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He no work.
He no build White House. He
warrior like me. Tell you what, McCook.
You ask John Grant
to come here. We fi ght Arapahos,
and kill plenty braves and catch plenty squaws' --
pure innocence
(unlike Jack's `Indian no work' rhetoric, used
on white offi
cials to get him where he wanted to go next week),
it makes me think of Yeats
writing wistfully from the height
of the magisterial self he made, `I now can but share with a friend
my thoughts and my emotions
and there is a continual discovery
of diff erence, but in those days, before I had found myself,
we could share adventures.'
So: to share adventures would be
enough, and as for the self, let that be sheer
decoration! with the serious
exuberance of regalia, shapely
as fl ames and authoritative as the fl ashing
of light from Hector's helmet! And
we fi nd you, mentioned in passing,
a secondary fi gure at conferences and commissions;
lined up with others
beside your constant enemy
Ouray, for the offi
cial government photographer;