“Wall, durn my skin!” said he, “but that is the all-firedest funniest rascal I ever kem across. I guess now what was in Heap Hungry’s thick head when he made a proposition to me that we should work a gold mine together: ‘Hi’-oh’ knows,’ sez he, ‘of a gold mine, much gold on top. If much gold on top, mucher gold under that, waugh!’ He is a cunnin’ beggar, too; wouldn’t take any chances over his gold mine, but wanted to make cert if it was gold.”
“But I don’t understand!” said Mrs. Elstree.
Dick slapped his thigh again in his emphatic way, and roared with laughter:
“Why, marm, don’t ye see. You was the gold mine! With the golden hair atop, he thought as how yer skull would be gold, an’ he wanted to make sure before ringin’ me in, so’s we’d kill you together and wash up fair!”
Mrs. Elstree shuddered, but she laughed nevertheless; she felt when Dick took so grim a thing jocularly it would not do for her to make new troubles.
But she was seriously disturbed in her mind all the same. She was not accustomed to Indians, and their ways and their proximity, combined with the possibilities of such ideas as had been brought to her notice, made her anxious. It might be all very well to have a terrible penalty afterwards exacted by one’s friends; but scalping was not a pleasant matter to contemplate, and the battle between the edge of a tomahawk and the human skull was not altogether a fair one.
Esse got on very well with the Indians. They had the idea that she was somehow or other under the special protection of Dick, and she was herself so kind to them, that to show her their eagerness to serve came easy. At first they amused her, and then, when she knew them a little better, they disgusted her. In fact, she went with them through somewhat of those phases with which one comes to regard a monkey before its place in the scale of creation is put in true perspective. Now and again she grew furiously indignant when there came under her notice some instance of their habitual and brutal cruelty to their squaws and children, their dogs and their horses. At first she used to speak to Dick, and to please her he would rate and threaten them; but she soon began to see that this was not quite fair to the hunter, as it created a certain sullenness towards him, which augured badly for future peace. So she gradually began to realise that, in spite of their ragged relics of a higher civilization, they were but little better than savages, and with the savage instincts which could not be altered all at once. Dick, who was, like all hunters, a close observer of little things, noticed the change in her bearing, and spoke of it in his own frank way:
“Guess, Little Missy, you’re gettin’ the hang of the Indian. He ain’t of much account nohow, and ye can’t bet money on him more’n on a yaller dog. Though he ain’t so bad as those think that don’t know him. There’s times when the cruelty of that lot of ours makes me so mad, I want to wipe them all out; but I know all the same that there isn’t one of them, man, woman, or child, that wouldn’t stand between me and death. Ay, or between any of you and death either. Guess, you’re about beginnin’ to size up the noble red man without his frills!”
The member of the party who got on best with the Indians was Miss Gimp. Le Maistre they respected and looked up to on account of his big beard; and for Mrs. Le Maistre they had the respect and affection which goes with the enjoyment of toothsome delicacies. But Miss Gimp ruled amongst them like a princess. No matter how she rated them for their imperfect costume, or their dirty ways, or their cruelty, they never made reply except their grave obeisance; and the point of her umbrella made, without evoking remonstrance, indentations in their bodies. Whenever they saw her stiff skirts moving along the sward — for Miss Gimp adhered loyally to the traditions of her youth and wore hoops — albeit of an undefined pattern — they would glide up as near as they could, keeping furtively in the shelter of the trees. So long as they were allowed, they would hang around her, looking like a lot of spectres who had seen better days. At first this used to annoy her, but it very soon became a source of pride, for human nature very soon becomes accustomed to the deference of inferiors. Miss Gimp, in her mind, regarded them as in some sort a kind of royal cohort, and began to treat them with added disdain, such as is supposed to be the attribute of royalty. They were perpetually sneaking round the house, and if they saw her at a window would wait patiently for hours in the hope of her coming out. Both Mrs. Elstree and Esse saw with amusement this perpetual attention on their part, but never said anything to her about it. Esse noticed that it used to give the most intense amusement to Dick whenever he chanced to see it, and that he often hurried away with a purple face; and she, listening, would hear the forest echoing to his explosive laughter. One day she followed him and came upon him sitting upon the trunk of a fallen tree, slapping his thighs, and with his long hair tossing about as he shook his head in a paroxysm of laughter. He did not hear her approach, and for a few moments she stood looking at him, at first a little indignant that he should be making such a fool of himself; but then the contagion of his laughter took her, and she too burst out in a wild peal. He instantly started to his feet, all his instincts of protection and aggression awake, and for the moment sobered into a grim seriousness. When, however, he saw who it was, the lines of his face relaxed, and he said:
“Wall, an’ it’s you, Little Missy. Durn! if I hadn’t kem away by myself I’d have busted — jest busted with laughter. The old lady takes the Indians like she was a queen, an’ all the while it ain’t her they’re after at all. There ain’t one of them that wouldn’t take and put a tomahawk through her skull or skelp her so far as the queenin’ racket is concerned.”
“Then what is it they are after, Dick?”
“It’s the parrot! Nothin’ else than that durned parrot!” and again Dick went off into fits of laughter.
When he recovered his breath, he went on:
“Did ye notice Kim lately — the parrot, I mean — they’ve all been tryin’ to get near him, and jest now one of them went up nigh him, an’ as soon as he got near up, the durned bird says ‘How!’ jest as well as if he was a Christian or an Indian. The man was so took back that he was like to drop. They all thought he was a god before, but nothin’ in this world would make them disbelieve it now!”
“But how does this affect Miss Gimp?”
“Why, don’t ye see, Little Missy, that she has the charge of him; she’s the sachem, the medicine-man, the witch, and they want to make themselves solid with her because they think she can square him. There isn’t one of them that likes her; but, all the same, they’d go a good length to please old Yam-pi, as they call her.”
“What is Yam-pi? What does it mean?” said Esse, inquisitively.
“It means, in Shoshonie, ‘Leather Legs,’ or ‘the old woman with boots,’” said Dick, and he laughed again.
Esse came away from the wood not altogether pleased with Dick. There seemed to be an overpowering levity in his character which did not altogether suit her idea of him, based originally on his fine physique. A woman who likes a man wants to respect him, and as Dick was the only male in the place, for of course Indians and servants did not count, she felt that she had to think of him now and then.
One morning Miss Gimp was in a state of suppressed excitement which at once arrested Esse’s attention. At breakfast she could not remain still, but buzzed and fluttered about everyone and everything in an unusual way. Mrs. Elstree with her usual placidity did not notice anything out of the common, or, if she did, kept it to herself. Esse had therefore the sweet interest of a secret, and she carefully noticed every detail of the companion, and very shortly came to the conclusion that she had a secret which she was simply bursting to tell someone — anyone. With true feminine perversity she therefore, at once and sternly, made up her mind that she would not assist in the unfolding at all. If Gimp wanted to tell anything she would have to do so altogether on her own initiative. It would of course have been quite a different thing if Gimp had a secret which she didn’t