Judah walked about all day with a dazed expression on his face, crying silently but bitterly, and a growing look of sullen fury on his dark face that told of bitter thoughts within. Over and over again his lips unconsciously formed the words:
“I’ll find him when I’m older if he’s on top of the earth, and then it’ll be him or me who will lie as my poor master lies in there to-day.”
Then came the funeral. The Indians gathered from all the adjoining cities and towns and from the Canada shore, to see the body of the man they had lived and respected committed to the ground. They buried him beneath the giant pine against which he was found leaning, wounded to death. Curiosity attracted many of the white inhabitants, among whom were the two strangers referred to in the first part of this narrative.
Two days after the funeral, Mr. Maybee and Warren sat in the latter’s room talking of Winona and Judah.
“It was a fortunit thing for us all, Mr. Maxwell, that you happened to be aroun’ during this hyar tryin’ time. You’ve been a friend in need, sir, durn me ef you ain’t.”
“Yes;” replied Warren, smiling at the other’s quaint speech, “it was a time that would have made any one a friend to those two helpless children.”
“Maybe, maybe,” returned the hotel keeper, dubiously. “But you must remember that every man warn’t built with a soul in his carcass; some of ’em’s only got a piece of liver whar the heart orter be.” Warren smiled again.
“Mr. Maybee, I want to ask you a question——”
“Go ahead, steamboat; what’s the question?”
“What is to become of Winona after I leave this place? It is different with the boy—he can manage somehow—but the girl; that is what troubles me.”