"Who belongs to it?" Bud was plainly suspicious. The shake of the squaw's bandannaed head was more artfully vague than her gesture. "Don' know--modder die--fadder die--ketchum long ways--off.""Well, what's its name?" Bud's voice harshened with his growing interest and bewilderment. The baby was again covering one twinkling eye with its spread, pink palm, and was saying "Pik-k?"and laughing with the funniest little squint to its nose that Bud had ever seen. It was so absolutely demoralizing that to relieve himself Bud gave the squaw a shake. This tickled the baby so much that the chuckle burst into a rollicking laugh, with a catch of the breath after each crescendo tone that made it absolutely individual and like none other--save one.
"What's his name?" Bud bullied the squaw, though his eyes were on the baby.
"Don't know ?"
"Take--Uvin--Chal," the baby demanded imperiously.
"Uh--uh--uh? Take!"
"Uvin Chal? Now what'd yuh mean by that, oletimer?" Bud obeyed an overpowering impulse to reach out and touch the baby's cheek with a mittened thumb. The baby responded instantly by again demanding that Bud should take.
"Pik-k?" said Bud, a mitten over one eye.
"Pik-k?" said the baby, spreading his fat hand again and twinkling at Bud between his fingers. But immediately afterwards it gave a little, piteous whimper. "Take--Uvin Chal!" it beseeched Bud with voice and starlike blue eyes together. "Take!"There was that in the baby's tone, in the unbaby-like insistence of its bright eyes, which compelled obedience. Bud had never taken a baby of that age in his arms. He was always in fear of dropping it, or crushing it with his man's strength, or something. He liked them--at a safe distance. He would chuck one under the chin, or feel diffidently the soft little cheek, but a closer familiarity scared him. Yet when this baby wriggled its other arm loose and demanded him to take, Bud reached out and grasped its plump little red-sweatered body firmly under the armpits and drew it forth, squirming with eagerness.
"Well, I'll tell the world I don't blame yuh for wanting to git outa that hog's nest," said Bud, answering the baby's gleeful chuckle.
Freed from his detaining grip on her shoulder, the squaw ducked unexpectedly and scuttled away down the trail as fast as her old legs would carry her; which was surprisingly speedy for one of her bulk. Bud had opened his mouth to ask her again where she had gotten that baby. He left it open while he stared after her astonished until the baby put up a hand over one of Bud's eyes and said "Pik-k?" with that distracting little quirk at the corners of its lips.
"You son of a gun!" grinned Bud, in the tone that turned the epithet in to a caress. "You dog gone little devil, you! Pik-k!
then, if that's what you want."
The squaw had disappeared into the thick under growth, leaving a track like a hippo in the snow. Bud could have overtaken her, of course, and he could have made her take the baby back again.
But he could not face the thought of it. He made no move at all toward pursuit, but instead he turned his face toward Alpine, with some vague intention of turning the baby over to the hotel woman there and getting the authorities to hunt up its parents.
It was plain enough that the squaw had no right to it, else she would not have run off like that.
Bud walked at least a rod toward Alpine before he swung short around in his tracks and started the other way. "No, I'll be doggoned if I will!" he said. "You can't tell about women, no time. She might spank the kid, or something. Or maybe she wouldn't feed it enough. Anyway, it's too cold, and it's going to storm pretty pronto. Hey! Yuh cold. old-timer?"The baby whimpered a little and snuggled its face down against Bud's chest. So Bud lifted his foot and scraped some snow off a nearby log, and set the baby down there while he took off his coat and wrapped it around him, buttoning it like a bag over arms and all. The baby watched him knowingly, its eyes round and dark blue and shining, and gave a contented little wriggle when Bud picked it up again in his arms.
"Now you're all right till we get to where it's warm," Bud assured it gravely. "And we'll do some steppin', believe me. Iguess maybe you ain't any more crazy over that Injun smell on yuh, than what I am--and that ain't any at all." He walked a few steps farther before he added grimly, "It'll be some jolt for Cash, doggone his skin. He'll about bust, I reckon. But we don't give a darn. Let him bust if he wants to--half the cabin's mine, anyway."So, talking a few of his thoughts aloud to the baby, that presently went to sleep with its face against his shoulder, Bud tramped steadily through the snow, carrying Lovin Child in his arms. No remote glimmer of the wonderful thing Fate had done for him seeped into his consciousness, but there was a new, warm glow in his heart--the warmth that came from a child's unquestioning faith in his protecting tenderness.
