The men who drove our mules were very rough fellows, but they soon got to liking me. I suppose that was because I knew how to ride and wasn’t afraid of anything. However that may be, they seemed to like me. They would do their best to make me comfortable, giving me the best they could get to eat—birds, squirrels, and the like—and always making for me a pallet of dry grass or leaves to sleep upon. Finally, one evening, when Campbell had gone away from the camp for some purpose or other, one of the rough men came to me and said:— “Little Missy”—that is what they always called me—“little Missy, you don’t like Campbell an’ you want to get away from him. Now he’s pretty quick on trigger, but I’m a bit quicker’n he is, an’ anyhow I’ll take the chances for you. Ef you say the word, I’ll pick a quarrel with him an’ kill him in fair fight. Then my pards an’ me’ll take you to some civilised town an’ leave you there, so’s you kin git back to your friends. Only say the word, an’ I’ll git him ready for his funeral afore mornin’.” Of course this horrified me, particularly the indifference with which the man thought of murder. I told him he must never think of doing anything of the kind, and asked him to promise me. “It’s jest as you says, little Missy,” he answered. “Only me an’ my pards wants you to know how ready we are to do you any little favour like that ef you want it done.” That night I couldn’t sleep. I lay all night looking up at the stars and thinking with horror of the light way in which this man had proposed to commit a murder for me. Then the thought came to me that I had myself tried to kill Campbell once with a hair-brush, and for a while I felt that after all I was no better than these murderous men. But, after thinking the thing out, I saw that the two cases were quite different. I had hit Campbell in self-defence, and I could not even yet feel sorry that I had wanted to kill him. Chapter the Thirteenth CAMPBELL was living, at that time, in a little town somewhere in Texas, and we got there after two or three weeks. It was a dismal-looking place. All the houses were built of rough boards, set upon end, and most of them were saloons. Campbell’s house was like all the rest, and when I asked my mother why he lived in so small a house, and what he had done with the fine one that I remembered, she told me he had lost most of his money. Almost immediately after I got to his house, Campbell took me before a sort of judge who had two pistols and a knife in his belt. Campbell told the judge that he wanted to adopt me as his daughter. When the judge asked him how old I was, he said I was thirteen, and then the judge said that my consent to his adoption of me was not necessary.