k it better to go than to stay, I
will ask Captain Maynard to escort you to the station."

"I will stay," she replied.

She wrote a brief telegram to her father, saying: "I am quite safe and
hard at work. All quiet; don't worry," and also composed a letter giving
vital details of the situation and taking strong ground against the way
in which the cattlemen had invaded the reservation. In conclusion she
added: "I have a fine studio, plenty of models, and am in fine health; I
cannot think of giving up my work because of this foolish panic. Don't
let these settlers influence you against Captain Curtis; he's right this
time."

As she ran through the papers and caught the full significance of their
precipitate attack on the agent, her teeth clinched in hot indignation.
At the first breath, before they were sure of a single item of news,
they leaped upon an honorable man, accusing him of concealing stolen
cattle and of harboring murderers and thieves. "As for the Indians, it
is time to exterminate these vermin! Let the State wipe out this tribe
and its agency, and send this fellow Curtis back to his regiment where
he belongs," was the burden of their song.

As she read on, tingling with wrath at these vulgarly written and
utterly un-Christian editorials, the girl caught an amazing side-glimpse
of herself and the views she once held. She remembered reading just such
reports once before, and joining with her father in his desire to punish
the redmen. Was Lawson right? Had her notions of the "brave and noble
pioneers fighting the wild beast and the savage" arisen from ignorance
of their true nature? Had they always been as narrow, as bigoted, as
relentless, and as greedy as these articles hinted at? Some of Lawson's
clean-cut, relentless phrases came back to her at the moment, and she
began to believe that he was nearer right than she had been. And her
father? Would he sanction such libels as these? At last the essential
grandeur of the position held in common by both Curtis and Lawson--of
the right of the small people to their place on the planet--came to her,
and in opposition to their grave, sweet eyes she saw again the brutal,
leering faces of the mob, and comprehended the feelings of a chief like
Grayman, as he confronts the oncoming hordes of a destroying race.

* * * * *

Meanwhile, in the grassy hollow between two round-top hills the bands of
Elk and Grayman were gathered in extraordi