"What does he do to
you?"
"Nothin'--'cept he's always a-teasin' me, an'--an' I'm afeered o'
him."
"Well, I'll take care of Uncle Rufe."
"I knowed YOU'D say that," she said. "Pap and Dave always laughs
at me," and she shook her head as though she were already
threatening her bad uncle with what Hale would do to him, and she
was so serious and trustful that Hale was curiously touched. By
and by he lifted one flap of his saddle-pockets again.
"I've got some candy here for a nice little girl," he said, as
though the subject had not been mentioned before. "It's for you.
Won't you have some?"
"I reckon I will," she said with a happy smile.
Hale watched her while she munched a striped stick of peppermint.
Her crimson bonnet had fallen from her sunlit hair and straight
down from it to her bare little foot with its stubbed toe just
darkening with dried blood, a sculptor would have loved the
rounded slenderness in the curving long lines that shaped her
brown throat, her arms and her hands, which were prettily shaped
but so very dirty as to the nails, and her dangling bare leg. Her
teeth were even and white, and most of them flashed when her red
lips smiled.
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