“Change your way of speaking; be more complaisant to me, my dear girl, for the more kindly you use me the better it will be for yonder men who are doomed beyond hope if I so much as lift a finger. First of all—do you love this Captain Melton?”
“He has never spoken to me,” replied Sadie. “How do I know that he cares for me?”
“That is not the question at issue. Do you love him? That is what I asked.”
“How can I answer that, when I do not know my own heart? He is a brave and good man, and I could love him dearly if he loved me as well. I will say no more upon that point.”
“At least you care enough for him to wish to save his life?”
“Yes—yes; I would do almost any thing for that,” she replied, eagerly.
“It has gone as far as that, has it? My dear girl, you are further gone than you imagined. Now, I do not wish to be incumbered by prisoners. If we can not come to terms, I shall find it necessary to put these fellows out of the way, and shall certainly do so. There are many ways in which to do this, and my friends the Indians will doubtless be happy to take the laboring oar out of my hands.”
“Do you mean that you would be base enough to give them up to the torture?” she cried.
“Undoubtedly, my Indian friends might find it in their hearts to burn them if they only had them. I was present at a spectacle of this kind, the other day, where they barbecued a traitorous Indian. It was not pretty, and I may say did not amuse me after the first gush, and I went so far as to kill the poor fellow with my own hand, to put him out of his pain. It would distress me very much to see any of your friends in a like delicate situation.”
“What do you ask of me, William Jackwood? Do you wish to drive me mad? You could not—could not be so base.”