Page:Nattie Nesmith (1870).pdf/278

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limbs. But I would have all those things piled up till night came, so as to have the cabin look nice, and how much water I made the squaws bring, to scald the wooden bowls and wash the succotash kettle. How I made them work on baskets, too, to buy me finery. But the baskets were all burned, and the bowls, the mats and blankets. I only escaped, and I wonder that God didn't let me burn, for my bad deeds."

"I don't think," said Augustus Reid, "that it was anything very bad for you to make those fat, lazy squaws do the work which they were so much better able to do than yourself; and as to the old man's sitting in his blanket all day, it hardly seems to me that it could have been necessary, when he was so close to a fire always."

"The spirit which led me to do those things was bad," said Nattie; "for I drove the squaws about and vexed the old man, to show my power; and the more I could afflict them the better I enjoyed myself. Oh, this was awfully wicked!