CHAPTER XIX
THE QUALITY OF MERCY
A vast dizziness and a throbbing of the head remained after they werequite done with me, but something of this left me when finally I satleaning back against the wagon body and looked about me. There werestraight, motionless figures lying under the blankets in the shade, andunder other blankets were men who writhed and moaned. Belknap passedabout the place, graver and apparently years older than at the beginningof this, his first experience in the field. He put out burial parties atonce. A few of the Sioux, including the one on whom Andrew JacksonMcGovern had vented his new-found spleen, were covered scantily wherethey lay. Our own dead were removed to the edge of the bluff; and somore headstones, simple and rude, went to line the great pathway intothe West.
Again Ellen Meriwether came and sat by me. She had now removed the graytraveling gown, for reasons which I could guess, and her costume mighthave been taken from a collector's chest rather than a woman's wardrobe.All at once we seemed, all of us, to be blending with thesesurroundings, becoming savage as these other savages. It might almosthave been a savage woman who came to me.
Her skirt was short; made of white tanned antelope leather. Above itfell the ragged edges of a native tunic or shirt of yellow buck,ornamented with elk teeth, embroidered in stained quills. Her feet stillwore a white woman's shoes, although the short skirt was enforced bynative leggins, beaded and becylindered in metals so that she tinkled asthe walked. Her hair, now becoming yellower and more sunburned at theends, was piled under her felt hat, and the modishness of longcylindrical curls was quite forgot. The brown of her cheeks, alreadystrongly sunburned, showed in strange contrast to the snowy white of herneck, now exposed by the low neck aperture of the Indian tunic. Hergloves, still fairly fresh, she wore tucked through her belt, armyfashion. I could see the red heart still, embroidered on the cuff!
She came and sat down beside me on the ground, I say, and spoke to me. Icould not help reflecting how she was reverting, becoming savage. Ithought this--but in my heart I knew she was not savage as myself.
"How are you coming on?" she said. "You sit up nicely--"
"Yes, and can stand, or walk, or ride," I added.
Her brown eyes were turned full on me. In the sunlight I could see thedark specks in their depths. I could see every shade of tan on her face.
"You are not to be foolish," she said.
"You stand all this nobly," I commented presently.
"Ah, you men--I love you, you men!" She said it suddenly and withperfect sincerity. "I love you all--you are so strong, so full of thedesire to live, to win. It is wonderful, wonderful! Just look at thosepoor boys there--some of them are dying, almost, but they won't whimper.It is wonderful."
"It is the Plains," I said. "They have simply learned how little a thingis life."
"Yet it is sweet," she said.
"But for you, I see that you have changed again."
She spread her leather skirt down with her hands, as though to make itlonger, and looked contemplatively at the fringed leggins below.
"You were four different women," I mused, "and now you are another,quite another."
At this she frowned a bit, and rose. "You are not to talk," she said,"nor to think that you are well; because you are not. I must go and seethe others."
I lay back against the wagon bed, wondering in which garb she had beenmost beautiful--the filmy ball dress and the mocking mask, the gray gownand veil of the day after, the thin drapery of her hasty flight in thenight, her half conventional costume of the day before--or this, thegarb of some primeval woman. I knew I could never forget her again. Thethought gave me pain, and perhaps this showed on my face, for my eyesfollowed her so that presently she turned and came back to me.
"Does the wound hurt you?" she asked. "Are you in pain?"
"Yes, Ellen Meriwether," I said, "I am in pain. I am in very greatpain."
"Oh," she cried, "I am sorry! What can we do? What do you wish? Butperhaps it will not be so bad after a while--it will be over soon."
"No, Ellen Meriwether," I said, "it will not be over soon. It will notgo away at all."
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