All else
failing, he can hide. Winnenap' did this the time of the measles
epidemic. Returning from his yearly herb gathering, he heard of it
at Black Rock, and turning aside, he was not to be found, nor did
he return to his own place until the disease had spent itself, and
half the children of the campoodie were in their shallow graves
with beads sprinkled over them.
It is possible the tale of Winnenap''s patients had not been
strictly kept. There had not been a medicine-man killed in the
valley for twelve years, and for that the perpetrators had been
severely punished by the whites. The winter of the Big Snow an
epidemic of pneumonia carried off the Indians with scarcely a
warning; from the lake northward to the lava flats they died in the
sweathouses, and under the hands of the medicine-men. Even
the drugs of the white physician had no power.
After two weeks of this plague the Paiutes drew to council to
consider the remissness of their medicine-men. They were sore with
grief and afraid for themselves; as a result of the council, one in
every campoodie was sentenced to the ancient penalty. But
schooling and native shrewdness had raised up in the younger men an
unfaith in old usages, so judgment halted between sentence and
execution. At Three Pines the government teacher brought out
influential whites to threaten and cajole the stubborn tribes. At
Tunawai the conservatives sent into Nevada for that pacific old
humbug, Johnson Sides, most notable of Paiute orators, to harangue
his people. Citizens of the towns turned out with food and
comforts, and so after a season the trouble passed.
But here at Maverick there was no school, no oratory, and no
alleviation. One third of the campoodie died, and the rest killed
the medicine-men. Winnenap' expected it, and for days walked and
sat a little apart from his family that he might meet it as became
a Shoshone, no doubt suffering the agony of dread deferred. When
finally three men came and sat at his fire without greeting he knew
his time. He turned a little from them, dropped his chin upon his
knees, and looked out over Shoshone Land, breathing evenly. The
women went into the wickiup and covered their heads with
their blankets.
So much has the Indian lost of savageness by merely desisting
from killing, that the executioners braved themselves to their work
by drinking and a show of quarrelsomeness. In the end a sharp
hatchet-stroke discharged the duty of the campoodie. Afterward his
women buried him, and a warm wind coming out of the south, the
force of the disease was broken, and even they acquiesced in the
wisdom of the tribe.
