"Now, there is a nook in Mr. Gledware's library, a sort of alcove where
you have a window all to yourself but are shut off from the rest of the
room, and that is where I was when two men came in softly and closed
and locked the door behind them. I couldn't see them but just as I was
starting up to find out what it meant, one of them--it was Mr.
Gledware, which surprised me greatly as he had gone with the rest to
the picnic--spoke your name, Brick. As soon as I beard that name, and
particularly on account of the way he spoke it, I determined to 'lay
low' and scout out the trouble. So I just drew up as small as possible
in my chair, as you would slip along through the high grass if Indians
were near, and I listened. Maybe if I had finished my civilization I
would have been obliged to let them know I was there; but fortunately,
I haven't reached the limit, yet.
"The other man, I soon found, was Red Kimball; they had about finished
their conversation before coming into the room, so the first part was
lost. Mr. Gledware had come for his check-book, and the check was for
Red Kimball. Red Kimball used to be the leader of a band of highwaymen
up in Cimarron, when it was No-Man's Land; it was his hand that
attacked the wagon-train when Mr. Gledware acted the hero--only, as
they were disguised as Indians, Mr. Gledware didn't know they were such
till later. He came on them, afterward, without their disguises, and
they would have killed him if YOU, Brick, hadn't knocked down Red, and
shot his brother! So, as I listened, I found out that Mr. Gledware
wasn't the hero he claimed to be, but was THE MAN YOU SAVED; and he is
MY STEPFATHER; and I was carried away BY HIM, and taken FROM HIM by the
Indians; but he wasn't killed at all. And my name, I suppose is Lahoma
GLEDWARE, at least not as Red Feather had taught me, "Lahoma WILLOCK."
And I am NO kin to you, at all, Brick, you just took me in and cared
for me because you ARE Brick Willock, the dearest tenderest friend a
little girl ever had--and these lines are crooked because there are
tears--because you are not my cousin.
"I'd rather be kin to you than married to a prince.
"Red Kimball says you were one of his gang of highwaymen but I know it
ISN'T TRUE, so you don't have to say A WORD. But he is determined to
be revenged on you for killing his brother. And the reason he's waited
this long is because he didn't know where you were--good reason, isn't
it? Tell you how he found out--it all comes from my getting civilized!
He's a porter at our Kansas City hotel. So when he heard the men
talking about how I had once been kidnaped by the Indians, and wrote
nearly every day to my cousin Brick Willock, which they thought an odd
name--he guessed the rest.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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