Page:Life Among the Piutes.djvu/139

 staid there three weeks. While I was still there, he had another trouble with one of my people. He beat an Indian man almost to death for no cause whatever. He asked him to help him carry a sick woman. The Indian was a little too long getting on his moccasins. The agent knocked him down with a great stick, and beat him so shamefully I ran to him and caught hold of him, saying, “Do not beat him so.” The man rose up, and as he did so, the agent raised the stick again to him. At this the Indian took hold of it; then the agent took out a pistol to shoot him; but white men came to him and said, “Do not shoot him.” After this, my good friend, Mrs. Howell, went away. My cousin, Jarry, had not spoken to me all that time, and I too went away, and had to leave my stove, for which I had given fifty dollars. Mr. Reinhard used it all the time, for which I tried to get paid; but I had to lose it, because he was a Christian man. His men, Frank Johnson, the school-teacher, and his brother, the blacksmith, were the two greatest gamblers that ever lived. They played with my people, and won a great many of their ponies; and they kept the interpreter Jarry losing all the time. They carried cards wherever they went; and when I was going away, Mr. Reinhard said to me, “Sarah, I want you to give this letter to Mr. Maulrick, and he will give Captain Scott whatever he wants out of the store. Captain Scott will go with you.”

I said, “All right,” and went away; and oh, what a wicked thing I did! I read the letter. It said, “Dear friend, as I have promised you, I will send you all the Indians. You know you are to pay them not in money but in clothes. I have given the bearer of this a thirty-dollar check. Write and tell me what kind of clothing you give, so that I can report that it has been issued to him.” I kept the letter, and when we got there I gave the money-