"I stay," she said simply. "All time, want my own people; all time, Red Feather say some day take me to white people--want to go, all time. But Red Feather never tell me 'BIG HAIR.' Didn't know what it was I was looking for--never thought it would be something like you." "But you ain't afraid now, are you, little one?" She shook her head, and drawing nearer, seated herself on the ground before the dugout. "You LOOK Big Hair," she explained sedately, "but your speech is talk of weak squaw." Somewhat disconcerted by these words, Willock sat down opposite her, and resumed his pipe as if to assert his sex. "I seem weak to you," he explained, "because I love you, child, and want to make friends with you. But let me meet a big man--well, you'd see, then!" He looked so ferocious as he uttered these words, that she started up like a frightened quail, grasping her blanket about her. "No, no, honey," he cooed abjectly, "I wouldn't hurt a fly. Me, I was always a byword amongst my pards. They'd say, 'There goes Brick Willock, what never harmed nobody.' When they kept me in at school I never clumb out the window, and it was me got all the prize cards at Sunday-school. How comes it, honey, that you ain't forgot to talk like civilized beings?" "Red Feather, him always put me with squaw that know English--that been to school on the reservation. Never let me learn talk like the Indians. Him always say some day take me to my own people. But never said 'BIG HAIR.'" "Did he tell you your mother died two years ago?" "Yes--father, him dead, too. Both died in the plains. Father was shot by robbers. Mother was left in big wagon--you bury her near this mountain." "Oh, ho! So your father was killed at the same time your mother was, eh?" "Yes." "Well--all right. And now you got nobody but me to look after you--but you don't need no more; as long as I'm able to be up and about, nothing is going to hurt you. Just you tell me what you want, and it'll be did." "Want to be ALL like white people; want to be just like mother." "Well, I'll teach you as fur up as I've been myself. Your style of talk ain't correct, but it was the best Red Feather could do by you. Him and you lay down your words like stepping-stones for your thoughts to step over; but just listen at me, how smooth and fine-textured my language is, with no breaks or crevices from the beginning of my periods to where my voice steps down to start on a lower ledge. That's the way white people talks, not that they got more to say than Injuns, but they fills in, and embodies everything, like filling up cabin-walls with mud. I'll take you by the hand right from where Red Feather left you, and carry you up the heights." She examined him dubiously: "You know how?" "I ain't no bell-wether in the paths of learning, honey, but Red Feather is some miles behind me. What's your name?" "Lahoma." "Born that way, or Injunized?"