PAGE 4
Running Elk
by
“I guess the gods were offended at my presumption and determined by one hair’s-breadth shift to destroy the balance of my whole structure. They’re a jealous lot, the gods. I didn’t understand, at that time, how great must have been the amusement which I offered them.
“You’ve heard of old Henry Harman? Yes, the railroad king. It was his daughter Alicia. No wonder you look incredulous.
“In order to understand the story you’ll have to know something about old Henry. You’ll have to believe in heredity. Henry is a self-made man. He came into the Middle West as a poor boy, and by force of indomitable pluck, ability, and doggedness he became a captain of industry. We were born on neighboring farms, and while I, after a lifetime of work, have won nothing except an underpaid Government job, Henry has become rich and mighty. He had that indefinable, unacquirable faculty for making money, and he became a commanding figure in the financial world. He’s dominant, he’s self-centered, he’s one-purposed; he’s a rough-hewn block of a man, and his unbounded wealth, his power, and his contact with the world have never smoothed nor rounded him. He’s just about the same now as when he was a section boss on his own railroad. His daughter Alicia is another Henry Harman, feminized. Her mother was a pampered child, born to ease and enslaved to her own whims. No desire of hers, however extravagant, ever went ungratified, and right up to the hour of her death old Henry never said no to her–partly out of a spirit of amusement, I dare say, and partly because she was the only unbridled extravagance he had ever yielded to in all his life. Well, having sowed the wind, he reaped the whirlwind in Alicia. She combined the distinguishing traits of both parents, and she grew up more effectively spoiled than her mother.
“When I got a panicky letter from one of Running Elk’s professors coupling her name vaguely with that of my Indian, I wavered in my determination to see this experiment out; but the analyst is unsentimental, and a fellow who sets out to untangle the skein of nature must pay the price, so I waited.
“That fall I was called to Washington on department business–we were fighting for a new appropriation–and while there I went to the theater one night. I was extremely harassed, and my mind was filled with Indian matters, so I went out alone to seek an evening’s relief, not caring whither my feet took me.
“The play was one of those you spoke of; it told the story of a young Indian college man in love with a white girl. Whether or not it was well written I don’t know; but it seemed as if the hand of destiny had led me to it, for the hero’s plight was so similar to the situation of Running Elk that it seemed almost uncanny, and I wondered if this play might afford me some solution of his difficulty.
“You will remember that the Indian in the play is a great football hero, and a sort of demi-god to his fellows. He begins to consider himself one of them–their equal–and he falls in love with the sister of his chum. But when this fact is made known his friends turn against him and try to show him the barrier of blood. At the finish a messenger comes bearing word that his father is dead and that he has been made chief in the old man’s place. He is told that his people need him, and although the girl offers to go with him and make her life his, he renounces her for his duty to the tribe.
“Well, it was all right up to that point, but the end didn’t help me in shaping the future of Running Elk, for his father was hale, hearty, and contented, and promised to hang on in that condition as long as we gave him his allowance of beef on Issue Day.