For his sake I would like to forgive
what you have done, what you promise to do. I have tried to forgive it;
but I cannot. I am an Indian; but I am also a man. As a race your people
have conquered my people, have penned them up in reservations to die;
but that is neither your doing nor mine. We are here as man to man. As
man to man you have offered me insult--and without reason." For the
first time a trace of passion came into the voice, into the soft brown
face. "I ask you to take back what you have just said. I do not warn
you. If you do so, there is no quarrel between us. I merely ask you to
take it back."
He halted expectant; but there was no answer, Craig's lips were
twitching uncontrollably, but he did not speak.
Just perceptibly the Indian shifted forward in his seat, just
perceptibly the long brown fingers tightened on his pony's mane.
"Will you not take it back?" he asked.
Once more the white man's lip twitched. "No," he said.
"No?"
"No."
That was all--and it was not all. For an instant after the Easterner had
spoken the stars looked down on the two men as they were, face to face;
then smiling, satiric they gazed down upon a very different scene: one
as old and as new as the history of man. Just what happened in that
moment that intervened neither the white man nor the red could have
told. It was a lapse, an oblivion; a period of primitive physical
dominance, of primitive human hate.
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