Me Smith

she said in her high voice. “I’d stick to a pal like you through thick and thin, I would! What did you pull out like that for anyhow?”
    Smith chuckled.
    “Well, sir, Susie, it fair broke my heart to start off without seein’ your pretty face and hearin’ your sweet voice again, but the fact is, I got so lonesome awaitin’ for you that I just naturally had to be travellin’. I ups and hits the breeze, and I has no pencil or paper to leave a note behind. It wasn’t perlite, Susie, I admits,” he said mockingly.
    “Dig up that money you’re goin’ to divide.” Susie looked like a young wildcat that has been poked with a stick.
    Smith drew an exaggerated sigh and shook his head lugubriously.
    “Child, I’m the only son of Trouble. I gets in a game and I loses every one of our honest, hard-earned dollars. The tears has been pilin’ out of my eyes and down my cheeks for forty miles, thinkin’ how I’d have to break the news to you.”
    “Smith, you’re just a common, common thief!” All the scorn of which she was capable was in her voice. “To steal from your own pal!”
    “Thief?” Smith put his fingers in his ears. “Don’t use that word, Susie. It sounds horrid, comin’ from a child you love as if she was your own step-daughter.”
    The muscles of Susie’s throat contracted so it hurt her; her face drew up in an unbecoming grimace; she cried with a child’s abandon, indifferent to the fact that her tears made her ludicrously ugly.
    “Smith,” she sobbed, “don’t you ever feel sorry for anybody? Couldn’t you ever pity anybody? Couldn’t you pity me?”
    Smith made no reply, so she went on brokenly;
    “Can’t you remember that you was a kid once, too, and didn’t know how, and couldn’t, fight grown up people that was mean to you?—and how you felt? I know you don’t have to do anything for me—you don’t have to—but won’t you? Won’t you do somethin’ good when you’ve got a chance—just this once, Smith? Won’t you go away from here? You don’t care anything at all for Mother, Smith, and she’s all I’ve got!” She stretched her hands toward him appealing, while the hot tears wet her cheeks. She was the picture of childish humiliation and misery.
    Smith looked at her and listened without derision or triumph. He looked at her in simple curiosity, as he would have looked at a suffering animal biting itself in pain. The unexpected outbreak interested him.
    Through a blur of tears, Susie read something of this in his face, and her hands dropped limply to her sides. Her appeal was useless.
    It was not that Smith did not understand her feelings. He did—perfectly. He knew how deep a child’s hurt is. He had been hurt himself, and the scar was still there. It was only that he did not care. He had lived through his hurt, and so would she. It was to his interest to stay, and first and always he considered Smith.
    “You needn’t say anything,” Susie said slowly, and there was no more supplication in her voice. “I thought I knew you before, Smith, but I know you better now. When a white man is onery, he’s meaner than an Injun, and that’s the kind of a white man you are. I’ll never forget this. I’ll never forget that I’ve crawled to you, and you listened like a stone.”
    Smith answered in a voice that was not unkind—as he would have warned her of a sink-hole or a bad crossing:
    “You can’t buck me, Susie, and you’d better not try. You’re game, but you’re just a kid.”
    “Kids grow up sometimes;” and she turned away.
    McArthur, strolling, while he enjoyed his pipe, came upon Susie lying face downward, her head pillowed on her arm, on a sand dune not far from the house. He thought she was asleep until she sat up and looked at him. Then he saw her swollen eyes.
    “Why, Susie, are you ill?”
    “Yes, I’m sick here.” She laid her hand upon her heart.
    He sat down beside her and stroked the streaked brown hair timidly.
    “I’m sorry,” he said gently.
    She felt the sympathy in his touch, and was quick to respond to it.
    “Oh, pardner,” she said, “I just feel awful!”
    “I’m sorry, Susie,” he said again.
    “Did your mother ever go back on you, pardner?”
    McArthur shook his head gravely.
    “No, Susie.”
    “It’s terrible. I can’t tell you hardly how it is; but it’s like everybody that you ever cared for in the world had died. It’s like standin’ over a quicksand and feelin’ yourself goin’ down. It’s like