on; but
in the main, the men nodded grim approval. They had plenty of
time--but at the end of it, Bill would either tell all he knew, or....

Lahoma plunged into the midst of her narrative:

"One evening Brick came on a deserted mover's wagon; he'd traveled all
day with nothing to eat or drink, and he got into the wagon to escape
the blistering sun. In there, he found a dead woman, stretched on her
pallet. He had a great curiosity to see her face, so he began lifting
the cloth that covered her. He saw a pearl and onyx pin at her throat.
It looked like one his mother used to wear. So he dropped the cloth and
never looked at her face. She had died the evening before, and he knew
she wouldn't have wanted any one to see her THEN. And he dug a grave
in the sand, though she was nothing to him, and buried her--never
seeing her face--and covered the spot with a great pyramid of stones,
and prayed for her little girl--I was her little girl--the Indians had
carried me away. You'll say that was a little thing; that anybody would
have buried the poor helpless body. Maybe so. But about not looking
at her face--well, I don't know; it WAS a little thing, of course, but
somehow it just seems to show that Brick Willock wasn't little--had
something great in his soul, you know. Seems to show that he couldn't
have been a common murderer. It's something you'll have to feel for
yourselves, nobody could explain it so you'd see, if you don't
understand already."

The men stared at her, somewhat bewildered, saying nothing. In some
breasts, a sense of something delicate, not to be defined, was stirred.

"One day," Lahoma resumed, "Brick saw a white man with some Indians
standing near that grave. He couldn't imagine what they meant to do,
so he hid, thinking them after him. Years afterward Red Feather
explained why they came that evening to the pile of stones. The white
man was Mr. Gledware. After Red Kimball's gang captured the
wagon-train, Mr. Gledware escaped, married Red Feather's daughter and
lived with the Indians; he'd married immediately, to save his life, and
the tribe suspected he meant to leave Indian Territory at the first
chance. Mr. Gledware, great coward, was terrified night and day lest
the suspicions of the Indians might finally cost him his life.

"It wasn't ten days after the massacre of the emigrants till he decided
to give a proof of good faith. Too great a coward to try to get away
and, caring too much