"Not she, Jim; he. How old is your little girl?" Split remembered that a genteel interest in the lower classes is becoming to the well-born.
"He just big like you," Jim responded mournfully, drawing the back of his brown hand across his nose. "But he all gone."
"Dead?" Split crossed her legs uneasily as she squatted, and lowered her voice reverently.
"He no dead," Jim said, lifting the sawbuck and easing it on his shoulder. "One Washoe squaw steal him—little papoose, nice little papoose. Much white—like you, missy. So white, squaw say no sure Injun."
"Jim!"
"Take him down Tluckee valley. Take him 'way. Jim see squaw one day long time 'go—Washoe Lake—shoot ducks. Heap shoot squaw. He die, but he say white Faginia man got papoose."
"Jim!" It was the faintest echo of the first terrified exclamation.
"Come Faginia, look papoose. No find. Chop wood long time. Heap hogady—not much dinner. Nice papoose—white, like you."
Jim paused. He expected sympathy, but he hoped for dinner. When he saw he was to get neither, he hunched his lame hip; scratched his head, balanced the sawbuck, and shuffled away.
Too overcome to move, Split sat looking after him. Her father! This, then, was her father! She was dazed, helpless, too overwhelmed even to be unhappy yet.