THE LITTLE Indian girl stood on the station platform, and a group of restless travelers, glad of whatever broke the monotony, had gathered in a circle about her, examining her wares. On every hand the dessert stretched away, meeting the bare, black mountains, their sides scarred by gorges and barren of vegetation. Against their somber background the bright clothing of the Indian maid showed to good advantage.
“You pay two prices for what you buy here,” said the man with his hat on one side, who had the air of knowing it all. “But the tourist is robbed everywhere. You might as well make up your mind to be cheated in the first place.”
“This is not cheat,” the Indian girl protested. “I make the baskets myself and they take many days.”
“Oh, of course, they all declare they are selling cheap,” said the man with his hat on one side. “And why shouldn’t they cheat if they can? I’d do the same in their place.” He looked at a man on the other side of the crowd and winked unpleasantly.
The next remark of the Indian girl was unexpected. " For what shall it profit a man,’ " she said in slow English, " ‘if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?’ That is what they taught us at the mission school, and I will not lie that I may sell my baskets, even though I go hungry.”
It was a silent company that climbed aboard the Pullman at the conductor’s signal. “It was not long for a sermon,” said the man with his hat on one side, “but it’s the kind of one you can’t forget in a hurry.”
ML-09/09/1962