send me a little girl to play with, after me asking for
one every night, all winter?"

"Don't understand God's business," replied Atkins briefly.

"I puts it this way," Brick spoke up; "God's done sent one little girl,
and it ain't right to crowd Him too far."

"Will I be all they is of me, as long as I live?"

"Nobody won't never come to live in these plains," Brick declared,
"unless its trappers and characters like us. But we'll stay by you,
won't we, Bill Atkins?"

Atkins looked exceedingly gruff and shook his head as if he had his
doubts about it. "You'll have to be taken to the States," he declared.

"But what would become of Brick?"

"Well, honey," said Brick, "you want to take your place with people in
the big world, don't you?"

"Oh, YES!" cried Lahoma, starting up and stretching her arm toward the
window. "In the big world--yes! That's the place for me--that's where
I want to live. But what will become of you?"

"Well," Brick answered slowly, "the rock pile, t'other side the
mountain is good enough for me. Your mother sleeps under it."

"Oh, Brick!" She caught his arm. "You wouldn't die if I went away,
would you?"

"Why, you see, honey, they wouldn't be nothing left to go on. I'd just
sort of stop, you know--but it wouldn't matter--out there in the big
world, people don't remember very long, and when you're grown you
wouldn't know there'd ever been a cove with a dugout in it, and a
window in the wall, and a Brick Willock to carry in the wood for the
fire."

"I'll always remember--and I won't go without you. He COULD go with
me, couldn't he, Bill?"

"I suspicion he has his reasons for not," Atkins observed gravely.

"I has, and I shall never go back to the States."

"Then what's the use civilizing me?" demanded Lahoma mournfully.

"I want you to enjoy yourself. And when I'm old and no-'count, you'd
need somebody to take care of you--and you'd go full-equipped and ready
to stand up to any civilized person that tried to run a bluff on you."

"But, oh, I want to GO--I want to go out THERE--where there ain't no
plains and alkali and buffalo-grass--where they's pavements and
policemen and people in beautiful clothes. I don't mean NOW, I mean
when I have got civilized." She drew herself up proudly. "I wouldn't
go till I was civilized, till I was like them." She turned impulsively
to Brick: "But you've got to go with me when I go! I'm going to stay
with you till I'm fit to go, and