Yet something like a sigh escaped him, and his hands fell down straight at his sides. Also, his narrow eyes gazed forward upon the horizon, absently, as if their inward visions were much clearer than anything external. In this manner he went onward for a little distance, till his moccasined foot struck sharply against something lying in his path, and so roused him from his reverie.
“Ugh! Ugh! So. When the squaw dies the papoose must suffer.”
The soft obstruction was a little child, curled into a rounded heap, and fast asleep upon this primitive public highway. The touch of the red man’s foot had partially wakened the sleeper, and when he bent and laid his hand upon her shoulder, she sprang up lightly, at once beginning to laugh and chatter with a gayety that infected even the stolid Indian.
“Ugh! The Little-One-Who-Laughs. Why are you here alone, so far from the Fort, Kitty Briscoe?”
“I runned away. Bunny rabbit runned away. I did catch him two times. I did find some posies, all yellow and round and—posies runned away, too. Ain’t that funny? Kitty go seek them.”
Her laughter trilled out, bird clear, and a mischievous twinkle lighted her big blue eyes.
“I runned away. Bunny rabbit runned to catch me. I runned to catch bunny. I caught the posies. Yellow posies gone—I go find them, too.”
As if it were the best joke in the world, the little creature still laughed over her own conceit of so many runnings till, in whirling about, she discovered the remnants of the flowers she had lost upon the heat-hardened path behind her. Indeed, when she had dropped down to sleep, overcome by sudden weariness, it had been with the cool leaves and blossoms for a couch. Now the love of all green and growing things was an inborn passion with this child, and her face sobered to a keen distress as she gazed upon her ruined treasures. But almost at once the cloud passed, and she laughed again.
“Poor posies, tired posies, sleepy, too. Kitty sorry. Put them in the water trough and wake them up. Then they hold their eyes open, just like Kitty’s.”
“Ugh! Where the papoose sleeps the blossoms wither,” remarked Black Partridge, regarding the bruised and faded plants with more attention. They were wild orchids, and he knew that the child must have wandered far afield to obtain them. At that time of year such blooms were extremely rare, and only to be found in the moist shadows of some tree-bordered stream quite remote from this sandy beach.