"Don't say that, Libby," Bud cried in real distress—she looked so little and pale in her black dress—"I will come back some time, and I won't forget my little girl. You're my girl, you know, Lib."
"I'm your girl all right," the child said unsteadily. "But I want you to stay. I can't make up things like Pearl and Mary Watson can—I can do some pretendin' games pretty good now, but I can't pretend about you—I'll know you're gone all the time, Bud," and she caught her breath in a quivering sob.
Then Bud lifted the little girl in his arms and kissed her over and over again.
"Don't cry, Libby," he said. "I'm going away to make lots of money, and you mustn't fret. Every night I want you to say to yourself: 'I'm Bud's girl, and he won't forget me;' and whenever you get lonely or downhearted, just say that. Now Libby Anne, tell me who you are."
"I'm Bud's girl, all right," she answered gravely.
The sun had gone down in a crimson haze, and a misty tenderness seemed to brood over the world. The September evening was so full of peace and beauty with its muffled tinkle of cowbells and the soft song of the whippoorwill that came at intervals from the maple bush on Oak Creek, it was hard to believe that there were troubled hearts anywhere.
The hoarse whistle of a long freight train on the C. P. R. boomed harshly through the quiet air. "I must go, Lib," said Bud.
Libby Anne stood looking after him as he went quickly down the road.
The evening twilight soon hid him from her sight, but she still
looked down the winding road until it dipped down in the valley of
Oak Creek.
Suddenly from the river-bank came the weird cry of a prairie wolf, and Libby Anne, turning with a shudder, ran home in the gathering dusk.