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Updated: May 26, 2025
Casey did not know the Piute customs well enough to follow them, and his version of the white man's funeral service was simple in the extreme. Hahnaga, however, brought two bottles of pickles and one jar of preserves which had outlasted Injun Jim's appetite, and put them in the grave with him, together with his knife and an old rifle and his pipe.
He was not alarmed at her threat of the sheriff, but he did not want to see her again or hear her or think of her. So Casey tore up the note and went and begged a little food from Hahnaga; then he broached the subject of the gold mine. The squaw listened, looking at him with dull black eyes and a face like a stamped-leather portrait of an Indian. She shook her head and pointed down the gulch.
She's got it coming, and I never cheated anybody yet. I ain't going to commence on an old squaw." "She is a big fool. What you think Hahnaga want of money? The agent he gives her blankets and tea and flour. If you give Hahnaga silk, I will be awful mad. She is old. She will die pretty quick." "Well," said Casey, "I dunno as any of us has got any cinch on living.
Or perhaps a little more, because she knew, poor thing, just how drunk Jim could get on the whisky they gave him for the gold. He used to beat her terribly when he came to camp drunk. Casey learned that much, though it didn't help him any. Hahnaga did not seem to think that anything need be done about the manner of Jim's death.
She screamed at him in English, in Piute, and chose words in each that no princess should employ to express her emotions. Her loud denunciations followed Casey to the tepee, where he stopped and offered his services to Hahnaga as undertaker. She accepted stolidly and together they buried Injun Jim, using his best blanket and not much ceremony.
I have always believed that Casey was afraid she might possibly marry him in spite of himself if she were in his immediate neighborhood long enough. They made themselves each a small pack of food and what was more vital, water, and went their different ways. Hahnaga struck off to the west, to her brother at the end of Forty-Mile Canyon. At least, that was where she said her brother mostly camped.
It sliced its way through the tepee wall and hung there quivering, Caught by the hilt. Injun Jim called out vicious, Piute words. "Hahnaga!" he commanded fiercely. "Hahnaga!" The lean old squaw came meekly, stood just within the tepee while her lord spat words at her. She answered apathetically in Piute and backed out.
And if there's a gold mine in the family, she sure has got to have an even break. What about old Jim? Buried him yet?" "He is in the tepee. I think Hahnaga will dig a grave. I don't care. I will go with you, and we will find the gold mine. Then you will buy me " "I'll buy you nothin'!" Casey's tone was emphatic. Lucy Lily looked at him steadily.
Casey Ryan," he stuttered, floundering in the mental backwash left by this flood of amazing eloquence. "I like that name. I think I will have you for my friend. Do not talk to my mother, Hahnaga. She is crazy. She tells lies all the time about me. She does not like me because I have went to school and got a fine educating. She is mad all the time when she sees that I am not like her.
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