“I’m hungry. I wish we had brought something to eat.”
“I did. It’s here in my blouse. I noticed at the dinner that you did more serving than eating. There’s water yonder, too; in that clump of bushes must be a spring,” and the prairie-wise lad was right.
The supper he produced was an indiscriminate mixture of meats and sweets and, had Kitty not been so really in need of food she would have disdained what she promptly pronounced “a mess.” But she ate it and felt rested by it; so that she began to remember things she had scarcely noticed earlier in the day.
“Gaspar, Wahneenah must have known about this—this money being offered for her and other Indians. She had taken everything out of her wigwam. I thought she was terribly grave this morning, and she kept looking at me all the time. Do you think she knew she was going to run away as she was?”
“Course. She’s known it some days.”
“And didn’t tell me!”
“She couldn’t, because she loves you so. She wouldn’t do a thing to put you in danger. So I thought the matter over, and I tell you I’ve just taken the business right out their hands. I was tired, any way. I’m glad we came. I’m almost a man, Kit; and I won’t be scolded by any woman as Mercy has scolded me. And when I found Abel was getting stingy, too, and claiming our horses for their keep, when they’ve really just kept themselves out on the prairie, or anywhere it happened, I—”
“Boy, you talk too fast. I—I don’t feel as if I was glad. Except when I remember Other Mother. They were horrid, horrid about her. I hate them for that, though I love them for other things. I wonder what Mother Mercy will say when we don’t come home!”
“She’ll have a chance to say a lot of things before we do, I guess. Well, we’ll be going. I wouldn’t like to miss Wahneenah, and I don’t know but they close the Fort gates at night.”