"The reason is because not only Bess but others are human. As we are now
I can make her happy, very happy. I know it because--I love her." He
paused, and into the tent there came the long-drawn-out wail of the baby
prisoner. Silence returned. "As surely as that little wolf is lonely,
Bess will know the trouble money brings if you do as you intend. Not
myself, but other men will teach her."
Landor was not smoking now. The pipe had gone dead in his fingers.
"Once more I ask why, How?"
The other's eyes did not shift, nor a muscle of his body.
"Because she is white and they are white, and I--am an Indian."
At last it had come: the thing Landor had tried to avoid, had hitherto
succeeded in avoiding. Yet face to face the big man could ignore it no
longer. It was true, as true as human nature; and he knew it was true.
Other men, brothers of his own race, would do this thing--as they would
do anything for money; and he, Landor, he who had raised her from a
child, who had adopted her as his own daughter, he it was who would make
it possible!
Involuntarily the big man got to his feet. He did not attempt to move
about, he did not speak. There, standing, he fought himself inch by
inch; battled against the knowledge of the inevitable that had been
dogging him day by day, hour by hour. A long time he stood so, his great
hands locked, his face toward the blank tent wall opposite; then at last
he turned.
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