Chapter I: DID not remain long with the circus—not more than four or five

months, I think—before Campbell found out where I was and came after me. If the manager had been a man of any courage, I should have refused to go with Campbell. But when Campbell threatened him with all sorts of lawsuits and prosecutions, he agreed to discharge me. Even then I should not have gone with Campbell if I could have got the money due me for my riding. But after the first month the manager had paid me almost nothing, on the plea of bad business (though his tent was always packed), and as he was paying all my expenses except for my plain clothes, I hadn’t pressed him for the money. He owed me nearly two hundred dollars when Campbell came, and I asked him for it, meaning to run away and find some other employment. But Campbell told him he was my father and my guardian, and that the money must be paid to him and not to me. The manager weakly yielded, and so I hadn’t enough money even to pay a railroad fare.

Under the circumstances, there was nothing for me to do but go with Campbell. He had sold the ranch, and was now keeping a big wholesale store in the city of Austin. He had built a very big house, and had a great many negro servants in it. Soon after I got to Austin, Campbell’s store was burned, and I thought at first that he was ruined. But he seemed richer after that than ever. My mother told me it was the insurance money, and a good many people used to think he had burned the store himself. There was a lawsuit about it, but Campbell won.

One day I concluded to have a talk with him. I asked him why he wanted to keep me with him, and why he wouldn’t give me the money I had earned in the circus, and let me go away.

He laughed at me, and told me it was because he didn’t choose to have his daughter riding in a circus. So I got no satisfaction out of him then. But in the letter he sent me in the bundle of papers that Colonel Kilgariff brought me, he explained the matter. It was because he feared I would get somebody else to be my guardian, and any new guardian would come upon him for the stocks and bonds my father had given me. Campbell had sold all of them that he could, and was using the money himself.

After a while, Campbell became interested in some kind of business—I don’t know what—out in Arizona; and when he had to go out there to stay for several months, he broke up his house in Austin, and took my mother and me with him. We lived in tents on the journey, and Campbell grew very uneasy after a time, because there were reports of a threatened Indian war. Still, we travelled on, until at last we got among the Indians themselves. They were very angry about something, but Campbell seemed to know how to deal with them, in some measure at least. But presently the war broke out in earnest, and Campbell told my mother he was completely ruined, as he had put all his money into the business, and this Indian war had destroyed it.

One day he had a parley with a big Indian chief, and that night he took my mother and went away somewhere, leaving me in the tent alone. About midnight a band of Indians came to the tent, howling like so many demons. They took me and carried me away on one of their horses.

I was greatly frightened, but I pretended not to be, and the Indians liked me for that. They always like people who are not afraid. They treated me well—or at any rate they did me no harm—but they carried me away to their camp, where all their squaws and children were; for they were on the war-path now, and Indians always take their families with them when they go to war.

When I found that they were not disposed to treat me badly I was almost glad they had captured me; for at least they had taken me away from Campbell, and I liked them much better than I did him.

In the letter Campbell sent me by Colonel Kilgariff, he told me that he had himself planned my capture by the Indians. He had arranged it with the chief when he had the parley with him; and when he went away with my mother, leaving me in the tent alone, he knew the Indians were to catch me that night. He wanted them to get me because then I couldn’t get another guardian, and he thought I could never come back to trouble him about my money when I grew up. I don’t know why he wrote all these things to me, except that he was dying and wanted me to know the whole story. He sent me back all my papers, so that I might some day get what was left of the property my father had given me. Among other things, he told me that my father was dead, and that he himself had killed him in a fight.

Chapter the Sixteenth