“Partner,” he said, to the child, “someone has been enforcing sumptuary laws upon us. I hesitate in deciding whether we shall take our water salted or fresh.”
With his hand on the hilt of his sword he regarded the youngster earnestly. Nothing prettier than the little naked fellow could have been imagined, howbeit he was not so plump as a child of his age should be, for the lack of nourishment had already told upon him markedly. Adam felt convinced, from various indications, that the tree which had done its deadly work had fallen about a week before, and that Wainsworth had not been able to do anything more than to crawl to the cabin, to die, neither for himself or the child.
For a time the rover wondered what he must do. His own plans had nearly disappeared from his mind. He reflected that a child so brown as this, so obviously half a little Narragansett, would be ill received by the whites. The Indians would be far more likely to cherish the small man, according to his worth. He therefore believed the best thing he could do would be to push onward, in the hope of finding an Indian settlement soon. There were several reasons, still remaining unaltered, why it would be wiser not to take the child to Boston.
“Well, our faces are dirty, partner,” he said, at the end of a long cogitation, in which the baby had never ceased to look up in his countenance and wink his big eyes, wistfully. “Let’s go out and have a bath.”
He took the tiny chap up in his arms and carried him forth to the spring. Here, in the warm sunlight, he got down on his knees in the grass, bathed his protégé, over and over again, for the pleasure it seemed to give the child and the joy it was to himself, to feel the little wet, naked fellow in his hands.
The sun performed the offices of a towel. Without putting his tiny shirt back upon him, Adam rolled the small bronze bit of humanity about his back, patting his velvety arms and thighs and laughing like the grown-up boy he was, till the little chap gurgled and crowed in tremendous delight. But it having been only the freshness of the water, air and sunlight which had somewhat invigorated the baby, he presently appeared to grow a little dull and weary. Adam became aware that it was time to be moving. He washed out the child’s wee shirt and hung it through his belt to dry as they went. Then taking a light blanket from the cabin, for the child’s use at night, he left the cabin behind and proceeded onward as before.
He walked till late in the afternoon without discovering so much as a sign of the Indian settlement he was seeking. By this time his own pangs of hunger had become excruciating. It was still too early in the summer for berries or nuts to be ripe, and the half green things which he found where the sun shone the warmest were in no manner fit to be offered to the child, as food.
Arriving at another small valley, as the sun was dipping into the western tree-tops, the rover sat down for a rest, and to plan something better than this random wandering toward the sunset. He had chuckled encouragement to the child from time to time, laughing in the little fellow’s face, but hardly had he caught at the subtle signs on the small face, at which a mother-parent would have stared wild-eyed in agony.
Now, however, as he sat the tiny man on the grass before him, he saw in the baby’s eyes such a look as pierced him to the quick. For a moment the infinite wistfulness, the dumb questioning, the uncomplaining silence of it, made him think, or hope, the child was only sad. He got down on all fours at once.
“Partner,” said he, jovially, “you are disappointed in me. I make poor shift as a mother. Do you want to be cuddled, or would you rather be tickled?”