Seems as it hasn't accomplished no good on you, as you still tell
lies."

The man rose abruptly, and laid the book on the seat. His manner was
quite as discouraging as it had been from the start.

"Honey," interposed Willock, "that ain't to say a lie, not a real lie."

"IS it a hand-organ?" Lahoma demanded sternly.

"In a manner of speaking, honey, it is a hand-organ in the sense of
shutting you off from asking questions. You learn to distinguish the
sauces of speech as you gets older. Out in the big world, people don't
say this or that according as it is, they steeps their words in a sauce
as suits the digestion. Don't be so quick to call 'LIES!' till you
learns the flavor of a fellow's meaning, not by his words but by the
sauce he steeps 'em in."

"Don't get mad at me," said Lahoma to the trapper. "I don't know
nothing, never having captured and branded the thoughts that is caged
up in books. But I want to be civilized and I am investigating
according."

The trapper, somewhat conciliated, reseated himself. He regarded the
girl with greater interest, not without a certain approval. "How comes
it that you aren't civilized, living with such a knowing specimen as
your own father?"

"My father's dead. Brick is my cousin, but I not knowing nothing of
him till he saved my life two years ago and after that, me with the
Indians and him all alone. Would you like to hear about it?"

"I wouldn't bother him, honey, with all that long story," interposed
Willock, suddenly grown restive.

"Yes, tell me," said the trapper, moving over that she might find room
on the block of wood beside him.

Lahoma seated herself eagerly and looking up into the other's face,
which softened more and more under her fearless gaze, she said:

"We was crossing the plains--father, mother and me, in a big wagon. And
men dressed up like Indians, they come whooping and shooting, and
father turns around and drives with all his might--drives clear to
yonder mountain. And mother dies, being that sick before, and the
jolting too much for her. So father takes me on his horse and rides
all night, and I all asleep. Well, those same men dressed like
Indians, they was in a cabin 'way up north, and had put their wigs and
feathers off and was gambling over what they stole from the other
wagons. So father, he sees the light from the window and rides up with
me. And they takes him for a spy and says they, in a voice awful
fierce, just this way-