The moon came up; the two cavalcades, scarcely a mile apart, moved on
in unison together. Then suddenly the dusky caravan seemed to arise,
stretch itself out, and swept away like a morning mist towards the west.
The bugles of Fort Biggs had just rung out.
*****
Peter Atherly was up early the next morning pacing the veranda of the
commandant's house at Fort Biggs. It had been his intention to visit
the new Indian Reservation that day, but he had just received a letter
announcing an unexpected visit from his sister, who wished to join him.
He had never told her the secret of their Indian paternity, as it had
been revealed to him from the scornful lips of Gray Eagle a year ago;
he knew her strangely excitable nature; besides, she was a wife now, and
the secret would have to be shared with her husband. When he himself
had recovered from the shock of the revelation, two things had impressed
themselves upon his reserved and gloomy nature: a horror of his previous
claim upon the Atherlys, and an infinite pity and sense of duty towards
his own race. He had devoted himself and his increasing wealth to this
one object; it seemed to him at times almost providential that his
position as a legislator, which he had accepted as a whim or fancy,
should have given him this singular opportunity.
Yet it was not an easy task or an enviable position. He was obliged to
divorce himself from his political party as well as keep clear of the
wild schemes of impractical enthusiasts, too practical "contractors,"
and the still more helpless bigotry of Christian civilizers, who would
have regenerated the Indian with a text which he did not understand
and they were unable to illustrate by example. He had expected the
opposition of lawless frontiersmen and ignorant settlers--as roughly
indicated in the conversation already recorded; indeed he had felt
it difficult to argue his humane theories under the smoking roof of
a raided settler's cabin, whose owner, however, had forgotten his
own repeated provocations, or the trespass of which he was proud. But
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