And the delinquent debtor put the whip to his long-haired, shambling mortgages and disappeared in a cloud of dust.
The Omaha is a genius for contracting debts. At the beginning of the big payment, the aggregate debts of the tribe were roughly estimated at $200,000, the living representative of long-digested groceries, starved ponies, shattered vehicles and forgotten alcoholic debauches.
The Government, in the wisdom of blindness, had caused large placards to be posted at the entrances to the Agency grounds, bearing this order: “No collector of any description shall be allowed within a radius of half a mile from the pay station.” Accordingly, the burly Indian police strutted about in blue clothes and brass buttons obstreperously hustling the white creditors over the half-mile line, where they lounged in disconsolate groups along the dusty highway, playing mumble-peg, pitching horseshoes, and verbally sending the entire tribe to the devil.
“Be cussed if I don’t hate to see the Twentieth Century kicked downstairs this way by the Dark Ages! Cussed if I don’t!” Thus a little wiry, pale-faced undertaker was heard to exclaim. His name was Comfort and he appeared to be a positive misery both to himself and to the delinquent relatives of the many good Indians he had laid away.
Beside the little undertaker, there were lawyers, bankers’ clerks, grocerymen, liverymen, middlemen, butchers, doctors, and a half dozen politicians, there for the purpose of whipping the brown voters into line. There were men like wolves, bears, dogs, goats, roosters, beetles, scorpions. The little undertaker was the scorpion; a middleman was like a bear; there was a banker’s clerk like a goat; and a thin, angular, tall politician, with a body appropriately like an interrogation point, who slunk about like a hungry wolf.
By ten o’clock the last stragglers of the tribe had arrived and the Agency grounds were filled with circles of sweating, brown men, women, and children, passing the stone pipe, tranquilly awaiting the coming of the Agent, whose name, upon a reservation, is a shout.
By 10:30 the Agent appeared, riding down the dusty road from his residence. He was preceded by mounted police of pompous bearing, who shouted “The Agent! Make way for the Agent!” to the circles of their tribesmen who sat in the dust of the highway.