Original Size
It needed but a tug to pull it to the ground. Burfield supplied that tug, and we all got a shock when the wrappings, dislodged by the fall, parted at one end and disclosed the face of a mummy. I had retreated to the other end of the little dip, not caring to witness some awful spectacle of disintegration; but a mummy—no museum-cased specimen, labelled ‘hands off’, but a real mummy of one’s own finding—was worth a few shudders to examine.
I looked into the shrivelled, but otherwise normal, face of the Indian woman. What had been her life, her heart history, now as completely gone as though it had never been—thirty years of life struggle in snow and sun, with, perhaps, a little joy, and then what?
Seven brass rings were on her thumb and a carved wooden armlet encircled the wrist. These I was vandal enough to accept from Burfield. There were more rings and armlets, but enough is enough. As the gew-gaws had a peculiar, gaseous, left-over smell, I wrapped them in my gloves, and surely if trifles determine destiny, that act was one of the trifles that determined the fact that I was to be spared to this life for yet a while longer. For, as I was carelessly wrapping up my spoil, with a nose very much turned up, Burfield suddenly started and then began bundling the wrappings around the mummy at great speed. Something was serious. I stooped to help him, and he whispered:
“Thought I heard a noise. If the Indians catch us, there’ll be trouble, I’m afraid.”
We hastily stood the mummy on end, head down, against the tree, and tried to make it look as though the coyotes had torn it down, after it had fallen within reach, as indeed they had, originally. Then we crawled to the other end of the gully, scrambled up the bank, and emerged unconcernedly.
There was nothing in sight but long stretches of sage brush, touched here and there by the sun’s last gleams. We were much relieved. Said Burfield:
“The Indians are mighty ugly over that Spotted Tail fight, and if they had caught us touching their dead, it might have been unhealthy for us.”
“Why, what would they do?” I asked, suddenly realising what many white men never do—that Indians are emotional creatures like ourselves. The brass rings became uncomfortably conspicuous in my mind.
“Well, I don’t suppose they would dare to kill us so close to the agency, but I don’t know; a mad Injun’s a bad Injun.”