9° 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
[July 21, 1906. 
regarded in the days of the buffalo traders at 
Fort Benton. To my surprise, some of these 
ladies in the car came to talk with Nat-ah'-ki, 
and said many kind things to her. And the little 
woman was highly pleased, even excited, by their 
visits. “Why,” she said to me in surprise, “I 
did not think that white women would speak to 
me. I thought they all hated an Indian woman.” 
“Many do,” I answered, “but they are not 
women of this class. There are women, and 
women. My mother is like these you have spoken 
to. Did you notice their dresses?” I added. 
“Well, so you must dress. I am glad that we 
arrive in the city at night. You shall be dressed 
like them before we go to the hospital.” 
Our train pulled into the city on time, and I 
hurried Nat-ah'-ki into a cab, and thence to the 
side entrance of a hotel, thence upstairs to a 
room which I had telegraphed for. It was a 
Saturday night and the stores were still open. 
I found a saleswoman in a department store to 
accompany me to the hotel and take Nat-ah'ki’s 
measure. In a iittle while we had her fitted out 
with waists and skirts, and a neat traveling coat. 
Blow pleased she was with them, and how proud 
I was of her. There was nothing, I thought, 
good enough to clothe that true and tried little 
body, whose candor, and gentleness, and innate 
refinement of mind were mirrored in her eyes. 
We had dinner in our room. I suddenly re¬ 
membered that I had not thought of one article 
of costume, a hat, and out I went to get it. In 
the lobby of the hotel I met an artist friend, and 
besought his aid in selecting the important gear. 
We looked at about five hundred. I thought, and 
at last decided upon a brown velvet thing with 
a black feather. We took it up to the room and 
Nat-ah'-ki tried it on. “ ’Twas too small,” we all 
declared, so back we went after another one. 
There didn’t seem to be any larger ones, and we 
we discouraged. “They don’t fit down,” I told 
the woman, “can’t be made to fit like this,” rais¬ 
ing my hat and jamming it down in place. The 
woman looked at me in astonishment. “Why, 
my dear sir!” she exclaimed. “Women do not 
wear their hats that way. They place them 
lightly on the top of the head, and secure them 
there with large pins, hat pins, running through 
the hair.” 
“Oh, I see,” I said. “That’s the way, is it? 
Well, give us back the hat and some pins, and 
we’ll be fixed this time, sure.” 
But we weren’t. Nat-ah'-ki wore her hair in 
two long braids, tied together and hanging down 
her back. There was no way of skewering that 
hat on, unless she wore her hair pompodour, or 
whatever you call it, bunched up on top of the 
head, you know, and of course she wouldn’t do 
that. Nor did I wish her to, I liked to see those 
great heavy braids falling down, away down be¬ 
low the waist. 
“I have it,” said my friend, who had ridden 
some himself, in fact, had been a noted cow 
puncher, “we’ll just get a piece of rubber elastic 
sewed on, like the string on a sombrero. That 
will go under the braids, close to the skin, and 
there you are.” 
The store was just closing when I finally got 
the elastic, some thread and needles, and Nat- 
ah'-ki sewed it on. The hat stayed. One could 
hardly knock it off. Tired and thirsty, the artist 
and I withdrew in search of a long fizzing drink, 
and Nat-ah'-ki went to bed. I found her tvide 
awake when I refurned. “Isn’t this splendid,” 
she exclaimed, “everything as one could wish it. 
You merely push a little black thing and some 
one comes up to wait on you, to bring you your 
dinner, or water, or whatever you want. You 
turn faucets, and there is your water. With one 
turn you make the lightning lamps burn, or go 
out. It is wonderful, wonderful. I could live 
here very happily.” 
“Is it better than the neat lodge we had, when 
we traveled about, when we camped right here 
where this city stands and hunted buffalo?” 
“Oh. no, no,” she cried, “it is not like those 
dear dead, past times. But they are gone. Since 
we must travel the white man’s road, as the chiefs 
say, let us take the best we can find along the 
way, and this is very nice.” 
In the morning we drove to the hospital, and 
up the elevator to the floor and room assigned 
to us. Nat-ah'-ki was put to bed by the Sisters, 
with whom she immediately became infatuated. 
Then came the doctor. "It is he,” I told her, “the 
one who saved me.” 
She rose up in bed and grasped one of his 
hands in both her own. “Tell him,” she said, 
“that I will be good and patient. That no matter 
how bad his medicines taste, I will take them, 
that no 1 matter how much he hurts me, I will not 
cry out. Tell him I wish to get well quick, so 
I can walk around, and do my work, and be happy 
and healthy once more.” 
“It is nothing organic,” said the doctor. “It 
does not even need the knife. A week in bed, 
some medicine, and she can go home as well as 
ever.” 
This was pleasing news to Nat-ah'-ki, when she 
came to her senses. The chloroform did not 
even make her ill, and she was as cheerful as a 
lark from morning until night. The Sisters and 
nurses were always coming in to talk and joke 
with her, and when I was not on hand to inter¬ 
pret, they still seemed to understand one another, 
Nat-ah'-ki in some way making her thoughts 
known. One could hear her cheery laughter 
ringing out of the room and down the hall at 
almost any hour of day. 
“Never in my life,” said the Sister Superior, 
“have I known such another cheerful, innocent, 
happy woman. You are a lucky man, sir, to have 
such a wife.” 
Then came the happy day when we could set 
out for home again. We went, and for a long 
time Nat-ah'-ki talked of the wonderful things 
she had seen. Bier faith in the Blackfoot men 
and women doctors was shattered, and she did 
not hesitate to say so. She told of the wonder¬ 
ful way in which her doctor had cut patients in 
the hospital and made them well; of his wonder¬ 
ful lightning lamp, (X-ray) with which one’s 
bones, the whole skeleton, could be seen through 
the flesh. The whole tribe became interested and 
came to listen from far and near. After that, 
many a suffering one went to the great hospital 
and to her doctor, no matter what their ailment 
was, in full faith that they would be cured. 
On our homeward way, I remember we saw a 
man and two women loading a hay wagon, the 
man on top of the load, the woman sturdily pitch¬ 
ing up great forkfuls of hay to him regardless 
of the extreme heat of the day. The little 
woman was astonished, shocked. “I did not 
think,” she said, that white men would so abuse 
their women. A Blackfoot would not be so cruel. 
I begin to think that white women have a much 
harder time than we do.” 
“You are right,” I told her, “most poor white 
women are slaves; they have ot get up at three 
or four o’clock in the morning, cook three meals 
a day, make, mend and wash their children’s 
clothes, scrub floors, work in the garden, and 
when night comes they have hardly strength left 
to crawf to bed. Do you think you could do all 
that?” 
“No,” she replied, “I could not. I wonder, if 
that is not why some white women so dislike 
us, because they have to work so dreadfully hard, 
while we have so much time to rest, or go visit¬ 
ing, or ride around here and there on the beauti¬ 
ful plains. Surely our life is happier than theirs, 
and you, Oh, lucky was the day when you chose 
me to be your little woman.” 
****** 
The years passed happily for Nat-ah'-ki and me. 
We had a growing bunch of cattle which were 
rounded up with the other Reservation stock 
twice a year. I built two small irrigating ditches 
and raised some hay. There was little work to 
do, and we made a trip somewhere every autumn, 
up into the Rockies with friends, or took a jaunt 
by rail to some distant point. Sometimes we 
would take a skiff and idly drift and camp along 
the Missouri for three or four hundred miles be¬ 
low Fort Benton, returning home by rail. I 
think that we enjoyed the water trips the best. 
The shifting, boiling flood, the weird cliffs, the 
beautifully timbered silent valley had a peculiar 
fascination for us such as no place in the great 
mountains possessed. It was one of these river 
trips that Nat-ah'-ki began to complain of sharp 
pain in the tips of her right hand fingers. "It 
is nothing but rheumatism,” I said, “and will 
soon pass away.” 
But I was wrong. The pain grew worse, and 
abandoning our boat at the mouth of Milk River, 
we took to the first train for the city where our 
doctor lived, and once more found ourselves in 
the hospital, in the very same room, the same 
good Sisters and nurses surrounding Nat-ah'-ki 
and trying to relieve her of the pain, which was 
now excruciating. The doctor came, felt her 
pulse, got out his stethoscope and moved it from 
place to place until, at last, it stopped at a point 
at the right side of the neck, close to the collar 
bone. There he listened long, and I began to 
feel alarmed. “It is not rheumatism, I said to 
myself. Something is wrong with her heart.” 
The doctor gave some directions to the nurse; 
then turning to Nat-ah'-ki he said, "Take cour¬ 
age, little friend, we’ll pull you through all right.” 
Nat-ah-'-ki smiled. Then she grew drowsy 
under the influence of an opiate; and we left 
the room. 
“Well, old man,” said the doctor, “this time 
I can do little. She may live a year, but I doubt 
it.” 
For eleven months we all did what we could, 
and then one day, my faithful, loving, tender¬ 
hearted little woman passed away, and left me. By 
day I think about her, at night, I dream of her. 
I wish that I had that faith which teaches us that 
we will meet again on the other shore. But all 
1 looks very dark to me. 
Walter B. Anderson. 
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