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Colonel Kate’s Protegee
by
As Mrs. Coolidge led the girl into her new home she looked down at her with approving eye and inwardly exclaimed, the conqueror’s joy already filling her heart, “She ‘ll be a success! A tremendous success! The Colonel’s wife can do what she pleases now!”
For in the days of which this chronicle tells, Santa Fe was still a military post, and the wife of the commanding officer had been all winter a thorn in the flesh of Mrs. Coolidge. The Colonel had been recently transferred from an Eastern post; and his wife, who had never been West before, had supposed that of course she would at once become the social leader of Santa Fe. Her disappointment was bitter when she found that place already firmly held and learned that she, the wife of a colonel in the army, and just from the East, would have to yield first place to the wife of a mere civilian who had lived in the West for a dozen years. She rebelled and tried to start a clique of her own, and all winter she had made trouble among the Select by getting up affairs which clashed with Colonel Kate’s plans, and by introducing innovations of which Colonel Kate did not approve. Mrs. Coolidge had no fears for her social supremacy,–she had reigned too long for the thought of downfall to be possible,–but she was tired of being crossed and annoyed, and she purposed with one audacious blow to humble the Colonel’s wife and put an end to her pretensions.
The plan came to her suddenly while she talked with old Ambrosio’s daughter in the street at Acoma. She saw that Barbara was discontented and unhappy, and that she longed to return to even so much of the life of the whites as she had found in the Indian schools. Colonel Kate pitied her and determined to help her. She was saying to herself that the girl was certainly intelligent and attractive, when she suddenly realized that this Indian maid was gifted with that indefinable but most potent of feminine attractions–personal charm. And then, like an inspiration, the idea took possession of her mind. She turned impulsively to Barbara:
“Will you go home with me and be my guest for all this spring and summer?”
The joy that beamed in the girl’s face told how gladly she would go. But it faded quickly and she shook her head sadly, as she answered:
“I can not. My father would not allow it. He will not even let me go back to school. He says that I am an Indian, and that I must stay in Acoma and be an Indian.”
When Mrs. Coolidge saw that look of eager desire leap into Barbara’s eyes she determined that the thing should be brought to pass and set herself to the task of overcoming old Ambrosio’s determination that his daughter should never again leave Acoma. It was not an easy thing to do, but Colonel Kate finally accomplished it, on condition that Barbara should return whenever he wished her to do so.
During the remaining days of Lent, dressmakers were busy with Barbara’s wardrobe; and Mrs. Coolidge carefully schooled her in a hundred little particulars of manner and deportment. And meanwhile the Select of Santa Fe waited with impatience for a first view of the Indian girl. For Colonel Kate was too shrewd a manager to discount the sensation she intended to produce, and so she kept Barbara at home, away from the front doors and windows, and out of sight of curious callers. In the meantime she diplomatically helped on the growing interest and excitement, and lost no opportunity of arousing curiosity about her protegee.
And at last, when Barbara had been three weeks in her home, and no one outside her own household had even seen the girl’s face; when the town was full of rumors and chatter and all manner of romantic stories about the Indian girl; when everybody was wondering what she could be like, and why Colonel Kate had taken such a fancy to her, then Mrs. Coolidge gave her a coming-out party which eclipsed everything in Santa Fe’s social annals.