Page:Life Amongst the Modocs.djvu/398

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salutation, which means so much; but I knew his thoughts. He was saying in his heart so loud that I heard him : " You and I are changed, the world ha& changed, men and women have grown old and ugly, and a new generation now controls and possesses the world below. Here there is no change."

I looked often at my old companion there, as he looked away across the scarlet and yellow woods in the dying sunlight or lifted his face to the mountain. The old, old face, but nobler now, a sort of strength in its very weakness, an earnestness very finely marked, a sincerity not stamped in broad furrows or laid in brick and mortar, but set in threads of silver and of gold. He had settled here in a stormy time. For the good he could do he came down here on the line between the white man and the red, where the worst of both men are always found, and you have nothing to expect from either but suspicion, treachery, and abuse, and here gathered a few Indians about him, and took up his abode.

He had planted trees, tilled the soil a little, grew some stock, and now had a pleasant home, and horses and cattle in herds up and down the river.

As the sun went down, the children, brown, beautiful, and healthy children, strong and supple, came in from the hills with the herds, and dis mounted, while some Indians came up from the river and led their ponies down to water.

A little girl came up the steps ; the eldest, a shy child of not more than a dozen years, yet almost a