Page:Nattie Nesmith (1870).pdf/91

 Nattie scanned the man with her quick, sharp eyes, and a vague recollection of the tremendous shape that seized her in its iron grasp on the night in which she ran away from home, passed through her mind. The tall Indian girl looked closely in her face, and, flaunting her red scarf disdainfully, said:

"The eyes of the pale daughter are not sky color; they are as black as my own. Torch Eye wants blue-eyed maiden. He no like this squaw you bring him, pappy."

"Hush, babbler," said the old Indian, sternly. "The better that the maiden's eyes be not blue; then might some foe exclaim, 'She is not of your race; now,race;' now [sic] with the dark stainings on her skin, she will seem to be, as I proclaim, a neighboring chieftain's daughter, that I have brought for my son."

Nattie, as she listened, began to grow alarmed. She lifted her hand,—it was of a brown color. She rubbed the palm on her face, and looked at it. The tall Indian girl laughed derisively.