en
tion in these pages. This is a book not of the Indian woman's
love, ..." Then he told of a farewell which he meant at the time
not to be permanent: "Good-byes were said, I led my steed a little
way, and an Indian woman walked at my side. Some things shall be
sacred. Recital is sometimes profanity. It was a sudden impulse that
made me . . . unwind my red silk sash, wave a farewell wit...
,
tos...
to her, and bid her kee...
till my return...
.
"
Finally, after wha...
liked to tell the reader was
a
delicate and hallowed reserve all
through the book, but what was actually an ingenious trick of literary
suspense, he described with greater detail the final parting with the
daughter of "the great chief of the Shastas" but not with Cajli
Shasta:
Why had
I
returned here? The reasons were many and
all-sufficient. Among others
I
had heard that another had
come upon the scene.
A
rumor had reached me that
a
little
brown girl was flitting through these forests; wild, frightene...
the sight of man, timid, sensitive, and strangely beautiful.
Who was she? Was she the last of the family of Mountain
Joe? Was she one of the Doctor's children, half prophetess,
half spirit, gliding through the pines, shunning the face of
the Saxon, or was she even something more? Well, her...
a
little secret which shall remain hers. Sh...
a
dreamer, and
delights in mystery. Who she was or who sh...
I
have
hardly
a
right to say. Her nam...
Calli Shasta.
What was
I
to do? Leave her to perish there in the gath
ering storm that was to fall upon the Modocs and their few
allies, or tear her away from her mother and the mountains?
But where was the little maiden now, as
I
looked from
the battlement on the world below? They told me she was
with my Modocs away to the east among the lakes.
I
waited,
enquired, delayed many days, but neither she nor her mother
would appear. Her mother, poor, broken-hearted Indian
woman, once
a
princess, was afraid
I
would carry away her
little girl. At last
I
bade farewell and turned down the wind
ing hill.
I
heard
a
cry and looked up.
There on the wall she stood, waving
a
red scarf.
Wa...
the same? Surel...
was the same
I
had thrown
her years and years before, when
I
left the land of fugitive.
There was
a
little girl beside her, too, not so brown
