"Now I've come to the day when I sent you the telegram, and why I sent it, so be prepared! There was to be a big picnic, today, near a town called Independence, and, as it happened, I didn't feel like going, so begged off—let me tell you why: I began a novel, last night, full of bright conversation, the pages all broken up in little scraps of print that hurry you along as if building steps for you to run down—it was ever and ever more interesting than real people can be. It was a story about a house-party and the writer just made them talk to suit himself and not to suit their dulness as a real house-party must, you know. So I stayed to finish that book. Oh, of course if I had had a lover to be with! But that's something I'll never have, I suppose; but I don't complain, Brick, for you've given me everything else I ever wanted.
"The reason I would like to have a lover is as follows: So I would understand the experience of being regarded that way. It would be like plowing up the sage-brush to plant kafir-corn and millo-maize, because until such time, there is bound to be a part of my nature unworked.
"Now, there is a nook in Mr. Gledware's library, a sort of alcove where you have a window all to yourself but are shut off from the rest of the room, and that is where I was when two men came in softly and closed and locked the door behind them. I couldn't see them but just as I was starting up to find out what it meant, one of them—it was Mr. Gledware, which surprised me greatly as he had gone with the rest to the picnic—spoke your name, Brick. As soon as I beard that name, and particularly on account of the way he spoke it, I determined to 'lay low' and scout out the trouble. So I just drew up as small as possible in my chair, as you would slip along through the high grass if Indians were near, and I listened. Maybe if I had finished my civilization I would have been obliged to let them know I was there; but fortunately, I haven't reached the limit, yet.
"The other man, I soon found, was Red Kimball; they had about finished their conversation before coming into the room, so the first part was lost. Mr. Gledware had come for his check-book, and the check was for Red Kimball. Red Kimball used to be the leader of a band of highwaymen up in Cimarron, when it was No-Man's Land; it was his hand that attacked the wagon-train when Mr. Gledware acted the hero—only, as they were disguised as Indians, Mr. Gledware didn't know they were such till later. He came on them, afterward, without their disguises, and they would have killed him if YOU, Brick, hadn't knocked down Red, and shot his brother! So, as I listened, I found out that Mr. Gledware wasn't the hero he claimed to be, but was THE MAN YOU SAVED; and he is MY STEPFATHER; and I was carried away BY HIM, and taken FROM HIM by the Indians; but he wasn't killed at all. And my name, I suppose is Lahoma GLEDWARE, at least not as Red Feather had taught me, "Lahoma WILLOCK." And I am NO kin to you, at all, Brick, you just took me in and cared for me because you ARE Brick Willock, the dearest tenderest friend a little girl ever had—and these lines are crooked because there are tears—because you are not my cousin.
"I'd rather be kin to you than married to a prince.
"Red Kimball says you were one of his gang of highwaymen but I know it ISN'T TRUE, so you don't have to say A WORD. But he is determined to be revenged on you for killing his brother. And the reason he's waited this long is because he didn't know where you were—good reason, isn't it? Tell you how he found out—it all comes from my getting civilized! He's a porter at our Kansas City hotel. So when he heard the men talking about how I had once been kidnaped by the Indians, and wrote nearly every day to my cousin Brick Willock, which they thought an odd name—he guessed the rest.
"It makes my blood turn cold to think that all the time we were living quietly and happily in the cove, that awful Red Kimball was hunting for you, meaning to have your life—and in a way that I'm ashamed to write, but must, so you'll know everything. He means to have you arrested and tried for his brother's murder—and he says HE CAN HANG YOU!
"And Mr. Gledware is his witness. That's why Red has come after him. You'll think it strange that after his gang were about to kill Mr. Gledware in the prairie, that he should come to ask him to act as witness against another man. That's what Mr. Gledware told him. But Red Kimball answered that it was all a bluff—they had never dreamed of shooting him or his little girl.
"When No-Man's Land was added to Oklahoma, a pardon was offered to Red Kimball and all his gang if they would come in and lay down their arms and swear to keep the peace—you see, most of their crimes had been committed where no courts could touch them. Well, all the gang came in— But what do you think? That terrible Red Kimball swears that YOU WERE ONE OF HIS GANG, and that as you didn't come in and surrender yourself, THE PARDON DOESN'T APPLY TO YOU! It was all I could do to keep from stepping right out and telling him you were one of the most peaceable and harmless of men and that you just HAPPENED to be riding about when you saw Mr. Gledware's danger, and just HAD to shoot Kansas Kimball to save me and my stepfather. You, a highwayman, indeed! I could laugh at that, if it didn't make me too mad when I think about it.
"Then Mr. Gledware talked. He said maybe it was a bluff against him, that standing him up against the moon to be shot at, but it wasn't one he was apt to forget, and he could never be on any kind of terms with Red; besides, he said, if Brick Willock hadn't saved his life, he'd always thought so, so wouldn't witness against him though he had no doubt he belonged to Red's gang. But that was nothing to HIM. And he couldn't understand how Red could have the face to come to him about ANYTHING, but was willing to pay a sum to keep all the past hushed up, as he didn't want any 'complications' from being claimed as a stepfather by Lahoma! The past was over, he said, and Lahoma had a home of her own, and he was satisfied to be free of her—and he would pay Red something to keep the past buried.