"Hey! You come back here a minute! What's all the rush?" Bud's voice and
his long legs pursued, and presently he overtook her and halted her by
the simple expedient of grasping her shoulder firmly. The high-keyed
howling ceased as suddenly as it had begun, and Bud, peering under
the rolled edge of the red stocking cap, felt his jaw go slack with
surprise.
The baby was smiling at him delightedly, with a quirk of the lips and
a twinkle lodged deep somewhere in its eyes. It worked one hand free of
its odorous wrappings, spread four fat fingers wide apart over one eye,
and chirped, "Pik-k?" and chuckled infectiously deep in its throat.
Bud gulped and stared and felt a warm rush of blood from his heart up
into his head. A white baby, with eyes that laughed, and quirky red lips
that laughed with the eyes, and a chuckling voice like that, riding on
the back of that old squaw, struck him dumb with astonishment.
"Good glory!" he blurted, as though the words had been jolted from him
by the shock. Where-upon the baby reached out its hand to him and said
haltingly, as though its lips had not yet grown really familiar with the
words: "Take--Uvin--Chal!"
The squaw tried to jerk away, and Bud gave her a jerk to let her know
who was boss. "Say, where'd you git that kid?" he demanded aggressively.
She moved her wrapped feet uneasily in the snow, flickered a filmy,
black eyed glance at Bud's uncompromising face, and waved a dirty paw
vaguely in a wide sweep that would have kept a compass needle revolving
if it tried to follow and was not calculated to be particularly
enlightening.
"Lo-ong ways," she crooned, and her voice was the first attractive thing
Bud had discovered about her. It was pure melody, soft and pensive as
the cooing of a wood dove.
"Who belongs to it?" Bud was plainly suspicious. The shake of the
squaw's bandannaed head was more artfully vague than her gesture. "Don'
know--modder die--fadder die--ketchum long ways--off."
"Well, what's its name?" Bud's voice harshened with his growing interest
and bewilderment. The baby was again covering one twinkling eye with
its spread, pink palm, and was saying "Pik-k?" and laughing with the
funniest little squint to its nose that Bud had ever seen. It was so
absolutely demoralizing that to relieve himself Bud gave the squaw
a shake. This tickled the baby so much that the chuckle burst into a
rollicking laugh, with a catch of the breath after each crescendo tone
that made it absolutely individual and like none other--save one.
"What's his name?" Bud bullied the squaw, though his eyes were on the
baby.
"Don't know!"
"Take--Uvin--Chal," the baby demanded imperiously.
"Uh--uh--uh? Take!"
"Uvin Chal? Now what'd yuh mean by that, oletimer?" Bud obeyed an
overpowering impulse to reach out and touch the baby's cheek with a
mittened thumb. The baby responded instantly by again demanding that Bud
should take.