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LavcHING Boy 261 A Too fighting and by and by I would beat it. But just then I was desperate. ‘Then those bad women spoke to me. They i took me in and fed me; they were kind, those bad | women. All my ideas were turned upside down now. I did not care. My heart was numb. I I learned their trade. I did what they did. In a few | months so, with the baby in me, that made me very sick. They took care of me, those bad wo- © men. ‘I suffered much pain, the child was born much | too soon, dead. I was glad. ‘When I was well, I went back to work among them. I had thought a lot, I learned a great deal. I saw how this new life was bad. I saw the faces, the empty hearts of those women, kind though they were. I hated all Americans, and I made up my mind. that an American should pay for what an American had done. I remembered my true name. I would have gone to my people, but I did not know how, and I wanted to be paid back. I had my plan.

‘I noticed one thing — that the men, when they went with those women, liked to be helped fool themselves that they were with another kind of woman, that they were loved. I did not wok like those women yet. I looked young, and decent. They liked that, those men. By then it