“No wanchee help.” The Chinaman grinned amiably. “Mebbe pu’ soon be big leddy. Heh! Sam Kee feed you plenty good glub—thass why. You tell Uncle Hankie. He buy you dress plenty big.”
Hilda sighed, and looked enviously at Captain Snow, the white kitten, a fine half-grown cat now, in high favor with Sam Kee, who said that “pu’ soon now he ketchy lat.” Captain Snow’s coat grew right along with him, and was laundered where it was, in calm leisure moments. How much better!
Upstairs, strewed about on the chairs and tables of a disused bedroom, were the discarded fineries Miss Val had left—splendid to play princess in; but they didn’t offer anything for a decent “personal appearance” at school. And the matter of stockings and shoes absolutely stumped Hilda. You couldn’t pin them together, or let them out. You just couldn’t make feet that had got too large go into shoes that stayed the same size. Finally, in desperation, she brought out a pair of French-heeled, beaded slippers of black satin that had pinched even Miss Val’s small foot, and were therefore thrown aside little worn. These could be held on with a string tied around the instep and ankle. And a pile of Miss Valeria’s worn-out silk hose began to furnish the stockings. Hilda made this do for school; at home she took to going barefoot.
She did not follow Sam Kee’s suggestion that Uncle Hank be bothered with any of these troubles. Aunt Val and Burchie there in Fort Worth were costing him an awful lot of money. There were mortgages. Hilda didn’t know what a mortgage was, but when she asked Shorty he said it was something that ate money and spit fire. Hilda understood this to be more or less figurative. But anyhow, if Uncle Hank had mortgages to deal with, she wouldn’t add the worry of her clothes. Besides, she was getting along pretty well now that it was warm weather. She did just love to go barefoot.
So she was barefoot when she ran, one hot Saturday afternoon, down the long box-elder avenue, and turned eastward, going after some milkweed pods she had seen the day before growing in a place where the trail came in from the Ojo Bravo. She was playing Persian Princess, and needed some of the lovely silvery-white pompoms that could be made from these pods. It was a good way off where the weeds grew, but she didn’t stop to get her pony. Maybe one of the boys, or even Uncle Hank, would be coming in—it was getting toward supper time—and give her a ride home behind him.
And sure enough, as she came within sight of the milkweeds, there was Uncle Hank on Buckskin, loping in from Ojo Bravo way. She left the trail and made for the weeds, running faster now, to get the pods and be ready by the time he came up with her. She was just reaching out to pick them—they had to be taken off carefully, or they would open out and all blow away like dandelion balls—when Uncle Hank’s big voice roared out at her, from where he had pulled up Buckskin:
“Stop!”
Hilda stopped, fairly frozen. Never had Uncle Hank spoken to her like that before. She stood there like a well-trained pointer dog, rigid in the attitude of running.
“Stand. Don’t move—for your life. I’m a-going to shoot!”
A hideous moment, then a noise that seemed to Hilda to split the sky, and send the earth reeling. Uncle Hank leaped from his pony and was running toward her. He had her now. She was lying back over his left arm, while the pistol in his right hand cracked again.