The young lady, as you have surmised, was Mr. Pinkerton's daughter; and there was a wan smile of welcome on her saddened face as she looked up to us.
We stood like shamed, heart-broken culprits before her; and I know that my heart bled for her.
She was so changed from the last time I had seen her. The innocent expression of her face, the openness and lack of all pose, were still evident; but these things served to make her lonely position the more sad to think of. She was like a stricken deer; and her great eyes looked upon us, craving, even before she spoke her yearning, some word of her father.
"Tell me," she said. "Charlie has told me—in his way. Oh! It is a hard, bitter story, as it comes from him."
"To my mind," said Apache Kid, in a soft voice, "it is at once one of the saddest stories and one of which the daughter cannot think without a greater honouring of her father."
Her hungering eyes looked squarely on him, but she spoke not a word.
"To me," he said, "his passing must be ever remembered with very poignant grief; and to my friend"—and he inclined his head to me—"it must be the same."
I thought she was on the brink of tears and breaking down, and so, I think, did he; for as I looked away sad (and ashamed, in a way), he said: "God knows how I feel this!"
I think the interjection of this personal cry helped her to be strong to hear She tossed the tears from her eyes bravely, and he went on:
"When I think that he died through simple disinterested kindness, and that that kindness, that was his undoing, was done for me—and my friends," he said in a lower tone, "then, though it makes me but the more sorrowful, I feel that"—he spoke the rest more quickly—"he died a death such as any man might wish to die. It was a noble death, and he was the finest man——"