brown
skin was there to be noticed, though you might pass it by, and the high
cheek-bones and the liquidly muddy eye. He had taken on the signs of
civilization at the level which he occupied; the farming community
had lent him its look of shrewdness in small bargains and its rakish
sophistication in garments, nor could you always assume with certainty,
except at Fox County fairs and elections, that he was intoxicated. So
much Government had done for him in Fox County, where the "Reservation,"
nursing the dying fragment of his race, testified that there is such a
thing as political compunction. Out in the wide spaces of the West he
still protects his savagery; they know an Indian there today as far as
they can see him, without a second glance.

And in Moneida, upon polling-days, he still, as Alec said, "made
trouble." Perhaps it would be more to the fact to say that he presented
the elements of which trouble is made. Civilization had given him a
vote, not with his coat and trousers, but shortly after; and he had not
yet learned to keep it anywhere but in his pocket, whence the transfer
was easy, and could be made in different ways. The law contemplated only
one, the straight drop into the ballot-box; but the "boys" had other
views. The law represented one level of political sentiment, the boys
represented another; both parties represented the law, both parties were
represented by the boys; and on the occasion of the South Fox election
the boys had been active in Moneida. There are, as we know, two kinds
of activity on these occasions, one being set to observe the other;
and Walter Winter's boys, while presumably neglecting no legitimate
opportunity of their own, claimed to have been highly successful in
detecting the methods of the other side.

The Indians owed their holdings, their allowances, their school, and
their protecting superintendent, Squire Ormiston, to a Conservative
Government. It made a grateful bond of which a later Conservative
Government was not, perhaps, unaware, when it added the ballot to
its previous benefits. The Indians, therefore, on election-days, were
supposed to "go solid" for the candidate in whom they had been taught
to see good will. If they did not go quite solid, the other side might
point to the evolution of the political idea in every dissentient--a
gladdening spectacle, indeed, on which, however, the other side seldom
showed any desire to dwell.

Hitherto the desires and intentions o