of
danger had been absent how gladly I would have lied to her! How quickly I
would have won her approval by proclaiming myself the greatest dolt in
Virginia and her father the wisest man in the world! But to accede to
everything she said and believed would be an endorsement of her presence
on the creek. I had had no idea of ousting myself from her good graces
when I went to find her that morning. Now the test had come, and her
welfare was involved; to be true to her as well as to myself I was forced
to say:

"I still think it was most dangerous for you to come here. I believe your
father acted very unwisely, no matter how much be believes in his
influence over the Indians. And I would thank God if you were back in
Williamsburg."

Her hands dropped to her side. The smiling eyes grew hard.

"Go on!" she curtly commanded.

"I've damned myself in your opinion already. Isn't that enough? Don't make
me pay double for being honest."

"Honest?" she jeered. "You've deliberately dodged my question. I asked you
what you thought of my father's power with the Indians. You rant about his
wickedness in bringing me here. For the last time I ask you to answer my
question and finish your list of my father's faults."

As if to make more steep the precipice down which from her esteem I was
about to plunge there came the voice of her father, loudly addressing the
settlers.

"You people ought to wake up," he was saying. "Was it your rifles, or was
it trade that stopped an attack on these cabins night before last? When
will you learn that you can not stop Indian wars until you've killed every
Indian this side the mountains? Has there ever been a time when you or
your fathers could stop their raids with rifles? Well, you've seen one
raid stopped by the influence of trade."

As he paused for breath the girl quietly said:

"Now, answer me."

And I blurted out:

"I don't have any idea that Black Hoof and his warriors will hesitate a
second in sacking Howard's Creek because of anything your father has said
or could say. I honestly believe the Shawnees are playing a game, that
they are hoping the settlers are silly enough to think themselves safe. I
am convinced that once Black Hoof believes the settlers are in that frame
of mind he will return and strike just as venomously as the Shawnees
struck in the old French War and in Pontiac's War, after feasting with the
whites and making them believe the red man was their friend."

She st