Of course this horrified me, particularly the indifference with which the man thought of murder. I told him he must never think of doing anything of the kind, and asked him to promise me.
“It’s jest as you says, little Missy,” he answered. “Only me an’ my pards wants you to know how ready we are to do you any little favour like that ef you want it done.”
That night I couldn’t sleep. I lay all night looking up at the stars and thinking with horror of the light way in which this man had proposed to commit a murder for me. Then the thought came to me that I had myself tried to kill Campbell once with a hair-brush, and for a while I felt that after all I was no better than these murderous men. But, after thinking the thing out, I saw that the two cases were quite different. I had hit Campbell in self-defence, and I could not even yet feel sorry that I had wanted to kill him.
Chapter the Thirteenth
CAMPBELL was living, at that time, in a little town somewhere in Texas, and we got there after two or three weeks.
It was a dismal-looking place. All the houses were built of rough boards, set upon end, and most of them were saloons. Campbell’s house was like all the rest, and when I asked my mother why he lived in so small a house, and what he had done with the fine one that I remembered, she told me he had lost most of his money.
Almost immediately after I got to his house, Campbell took me before a sort of judge who had two pistols and a knife in his belt. Campbell told the judge that he wanted to adopt me as his daughter. When the judge asked him how old I was, he said I was thirteen, and then the judge said that my consent to his adoption of me was not necessary.
The reason he said that was because I had told him that I didn’t want to be Campbell’s daughter. The judge signed the papers, and told me that Campbell was my father now, and that I must obey him in everything. Campbell told me that my name would hereafter be Evelyn Byrd Campbell. I supposed then that he was telling the truth.
When he got home that evening, he had been drinking heavily, and he seemed particularly happy. He told my mother that he had “fixed things,” so that they wouldn’t be poor any longer. He said he was going to buy a big ranch and raise horses.