CHAPTER V
A BIRTHDAY GIFT
Rosebud struggled through five long months of illness after her arrival at White River Farm. It was only the untiring care of Rube and his wife, and Seth, that pulled her through. The wound at the base of the skull had affected her brain as well as body, and, until the last moment when she finally awoke to consciousness, her case seemed utterly without hope.
But when at last her convalescence came it was marvelously rapid. It was not until the good old housewife began to question her patient that the full result of the cruel blow on her head was realized. Then it was found that she had no recollection of any past. She knew not who she was, her name, her age, even her nationality. She had a hazy idea of Indians, which, as she grew stronger, became more pronounced, until she declared that she must have lived among Indians all her life.
It was this last that roused Seth to a sense of what he conceived to be his duty. And with that deliberateness which always characterized him, he set about it at once. From the beginning, after his first great burst of pitying sorrow for the little waif, when he 55 had clasped her in his arms and almost fiercely claimed her for his own, his treasure trove, he had realized that she belonged to some other world than his own. This thought stayed with him. It slumbered during the child’s long illness, but roused to active life when he discovered that she had no knowledge of herself. Therefore he set about inquiries. He must find out to whom she belonged and restore her to her people.
There was no one missing for two hundred miles round Beacon Crossing except the Jasons. It was impossible that the Indians could have gone farther afield, for they had not been out twenty-four hours when Rosebud was rescued. So his search for the child’s friends proved unavailing.
Still, from that day on he remained loyal to her. Any clue, however frail, was never too slight for him to hunt to its source. He owed it to her to restore her to her own, whatever regret it might cost him to lose her. He was not the man to shirk a painful duty, certainly not where his affections were concerned.
During the six years, while Rosebud was growing to womanhood, Seth’s hands were very full. Those wonderful violet eyes belonged to no milk and water “miss.” From the very beginning the girl proved herself spirited and wilful. Not in any vicious way. A “madcap” best describes her. She had no thought of consequences; only the delight of the moment, the excitement and risk. These were the 56 things that plunged her into girlish scrapes from which it fell to the lot of Seth to extricate her. All her little escapades were in themselves healthy enough, but they were rarely without a smack of physical danger.
She began when she learned to ride, a matter which of course devolved upon Seth.