Page:Life Among the Piutes.djvu/133

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The Malheur Agency.
129

just as if they were our own fathers’ sons and daughters. Although we are savages, we love one another as well as the fairest of the land. My cousin said, “My father-in-law and all the men are coming to talk to the agent, and don’t you say a word.” I said, “Very well.” “They are going to ask him for the grain, but don’t tell anybody about Reinhard’s doings. What do we care whether he gives our people anything or not, so long as he gives us something to live on? What do you think our people care for us? Let them go wherever they like.”

I said, “Dear brother, I am ashamed of you, you talk so heartlessly. I am going to see my people dealt rightly by, and to stand by them, and I am going to talk for them just as long as I live. If you want to see your people starve, that is your own business. I am going to see that they get their wheat, and I am going to get mine too; that is, if he will give it to us. I am here to work for my people, and I am going to my work.” Just then the mother of the little boy came crying as if her heart would break. “Oh, my poor child,” she was saying, “he will die,—the only child I have left out of four.”

I said nothing. I was feeling badly for the little boy and his mother, too. Jarry asked her what was the matter. She told him all, and said the little boy’s ear was swelling badly, and it was black and the boy would not speak. “Oh, I am so afraid he is going to die. I have come to see if the white doctor will come and do something for him.” I said, “Come with me, “and went for the doctor. There were a great many there to see the boy. Two sub-chiefs were there, and Oytes was laying hands on him as we got there.

I said, “Here is the white doctor; maybe he can do something for him.”

Egan said, “No; the white people hate us; he might