“This is all I had to give them, and they run just as fast for one of these as they would for a pony.”
“Good enough! I’ll have some races for my own edification and comfort,” and he drew out some coins. “Will you run for this—run far over there?”
The children looked at the girl. She nodded her head, said a word or two unintelligible to him, but perfectly clear to them; for, with sharp looks at the coins and pleased yells, they leaped away to their racing.
“Now, this is more comfortable,” he said. “May I sit down here? Thanks! Now would you mind telling me whose likeness it is you are making in the clay?” 52
“I guess you know it’s nobody’s likeness,” she answered, and again thrust it back out of sight, her face flushing that he should thus make a jest of her poor efforts. “You’ve seen real statues, I suppose, and know how they ought to be, but you don’t need to look for them in the Purcell Range.”
“But, indeed, I am in earnest about your modeling. Won’t you believe me?” and the blue eyes looking into her own were so appealing, that she turned away her head half shyly, and a pink flush crept up from her throat. Miss Rivers was evidently not used to eyes with caressive tendencies and they disturbed her, for all her strangely unchildlike character.
“Of course, your work is only in the rough,” he continued; “but it is not at all bad, and has real Indian features. And if you have had no teaching—”
“Huh!” and she looked at him with a mirthless smile. “Where’d any one get teaching of that sort along the Columbia River? Of course, there are some gentlemen—officers and such—about the reservations, but not one but would only laugh at such a big girl making doll babies out of mud. No, I had no teaching to do anything but read, and I did read some in a book about a sculptor, and how he made animals and people’s faces out of clay. Then I tried.”
As she grew communicative, she seemed so much more what she really was in years—a child; and he noticed, with satisfaction, that she looked at him more frankly, while the suspicion faded almost entirely from her face.
“And are you going to develop into a sculptor under Overton’s guardianship?” he asked. “You see, he has told me of his good luck.” 53