we
have seen, was very beautiful. This rare wild flower had now almost
matured in the hot summer sun just past. But remember, it was all being
done in the name of and under the direction of, and, in fact, by, the
United States Government.

To say nothing of the desire of agents and their deputies to capture and
possess beautiful girls, it is very important to any Indian agent that
each victim, even though he be half or three-quarters, or even entirely,
white, be kept on the Reservation; for every captive is so much money in
the hands of the Indian agent. He must have Indians, as said before, to
report to the Government in order to draw blankets, provisions,
clothes, and farming utensils for them. True, the Indians do not get a
tithe of these things, but he must be on the Reservation roll-call in
order that the agent may draw them in his name.

This agency had become remarkably thin of Indians. The mountain Indians,
accustomed to pure water and fresh air, could not live long in the hot,
fever-stricken valley. They died by hundreds. And then, as if utterly
regardless of the profits of the agents of the Reservation, they hung
themselves in their prison-pens, with their own chains. Two, father and
son, killed themselves with the same knife one night while chained
together.

There was just a little bit of the old Roman in these liberty-loving
natures, it seemed to me. See the father giving himself the death-wound,
and then handing the knife to his son! The two chained apart, but still
able to grasp each other's hands; grasping hands and dying so! Very
antique that, it seems to me, in its savage valor--love of liberty, and
lofty contempt of death. But then it was only Indians, and happened so
recently.

It is true, Gar Dosson wanted revenge and the girl; and the two men
wanted the little farm. Yet do not forget that back of all this lay that
granite and immovable mountain of fact, that other propelling principle
to compel them on to the hunt, the order, the sanction--the gold--of the
government. Let it be told with bowed head, with eyes to the ground, and
cheeks crimson with shame! Think of one of these hunted human beings--a
beautiful young girl, just at that sweet and tender, almost holy period
of life, the verge of womanhood, when every man of the land should start
up with a noble impulse to throw the arm of protection about her!

"Shoo! they must be close about," began the shorter of the two ruffians,
reaching back