“Now, sonny, talk. Tell me the whole endurin’ story from A to Izzard. Where’d you come from now? Where was you bound? What’s your name? an’ her’s? an’ the little tacker’s? My! but ain’t she a beauty! I never see ary such hair on anybody’s head, black or white. It’s gettin’ dry, ain’t it; an’ how it does fly round, just like foam.”
“I’m not ‘sonny,’ nor ‘bubby.’ I’m Gaspar Keith. I was brought up at Fort Dearborn. After the massacre, I was taken to Muck-otey-pokee. I—”
But the lad’s thoughts already began to grow sombre, and he became so abruptly silent that Abel prompted him.
“Hmm, I’ve heard of that—that—Mucky place. Indian settlement, wasn’t it? Took prisoner, was you?”
“No. I wasn’t a prisoner, exactly. I was just a—just a friend of the family, I guess.”
“Oh? So. A friend of an Indian family, sonny?”
“If you’d rather not call me Gaspar, you can please say ‘Dark-Eye.’ That’s my new Indian name; but I hate those other ones. They make me think I am a baby. And I’m not. I am a man, almost.”
“So you be. So you be,” agreed Abel, admiring the little fellow’s spirit. “I ’low you’ve seen sights, now, hain’t you?”
“Yes, dreadful ones; so dreadful that I can’t talk about them to anybody. Not even to you, who have given us this nice food and let us warm ourselves. I would if I could, you see; only when I let myself think, I just get queer in the head and afraid. So I won’t even think. It doesn’t do for a boy to be afraid. Not when he has his mother and sister to take care of.”