“See here! No one need know I found you among the Indians. I can make up some story—say you’re the daughter of an old partner of mine. It’ll be a lie, of course, and I don’t approve of lies. But if it makes you feel better, it goes just the same! Partner dies, you know, and I fall heir to you. See? Then, of course, I pack you back to civilization, where you can—well, go to school or something. How’s that?”
She did not answer, only looked at him strangely, from under those straight brows. He felt an angry impatience with her that she did not take the proposal differently, when it was so plainly for her good he was making schemes.
“As to your father being dead—that part of it would be true enough, I suppose,” he continued; “for Akkomi told me he was dead.”
“Yes—yes, he is dead,” she said coldly, and her tones were so even no one would imagine it was her father she spoke of. 43
“Your mother, too?”
“My mother, too,” she assented. “But I told you I wasn’t going to talk any more about myself, and I ain’t. If I can’t go to your Sunday-school without a pedigree, I’ll stop where I am—that’s all.”
She spoke with the independence of a boy, and it was, perhaps, her independence that induced the man to be persistent.
“All right, ’Tana,” he said cheerfully. “You come along on your own terms, so long as you get out of these quarters. I’ll tell the dead partner story—only the partner must have a name, you know. Montana is a good name, but it is only a half one, after all. You can give me another, I reckon.”
She hesitated a little and stared at the glowing embers of the lodge fire. He wondered if she was deciding to tell him a true one, or if she was trying to think of a fictitious one.
“Well?” he said at last.