, and one even addressed her in his own guttural tongue, at which she betrayed a slight feeling of alarm; and Peter saw with satisfaction that she drew close to him. Knowing that his old interpreter and Gray Eagle were of a different and hostile tribe a hundred miles away, and that his secret was safe with them, he simply introduced her as his sister. But he presently found that the braves had added to their curiosity a certain suspiciousness and sullen demeanor, and he was glad to resign his sister into the hands of the agent’s wife, while he prosecuted his business of examination and inspection. Later, on his return to the cabin, he was met by the agent, who seemed to be with difficulty suppressing a laugh.

“Your sister is exciting quite a sensation here,” he said. “Do you know that some of these idiotic braves and the Medicine Man insist upon it that she’s A SQUAW, and that you’re keeping her in captivity against your plighted faith to them! You’ll excuse me,” he went on with an attempt to recover his gravity, “troubling you with their d—d fool talk, and you won’t say anything to HER about it, but I thought you ought to know it on account of your position among ‘em. You don’t want to lose their confidence, and you know how easily their skeery faculties are stampeded with an idea!”

“Where is she now?” demanded Peter, with a darkening face.

“Somewhere with the squaws, I reckon. I thought she might be a little skeered of the braves, and I’ve kept them away. SHE’S all right, you know; only if you intend to stay here long I’d”—

But Peter was already striding away in the direction of a thicket of cottonwood where he heard the ripple of women’s and children’s voices. When he had penetrated it, he found his sister sitting on a stump, surrounded by a laughing, gesticulating crowd of young girls and old women, with a tightly swaddled papoose in her lap. Some of them had already half mischievously, half curiously possessed themselves of her dust cloak, hat, parasol, and gloves, and were parading before her in their grotesque finery, apparently as much to her childish excited amusement as their own. She was even answering their gesticulations with equivalent gestures in her attempt to understand them, and trying amidst shouts of laughter to respond to the monotonous chant of the old women who were zigzagging a dance before her. With the gayly striped blankets lying on the ground, the strings of beads, wampum, and highly colored feathers hanging from the trees, and the flickering lights and shadows, it was an innocent and even idyllic picture, but the more experienced Peter saw in the performances only the uncertain temper and want of consecutive idea of playing animals, and the stolid unwinking papoose in his sister’s lap gave his sentiment a momentary shock.

Seeing him approach she ran to meet him, the squaws and children slinking away from his grave face. “I have had such a funny time, Peter! Only to think of it, I believe they’ve never seen men or women with decent clothes before,—of course the settlers’ wives don’t dress much,—and I believe they’d have had everything I possess if you hadn’t come. But they’re TOO funny for anything. It was killing to see them put on my hat wrong side before, and try to make one out of my parasol. But I like them a great deal better than those gloomy chiefs, and I think I understand them almost. And do you know, Peter, somehow I seem to have known them all before. And those dear little papooses, aren’t they ridiculously lovely. I only wish”—she stopped, for Peter had somewhat hurriedly taken the Indian boy from her arms and restored it to the frightened mother. A singular change came over her face, and she glanced at him quickly. But she resumed, with a heightened color, “I like it ever so much better here than down at the fort. And ever so much better than New York. I don’t wonder that you like them so much, Peter, and are so devoted to them. Don’t be angry, dear, because I let them have my things; I’m sure I never cared particularly for them, and I think it would be such fun to dress as they do.” Peter remembered keenly his sudden shock at her precipitate change to bright colors after leaving her novitiate at the Sacred Heart. “I do hope,” she went on eagerly, “that we are going to stay a long time here.”

“We are leaving to-morrow,” he said curtly. “I find I have urgent business at the fort.”

And they did leave. None too soon, thought Peter and the Indian agent, as they glanced at the faces of the dusky chiefs who had gathered around the cabin. Luckily the presence of their cavalry escort rendered any outbreak impossible, and the stoical taciturnity of the race kept Peter from any verbal insult. But Mrs. Lascelles noticed their lowering dissatisfaction, and her eyes flashed. “I wonder you don’t punish them,” she said simply.

For a few days after their return she did not allude to her visit, and Peter was beginning to think that her late impressions were as volatile as they were childlike. He devoted himself to his government report, and while he kept up his communications with the reservation and the agent, for the present domiciled himself at the fort.

Colonel Bryce, the commandant though doubtful of civilians, was not slow to appreciate the difference of playing host to a man of Atherly’s wealth and position and even found in Peter’s reserve and melancholy an agreeable relief to the somewhat boisterous and material recreations of garrison life, and a gentle check upon the younger officers. For, while Peter did not gamble or drink, there was yet an unobtrusive and gentle dignity in his abstention that relieved him from the attitude of a prig or an “example.” Mrs. Lascelles was popular with the officers, and accepted more tolerantly by the wives, since they recognized her harmlessness. Once or twice she was found apparently interested in the gesticulations of a few “friendlies” who had penetrated the parade ground of the fort to barter beads and wampum. The colonel was obliged at last to caution her against this, as it was found that in her inexperience she had given them certain articles that were contraband of the rules, and finally to stop them from an intrusion which was becoming more frequent and annoying. Left thus to herself, she relieved her isolation by walks beyond the precincts of the garrison, where she frequently met those “friendly” wanderers, chiefly squaws and children. Here she was again cautioned by the commander,—

“Don’t put too much faith in those creatures, Mrs. Lascelles.”

Jenny elevated her black brows and threw up her arched nose like a charger. “I’m not afraid of old women and children,” she said loftily.

“But I am,” said the colonel gravely. “It’s a horrible thing to think of, but these feeble old women and innocent children are always selected to torture the prisoners taken by the braves, and, by Jove, they seem to like it.”

Thus restricted, Mrs. Lascelles fell back upon the attentions of Lieutenant Forsyth, whose gallantry was always as fresh as his smart cadet-like tunics, and they took some rides together. Whether it was military caution or the feminine discretion of the colonel’s wife,—to the quiet amusement of the other officers,—a trooper was added to the riding party by the order of the colonel, and thereafter it consisted of three. One night, however, the riders did not appear at dinner, and there was considerable uneasiness mingled with some gossip throughout the garrison. It was already midnight before they arrived, and then with horses blown and trembling with exhaustion, and the whole party bearing every sign of fatigue and disturbance. The colonel said a few sharp, decisive words to the subaltern, who, pale and reticent, plucked at his little moustache, but took the whole blame upon himself. HE and Mrs. Lascelles had, he said, outridden the trooper and got lost; it was late when Cassidy (the trooper) found them, but it was no fault of HIS, and they had to ride at the top of their speed to cover the ground between them and the fort. It was noticed that Mrs. Lascelles scarcely spoke to Forsyth, and turned abruptly away from the colonel’s interrogations and went to her room.

Peter, absorbed in his report, scarcely noticed the incident, nor the singular restraint that seemed to fall upon the little military household for a day or two afterwards. He had accepted the lieutenant’s story without comment or question; he knew his own sister too well to believe that she had lent herself to a flirtation with Forsyth; indeed, he had rather pitied the young officer when he remembered Lascelles’ experience in his early courtship. But he was somewhat astonished one afternoon to find the trooper Cassidy alone in his office.

“Oi thought Oi’d make bould to have a word wid ye, sorr,” he said, recovering from a stiff salute with his fingers nipping the cord of his trousers. “It’s not for meeself, sorr, although the ould man was harrd on me, nor for the leddy, your sister, but for the sake of the leftenant, sorr, who the ould man was harrdest on of all. Oi was of the parrty that rode with your sister.”

“Yes, yes, I remember, I heard the story,” said Peter. “She and Mr. Forsyth got lost.”

“Axin’ your pardin, sorr, she didn’t. Mr. Forsyth loid. Loid like an officer and a jintleman—as he is, God bless him—to save a leddy, more betoken your sister, sorr. They never got lost, sorr. We was all three together from the toime we shtarted till we got back, and it’s the love av God that we ever got back at all. And it’s breaking me hearrt, sorr, to see HIM goin’ round with the black looks of everybody upon him, and he a-twirlin’ his moustache and purtending not to mind.”

“What do you mean?” said Peter, uneasily.

“Oi mane to be tellin’ you what happened, sorr,” said Cassidy stoutly. “When we shtarted out Oi fell three files to the rear, as became me, so as not to be in the way o’ their colloguing, but sorra a bit o’ stragglin’ was there, and Oi kept them afore me all the toime. When we got to Post Oak Bottom the leddy p’ints her whip off to the roight, and sez she: ‘It’s a fine bit of turf there, Misther Forsyth,’ invitin’ like, and with that she gallops away to the right. The leftenant follys her, and Oi closed up the rear. So we rides away innoshent like amongst the trees, me thinkin’ only it wor a mighty queer place for manoovrin’, until we seed, just beyond us in the hollow, the smoke of an Injin camp and a lot of women and childer. And Mrs. Lascelles gets off and goes to discoursin’ and blarneying wid ‘em: and Oi sees Mr. Forsyth glancin’ round and lookin’ oneasy. Then he goes up and sez something to your sister, and she won’t give him a hearin’. And then he tells her she must mount and be off. And she turns upon him, bedad, like a tayger, and bids him be off himself. Then he comes to me and sez he, ‘Oi don’t like the look o’ this, Cassidy,’ sez he; ‘the woods behind is full of braves,’ sez he. ‘Thrue for you, leftenant,’ sez Oi, ‘it’s into a trap that the leddy hez led us, God save her!’ ‘Whisht,’ he sez, ‘take my horse, it’s the strongest. Go beside her, and when Oi say the word lift her up into the saddle before ye, and gallop like blazes. Oi’ll bring up the rear and the other horse.’ Wid that we changed horses and cantered up to where she was standing, and he gives the word when she isn’t lookin’, and Oi grabs her up—she sthrugglin’ like mad but not utterin’ a cry—and Oi lights out for the trail agin. And sure enough the braves made as if they would folly, but the leftenant throws the reins of her horse over the horn of his saddle, and whips out his revolver and houlds ‘em back till I’ve got well away to the trail again. And then they let fly their arrows, and begorra the next thing a BULLET whizzes by him. And then he knows they have arrms wid ‘em and are ‘hostiles,’ and he rowls the nearest one over, wheelin’ and fightin’ and coverin’ our retreat till we gets to the road agin. And they daren’t folly us out of cover. Then the lady gets more sinsible, and the leftenant pershuades her to mount her horse agin. But before we comes to the fort, he sez to me: ‘Cassidy,’ sez he, ‘not a word o’ this on account of the leddy.’ And I was mum, sorr, while he was shootin’ off his mouth about him bein’ lost and all that, and him bein’ bully-ragged by the kernel, and me knowin’ that but for him your sister wouldn’t be between these walls here, and Oi wouldn’t be talkin’ to ye. And shure, sorr, ye might be tellin’s the kernel as how the leddy was took by the hysterics, and was that loony that she didn’t know whatever she was sayin’, and so get the leftenant in favor again.”

“I will speak with the colonel to-night,” said Peter gloomily.

“Lord save yer honor,” returned the trooper gratefully, “and if ye could be sayin’ that the LEDDY tould you,—it would only be the merest taste of a loi ye’d be tellin’,—and you’d save me from breakin’ me word to the leftenant.”

“I shall of course speak to my sister first,” returned Peter, with a guilty consciousness that he had accepted the trooper’s story mainly from his previous knowledge of his sister’s character. Nevertheless, in spite of this foregone conclusion, he DID speak to her. To his surprise she did not deny it. Lieutenant Forsyth,—a vain and conceited fool,—whose silly attentions she had accepted solely that she might get recreation beyond the fort,—had presumed to tell her what SHE must do! As if SHE was one of those stupid officers’ wives or sisters! And it never would have happened if he—Peter—had let her remain at the reservation with the Indian agent’s wife, or if “Charley” (the gentle Lascelles) were here! HE would have let her go, or taken her there. Besides all the while she was among friends; HIS, Peter’s own friends,—the people whose cause he was championing! In vain did Peter try to point out to her that these “people” were still children in mind and impulse, and capable of vacillation or even treachery. He remembered he was talking to a child in mind and impulse, who had shown the same qualities, and in trying to convince her of her danger he felt he was only voicing the common arguments of his opponents.

He spoke also to the colonel, excusing her through her ignorance, her trust in his influence with the savages, and the general derangement of her health. The colonel, relieved of his suspicions of a promising young officer, was gentle and sympathetic, but firm as to Peter’s future course. In a moment of caprice and willfulness she might imperil the garrison as she had her escort, and, more than that, she was imperiling Peter’s influence with the Indians. Absurd stories had come to his ears regarding the attitude of the reservation towards him. He thought she ought to return home as quickly as possible. Fortunately an opportunity offered. The general commanding had advised him of the visit to the fort of a party of English tourists who had been shooting in the vicinity, and who were making the fort the farthest point of their western excursion. There were three or four ladies in the party, and as they would be returning to the line of railroad under escort, she could easily accompany them. This, added Colonel Carter, was also Mrs. Carter’s opinion,—she was a woman of experience, and had a married daughter of her own. In the mean time Peter had better not broach the subject to his sister, but trust to the arrival of the strangers, who would remain for a week, and who would undoubtedly divert Mrs. Lascelles’ impressible mind, and eventually make the proposition more natural and attractive.

In the interval Peter revisited the reservation, and endeavored to pacify the irritation that had sprung from his previous inspection. The outrage at Post Oak Bottom he was assured had no relation to the incident at the reservation, but was committed by some stragglers from other tribes who had not yet accepted the government bounty, yet had not been thus far classified as “hostile.” There had been no “Ghost Dancing” nor other indication of disturbance. The colonel had not deemed it necessary to send out an exemplary force, or make a counter demonstration. The incident was allowed to drop. At the reservation Peter had ignored the previous conduct of the chiefs towards him; had with quiet courage exposed himself fully—unarmed and unattended—amongst them, and had as fully let it be known that this previous incident was the reason that his sister had not accompanied him on his second visit. He left them at the close of the second day more satisfied in his mind, and perhaps in a more enthusiastic attitude towards his report.

As he came within sound of the sunset bugles, he struck a narrower trail which led to the fort, through an oasis of oaks and cottonwoods and a small stream or “branch,” which afterwards lost itself in the dusty plain. He had already passed a few settler’s cabins, a sutler’s shop, and other buildings that had sprung up around this armed nucleus of civilization—which, in due season, was to become a frontier town. But as yet the brief wood was wild and secluded; frequented only by the women and children of the fort, within whose protecting bounds it stood, and to whose formal “parade,” and trim white and green cottage “quarters,” it afforded an agreeable relief. As he rode abstractedly forward under the low cottonwood vault he felt a strange influence stealing over him, an influence that was not only a present experience but at the same time a far-off memory. The concave vault above deepened; the sunset light from the level horizon beyond streamed through the leaves as through the chequers of stained glass windows; through the two shafts before him stretched the pillared aisles of Ashley Church! He was riding as in a dream, and when a figure suddenly slipped across his pathway from a column-like tree trunk, he woke with the disturbance and sense of unreality of a dream. For he saw Lady Elfrida standing before him!

It was not a mere memory conjured up by association, for although the figure, face, and attitude were the same, there were certain changes of costume which the eye of recollection noticed. In place of the smart narrow-brimmed sailor hat he remembered, she was wearing a slouched cavalry hat with a gold cord around its crown, that, with all its becomingness and picturesque audacity, seemed to become characteristic and respectable, as a crest to her refined head, and as historic as a Lely canvas. She wore a flannel shirt, belted in at her slight waist with a band of yellow leather, defining her small hips, and short straight pleatless skirts that fell to her trim ankles and buckled leather shoes. She was fresh and cool, wholesome and clean, free and unfettered; indeed, her beauty seemed only an afterthought or accident. So much so that when Peter saw her afterwards, amidst the billowy, gauzy, and challenging graces of the officer’s wives, who were dressed in their best and prettiest frocks to welcome her, the eye turned naturally from that suggestion of enhancement to the girl who seemed to defy it. She was clearly not an idealized memory, a spirit or a ghost, but naturalistic and rosy; he thought a trifle rosier, as she laughingly addressed him:—