"You can stop thinking, perhaps," said the young man, "but you can't stop this situation up here from having an influence on your life. Everybody in Lake City must be directly or indirectly affected by the reservation. Everybody, from the legislators to the grocery keepers, has been grafting on the Indians. Your own father says the thing that's kept him going for years was the hope of Indian lands. Margery Marshall's clothed with Indian money." "And how about the influence on you, Billy?" asked Lydia with a keen look into the young fellow's rugged face. "I'm in the process of hating myself," replied Billy, honestly. "I came up here last month to see how bad off the Indians were. And I saw the poor starving, diseased brutes and I cursed my white breed. And yet, Lyd, I saw a tract of pine up in the middle of the reservation that I'd sell my soul to own! It's on a rise of ground, with a lake on one edge, and the soil is marvelous, and it belongs to a full-blood." There was understanding in Lydia's eyes. "Oh, the pines are wonderful," she exclaimed. "If one could only keep them, forever! And I suppose that's the way the Indians feel about them too!" "It's all wrong," muttered Billy. "It's all wrong, and yet," more firmly, "the reservation is doomed and if we don't take some of it, Lydia, we'll not be helping the Indians--but just being foolish." Lydia nodded. A hot breeze drifted through the woods and the pines sighed deeply. "To have it and hold it for your children's children," exclaimed Lydia, passionately. "You and yours to live on it forever. And yet, I'd see a dead Indian baby and starving squaws behind every tree, I know I would." "I tell you what I'm going to do," said Billy, doggedly. "I'm going to get hold of that tract. I'm not going to deceive myself that it's all anything but a rotten, thieving game we whites are playing, but I'm going to do it, anyhow." "I'd like to myself," Lydia still had the look of understanding, "but I'm afraid to! I'd be haunted by Charlie Jackson's eyes." "I'm going to get that tract. I'll pay for it, somehow, and I'll go on doing what I can to see that the Indians get what's left of a decent deal." Again the two listened to the wind in the pines, then Lydia said, "We must get back for the speeches." Billy started back, obediently. "We're grown up, aren't we, Billy?" sighed Lydia. "We've got to decide what we're going to do and be, and I hate to think about it. I hate important decisions. Seems as though I'd been dogged by 'em all my life." "If I had my way," cried Billy, unexpectedly, "you never should quite grow up. You'd always be the dear little yellow-haired girl that tramped her legs off to earn my miserable old school books. And that's what you always will be to me--the oldest and youngest little girl! And whether you like me or not, I'll tell you you're not going to have any worries that I can help you ward off."