"Your camp no place for girl child," she replied, looking directly at him. "Your men they rough, they get whisky sometimes. They fight. They speak bad words, what you call swear. I not want her hear that. I not want her see whisky man."
"Oh, Brown!" said Wingate, turning to his companion. "What a reproach! What a reproach! Here our gang is—the vanguard of the highest civilization, but unfit for association with a little Indian child!"
Brown stood speechless, although in his rough, honest mind he was going over a list of those very "swears" she objected to, but they were mentally directed at the whole outfit of his ruffianly construction gang. He was silently swearing at them for their own shortcomings in that very thing.
The child on the couch stirred again. This time the firelight fell full across the little arm. Wingate stared at it, then his eyes widened. He looked at the woman, then back at the bare arm. It was the arm of a white child.
"Catharine, was your husband white?" he asked, in a voice that betrayed anxiety.
"I got no husban'," she replied, somewhat defiantly.
"Then—" he began, but his voice faltered.
She came and stood between him and the couch.
Something of the look of a she-panther came into her face, her figure, her attitude. Her eyes lost their mournfulness and blazed a black-red at him. Her whole body seemed ready to spring.
"You not touch the girl child!" she half snarled. "I not let you touch her; she mine, though I have no husban'!"