586 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
[ApRIL 14, 1906. 

Ashton’s zsthetic sense was pleased. “She is a 
very comely girl,” he remarked. “Poor thing! 
Whatever will become of her?” 
“Well,’ I reminded him, “this is not a 
civilized community; she would be welcomed 
and provided for by any and every family in the 
camp.” 
Such was, indeed, the case. Many a woman 
came to our lodge and asked that the girl might 
live with her, each one saying that the mother 
had been her particular friend, or that her own 
daughter was the friend and playmate of the 
orphan, and for that reason she wished to give 
the lone one a home. Nat-ah’-ki invariably told 
them that the girl was free to go, or remain, 
and then the latter would say that they were 
all very kind, but she preferred to stay where 
she was for a time. 
When I told Ashton what these visitors were 
asking, he seemed to be surprised, and said that 
he had rather doubted my view of their kind- 
liness and charity. He sat silently musing and 
smoking a long time and then, more in the way 
of a joke than seriously, told me to say to the 
girl that as he had saved her from the Assina- 
boines, he thought that she belonged to him; 
that he was now her father, as it were. But 
this was no joke to her; she took it very 
seriously indeed, and replied: “I know it: he 
is now my chief; I take his words.” 
This unexpected answer certainly surprised 
Ashton, and made him very thoughtful. 
In about a week we packed up and moved in 
to the fort, Nat-ah’-ki’s uncle accompanying us 
to drive the horses back to the herd, as we had 
no way of caring for them. We ought to have 
remained longer in the camp, for the ride re- 
opened Ashton’s wound, and retarded his com- 
plete recovery. After reaching the fort, he kept 
pretty close to his lounge for a couple of weeks, 
and the young orphan waited on him, highly 
pleased when she could save him a few steps. 
To pass the time, he taught her simple English 
words, and short sentences. It was really laugh- 
able sometimes to hear her mix them up, as 
for instance, when she would say, “The cow he is 
water drink.” But we didn’t laugh, for if we 
had, there would have been an end to the 
lessons. Many a promising Indian scholar has 
been lost by the thoughtless ridicule of his 
teacher. 
Berry returned to the fort a day or two after 
we arrived, and we began to plan for the 
winter's trade and to make lists of the goods 
needed. Whether we should make a camp trade, 
or build a post, and at what point, would de- 
pend entirely on the Indians’ plans for the 
winter. Ashton intended to winter with us 
wherever we went, but one day he received a 
letter that changed his plans. He did not tell 
us more than the fact that it was necessary for 
him to return to the States soon. In fact, he 
had never spoken of his affairs, nor his family. 
All we knew was that he had proved to be a 
good companion, a man of kindly nature, a 
wholly dependable man. 
“I am not very inquisitive, I hope,” said Berry 
to me; “but I’d just like to know what our 
friend’s trouble is, what he is always grieving 
about, and what it is that causes him to go 
back. It’s plain to be seen that he doesn’t want 
to go.” 
I felt as Berry did, but no more than he could 
I say anything to Ashton about it. 
Several steamboats were yet to arrive before 
the close of the season, and he deferred his de- 
parture. One evening, when we were all con- 
gregated in the front room, the conversation 
turned to his impending departure, and he said 
that he would return to us as soon as possible; 
if not sometime during the winter, then by the 
first boat in the spring. ‘And now,” he con- 
tinued, “say this to my little girl; tell her that I 
wish to take her with me, and put her in school 
down there with a lot of other nice little girls, 
where kind black robe women will care for her, 
and teach her to read, and write, and sew, and 
many other good and useful things.” 
This proposition certainly surprised Berry and 
me, and when it had been interpreted, the women 
were simply lost in astonishment... A long 
silence ensued; we all waited for the girl to 
speak; all certain that she would refuse to leave 
us. We were still more astonished, if that 
were possible, when she at last replied that she 
would go. And then she ran to Nat-ah’-ki, hid 
her face in her Jap, and cried. We men got 
our hats and strolled out. 
“T have been thinking of this for some time,” 
Ashton said to us, after we had sat down on 
the river bank and lighted our pipes. “I am 
curious to know what effect a really first-class 
education will have upon the girl, and what use 
she will make of it. Do you think it a good 
plan?” 
, 
“God only knows,’ Berry replied. “It may 
make her very unhappy; it certainly will if, in 
spite of high education and all accomplishments, 
the whites shall still avoid and despise her be- 
cause she is an Indian. Again, it might make of 
her a noble and useful woman. I advise you to 
try it, anyway.” 
“But, Berry, old man!” I exclaimed, “the white 
people do not despise Indians. On the other 
hand, I am sure that they highly respect those 
of them who are really men.” 
“LT guess I know what they think, what they 
do,’ he rejoined. “I am only half Indian, but I 
have been abused by them in my time.” 
“Who were ‘They,’” I.asked. “Were they 
men fairly representative of the white people? 
Or were they the ignorant and low down ones?” 
He acknowledged that he had ever been kindly 
and respectfully treated by the former class. 
“Well,” Ashton concluded, “The girl goes 
with me. I'll take her to St. Louis and place 
her in some good institution, preferably one 
managed by the Sisters. All that money can pay 
for shall be done for her; moreover, I'll make 
my will and provide for her in case of my death. 
I'd rather she should have what I leave, than 
anyone else.” 
Early one morning we went to the levee to 
see them off. On the previous evening the girl 
had cried bitterly while the few things that we 
could provide for her were being packed, and 
Nat-ah’-ki told her that if she did not wish to 
leave us, she need not do so, that Never-Laughs 
would not think of taking her away against her 
will. The girl replied that she would do as he 
wished. ‘He saved me,” she said; “and I be- 
long to him. I know that he means well.” 
The boat had steamed up, the whistle blew. 
and the passengers went aboard. The young 
one was very quiet, and dry-eyed. She followed 
Ashton up the gang-plank, shawl thrown over 
her head and partly concealing her face, and 
they went up on the upper deck. The boat drew 
out into the stream, slowly turned, and then 
swiftly disappeared around the bend. We went 
thoughtfully home. 
“T do not like it at all,’ said the Crow Woman. 
“What have we to do with white peoples’ ways 
and learning? The Sun gave us these plains, 
and these mountains and rivers, the buffalo and 
the deer. They are all we need.” 
“You speak truth,’ old Mrs. Berry said to 
her. “Yet I am glad that my son went down to 
the far white men’s country, for what he learned 
there is of use. He can make their writing and 
read it. He is a trader, knowing how to buy 
and sell. He is above the chiefs, for they come, 
to him for advice.” 
“IT think,” I said, “that I ought to have sent 
Nat-ah’-ki along with them.” 
“Just hear him!’’ she cried, seizing me by the 
shoulder and pushing me out of the trail. “As 
if he couldn’t teach me himself. But he will 
not, although I have asked him to do so more 
than a hundred times.” 
That was one thing Nat-ah’-ki always rather 
regretted, her inability to speak English. I did 
not teach it to her, for I early realized that she 
would never be able to master some of our con- 
sonants, especially b, f, 1 and r, the sounds of 
which are wholly foreign to the Blackfoot 
language. Rather than hear her speak our 
tongue incorrectly, I preferred that she should 
not speak it at all. And then, I spoke her 
language, more and more fluently as time went 
by, and I thought that we were sufficient unto 
ourselves. I did not think that we would ever 
be much in the company of white people, es- 
pecially white women. The majority of the 
latter, those who lived upon the frontier, hated 
the Indian women, especially those, married to 
white men, and equally they hated, despised, the 
whites who had married them, and lost no op- 
portunity to show their ill will. 
Berry keenly realized this, and at times was 
actually sick at heart over the slights, real and 
imagined, but mostly the latter, put upon him. 
Once, and once only—it was soon after Ashton’s 
departure with his protégé—he told me of an 
experience he had gone through, which, I think, 
was in many ways the most peculiar and pathetic 
one I ever heard. It so burned itself into my 
memory that I can repeat it word for word as 
he related 1t. 
“When I was only a child,” he said, “I can 
remember my father frequently mentioning the 
property, a farm, he owned in Missouri. After 
he left the service of the American Fur Com- 
pany, he became an independent trader, and 
made almost yearly trips to St. Louis to dispose 
of his furs. He gradually made longer and . 
longer stays down there, and finally gave up 
trading altogether, remaining down on his farm, 
and visiting us only occasionally. Young as I 
was, I had a great desire to become a trader 
myself, and worked hard for the men with whom 
he successively placed me, beginning with Major 
Dawson, the company’s factor here. Dawson 
himself, as well as the clerks, seemed to like 
me, and they all helped me when they saw that I 
was trying to read and write. If I do say it, I 
believe that I made pretty rapid progress, more 
rapid that my father thought I would. He in- 
tended, when the time came, to send me to 
school in the States. 
“There came a time when he had been away 
from us for two years, and my friends thought 
