Rewards and Fairies - Penn State University

‘Did Toby die of yellow fever?’Una asked.
Rudyard Kipling
dress, making the very leaves look silly: feathered war-bonnets,
‘Not him! There’s justice left in the world still. He went down yellow doeskin leggings, fringed and tasselled, red horse-blan-
to the City and bled ‘em well again in heaps. He sent back kets, and their bridles feathered and shelled and beaded no
word by Red Jacket that, if there was war or he died, I was to bounds. I thought it was war against the British till I saw their
bring the oils along to the City, but till then I was to go on faces weren’t painted, and they only carried wrist-whips. Then I
working in the garden and Red Jacket was to see me do it. hummed “Yankee Doodle” at ‘em. They told me they was go-
Down at heart all Indians reckon digging a squaw’s business, ing to visit Big Hand and find out for sure whether he meant
and neither him nor Cornplanter, when he relieved watch, was to join the French in fighting the English or make a peace treaty
a hard task-Master. We hired a nigger-boy to do our work, and with England. I reckon those two would ha’ gone out on the
a lazy grinning runagate he was. When I found Toby didn’t die war-path at a nod from Big Hand, but they knew well, if there
the minute he reached town, why, boylike, I took him off my was war ‘twixt England and the United States, their tribe ‘ud
mind and went with my Indians again. Oh! those days up north catch it from both parties same as in all the other wars. They
at Canasedago, running races and gambling with the Senecas, asked me to come along and hold the ponies. That puzzled
or bee-hunting ‘in the woods, or fishing in the lake.’ Pharaoh me, because they always put their ponies up at the “Buck” or
sighed and looked across the water. ‘But it’s best,’ he went on Epply’s when they went to see General Washington in the city,
suddenly, ‘after the first frosts. You roll out o’ your blanket and and horse-holding is a nigger’s job. Besides, I wasn’t exactly
find every leaf left green over night turned red and yellow, not dressed for it.’
by trees at a time, but hundreds and hundreds of miles of ‘em, ‘D’you mean you were dressed like an Indian?’Dan de-
like sunsets splattered upside down. On one of such days—the manded.
maples was flaming scarlet and gold, and the sumach bushes Pharaoh looked a little abashed. ‘This didn’t happen at Leba-
were redder—Cornplanter and Red Jacket came out in full warnon,’ he said, ‘but a bit farther north, on the Reservation; and
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