Page:Micheaux - The Conquest, The Story of a Negro Pioneer (1913).djvu/293

 When I got to the claim I was weak in every way. My wife seemed none the worse, but my emotions were intense when I saw the little dead boy. Poor little fellow! As he lay stiff and cold I could see the image of myself in his features. My wife noticed my look and said:

"It is just like you, dear!"

That night we buried the baby on the west side of the draw. It should have been on the east, where the only trees in the township, four spreading willows, cast their shadows.

"Well, dear, we have each other," I comforted her as she cried.

Between sobs she tried to tell me how she had prayed for it to live, and since it had looked so much like me, she thought her heart would break.

When the child was born they had sent a telegram to her father which read:

"Baby born dead. Am well."

This was his first knowledge of it. We received a telegram that night that he was on the way and the next day he arrived, bringing Ethel with him. When he got out of the livery rig that brought them I could see Satan in his face. A chance had come to him at last. It seemed to say:

"Oh, now I'll fix you. Away when the child was born, eh?"

His very expression seemed jubilant. He had longed for some chance to get me and now it had arrived. He did not speak to me, but bounded into the room where my wife was, and she must have read the same thing in his expression, for, as he talked about it later, I learned the first thing she said was: