I crept silently away.
It was dark when I returned to camp, and she had supper ready and was
anxiously awaiting me. She ran to me and took my hand affectionately.
"What kept you so long?" she asked earnestly. "I have been anxious. I
thought something must have happened to you!"
And as we approached the fire, she looked in my face, and cried out in
astonishment.
"Something has happened to you. You are as white as a sheet. What is it?
Are you sick? What shall I do if you get sick!"
"No," I said, "I am not sick. I am all right--now."
"But something has happened," she insisted. "You are weak as well as
pale. Let me do something for you. What was it?"
"A snake," I said, for an excuse. "A rattlesnake. It struck at me and
missed. It almost struck me. I'll be all right now."
The longer I live the surer I am that I told her very nearly the truth.
That night we sat up late and talked. She was only a dear little child,
now, with a bit of the mother in her. She was really affectionate to me,
more so than ever before, and sometimes I turned cold as I thought of
how her affection might have been twisted into deviltry had it not been
so strangely brought home to me that she was a child, with a good deal
of the mother in her. I turned cold as I thought of her playing with her
doll while I had been out on the prairie laying poison plots against her
innocence, her defenselessness, her trust in me.
Why, she was like my mother! I had not thought of my mother for days.
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