After a while, Campbell became interested in some kind of business—I don’t know what—out in Arizona; and when he had to go out there to stay for several months, he broke up his house in Austin, and took my mother and me with him. We lived in tents on the journey, and Campbell grew very uneasy after a time, because there were reports of a threatened Indian war. Still, we travelled on, until at last we got among the Indians themselves. They were very angry about something, but Campbell seemed to know how to deal with them, in some measure at least. But presently the war broke out in earnest, and Campbell told my mother he was completely ruined, as he had put all his money into the business, and this Indian war had destroyed it.
One day he had a parley with a big Indian chief, and that night he took my mother and went away somewhere, leaving me in the tent alone. About midnight a band of Indians came to the tent, howling like so many demons. They took me and carried me away on one of their horses.
I was greatly frightened, but I pretended not to be, and the Indians liked me for that. They always like people who are not afraid. They treated me well—or at any rate they did me no harm—but they carried me away to their camp, where all their squaws and children were; for they were on the war-path now, and Indians always take their families with them when they go to war.
When I found that they were not disposed to treat me badly I was almost glad they had captured me; for at least they had taken me away from Campbell, and I liked them much better than I did him.
In the letter Campbell sent me by Colonel Kilgariff, he told me that he had himself planned my capture by the Indians. He had arranged it with the chief when he had the parley with him; and when he went away with my mother, leaving me in the tent alone, he knew the Indians were to catch me that night. He wanted them to get me because then I couldn’t get another guardian, and he thought I could never come back to trouble him about my money when I grew up. I don’t know why he wrote all these things to me, except that he was dying and wanted me to know the whole story. He sent me back all my papers, so that I might some day get what was left of the property my father had given me. Among other things, he told me that my father was dead, and that he himself had killed him in a fight.
Chapter the Sixteenth
I STAYED with the Indians for several months—as long as the war lasted. It was then that I lived on buffalo meat alone, with no other food. Finally the soldiers conquered the Indians and forced them to go back on their reservation. Then Campbell came to see if I was still alive, and, finding me, he took me with him to New York, where he was practising law and doing something in a bank. That lasted a year or so. Nothing ever lasted long with Campbell. But when he left New York and went to Missouri to live, he seemed to have plenty of money again.
Soon afterward, this war came on, and Campbell raised a company, got himself appointed its captain, and went into the Confederate service. After a while, he came home on a leave of absence. He and my mother had been on very bad terms for a long time, and things seemed worse than ever.
One day, when he had been drinking a good deal, he insulted my mother frightfully, and she turned upon him at last, saying she intended to expose his rascalities and “bring him to book”—that was her phrase—for embezzling my property.
Dorothy, I can’t tell you all about that scene. I was so shocked and frightened that it gives me a nightmare even now to recall it. Campbell killed my mother by choking her to death in my presence!