Virginia -- History -- Civil War, 1861-1865 -- Fiction
After a while, Campbell became interested in some kind of business—I
don’t know what—out in Arizona; and when he had to go out there to
stay for several months, he broke up his house in Austin, and took
my mother and me with him. We lived in tents on the journey, and
Campbell grew very uneasy after a time, because there were reports of
a threatened Indian war. Still, we travelled on, until at last we got
among the Indians themselves. They were very angry about something,
but Campbell seemed to know how to deal with them, in some measure at
least. But presently the war broke out in earnest, and Campbell told my
mother he was completely ruined, as he had put all his money into the
business, and this Indian war had destroyed it.
One day he had a parley with a big Indian chief, and that night he
took my mother and went away somewhere, leaving me in the tent alone.
About midnight a band of Indians came to the tent, howling like so many
demons. They took me and carried me away on one of their horses.
I was greatly frightened, but I pretended not to be, and the Indians
liked me for that. They always like people who are not afraid. They
treated me well—or at any rate they did me no harm—but they carried
me away to their camp, where all their squaws and children were; for
they were on the war-path now, and Indians always take their families
with them when they go to war.
When I found that they were not disposed to treat me badly I was almost
glad they had captured me; for at least they had taken me away from
Campbell, and I liked them much better than I did him.
In the letter Campbell sent me by Colonel Kilgariff, he told me that
he had himself planned my capture by the Indians. He had arranged it
with the chief when he had the parley with him; and when he went away
with my mother, leaving me in the tent alone, he knew the Indians
were to catch me that night. He wanted them to get me because then I
couldn’t get another guardian, and he thought I could never come back
to trouble him about my money when I grew up. I don’t know why he wrote
all these things to me, except that he was dying and wanted me to know
the whole story. He sent me back all my papers, so that I might some
day get what was left of the property my father had given me. Among
other things, he told me that my father was dead, and that he himself
had killed him in a fight.
Chapter the Sixteenth
I STAYED with the Indians for several months—as long as the war
lasted. It was then that I lived on buffalo meat alone, with no other
food. Finally the soldiers conquered the Indians and forced them to go
back on their reservation. Then Campbell came to see if I was still
alive, and, finding me, he took me with him to New York, where he was
practising law and doing something in a bank. That lasted a year or so.
Nothing ever lasted long with Campbell. But when he left New York and
went to Missouri to live, he seemed to have plenty of money again.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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