Flint and Feather | Page 9

Cattle Thief: that
lion had left his lair,
And they cursed like a troop of demons--for the
women alone were there.
"The sneaking Indian coward," they hissed;
"he
hides while yet he can;
He'll come in the night for cattle, but he's
scared
to face a man."
"Never!" and up from the cotton woods rang the
voice of Eagle Chief;
And right out into the open stepped, unarmed,
the
Cattle Thief.
Was that the game they had coveted? Scarce fifty
years had rolled
Over that fleshless, hungry frame, starved to the
bone and old;
Over that wrinkled, tawny skin, unfed by the
warmth of blood.
Over those hungry, hollow eyes that glared for the
sight of food.
He turned, like a hunted lion: "I know not fear,"
said he;
And the words outleapt from his shrunken lips in
the language of the Cree.
"I'll fight you, white-skins, one by one, till I
kill you all," he said;
But the threat was scarcely uttered, ere a dozen
balls of lead
Whizzed through the air about him like a shower

of metal rain,
And the gaunt old Indian Cattle Thief dropped
dead on the open plain.
And that band of cursing settlers gave one
triumphant yell,
And rushed like a pack of demons on the body that
writhed and fell.
"Cut the fiend up into inches, throw his carcass
on the plain;
Let the wolves eat the cursed Indian, he'd have
treated us the same."
A dozen hands responded, a dozen knives
gleamed
high,
But the first stroke was arrested by a woman's
strange, wild cry.
And out into the open, with a courage past
belief,
She dashed, and spread her blanket o'er the corpse
of the Cattle Thief;
And the words outleapt from her shrunken lips in
the language of the Cree,
"If you mean to touch that body, you must
cut
your way through me."
And that band of cursing settlers dropped
backward one by one,
For they knew that an Indian woman roused,
was
a woman to let alone.
And then she raved in a frenzy that they
scarcely
understood,
Raved of the wrongs she had suffered since her
earliest babyhood:
"Stand back, stand back, you white-skins, touch
that dead man to your shame;
You have stolen my father's spirit, but

his body I
only claim.
You have killed him, but you shall not dare to
touch him now he's dead.
You have cursed, and called him a Cattle
Thief,
though you robbed him first of bread--
Robbed him and robbed my
people--look there, at
that shrunken face,
Starved with a hollow hunger, we owe to you and
your race.
What have you left to us of land, what have you
left of game,
What have you brought but evil, and curses since
you came?
How have you paid us for our game? how paid us
for our land?
By a book_, to save our souls from the sins _you
brought in your other hand.
Go back with your new religion, we
never have
understood
Your robbing an Indian's body, and mocking his
soul with food.
Go back with your new religion, and find--if find
you can--
The honest man you have ever made from out a
starving man.
You say your cattle are not ours, your meat is not
our meat;
When you_ pay for the land you live in, _we'll pay
for the meat we eat.
Give back our land and our country, give back
our
herds of game;
Give back the furs and the forests that were ours

before you came;
Give back the peace and the plenty. Then come
with your new belief,
And blame, if you dare, the hunger that drove
him to
be a thief."
A CRY FROM AN INDIAN WIFE
My forest brave, my Red-skin love, farewell;
We may not meet
to-morrow; who can tell
What mighty ills befall our little band,
Or
what you'll suffer from the white man's hand?
Here is your knife! I
thought 'twas sheathed for aye.
No roaming bison calls for it to-day;

No hide of prairie cattle will it maim;
The plains are bare, it seeks a
nobler game:
'Twill drink the life-blood of a soldier host.
Go; rise
and strike, no matter what the cost.
Yet stay. Revolt not at the Union
Jack,
Nor raise Thy hand against this stripling pack
Of white-faced
warriors, marching West to quell
Our fallen tribe that rises to rebel.

They all are young and beautiful and good;
Curse to the war that
drinks their harmless blood.
Curse to the fate that brought them from
the East
To be our chiefs--to make our nation least
That breathes
the air of this vast continent.
Still their new rule and council is well
meant.
They but forget we Indians owned the land
From ocean unto
ocean; that they stand
Upon a soil that centuries agone
Was our sole
kingdom and our right alone.
They never think how they would feel
to-day,
If some great nation came from far away,
Wresting their
country from their hapless braves,
Giving what they gave us--but
wars and graves.
Then go and strike for liberty and life,
And bring
back honour to your Indian wife.
Your wife? Ah, what of that, who
cares for me?
Who pities my poor