“It ’ud be safer; we’re no so near to neighbors, and your fayther so distracted.” Polly pinched her chin thoughtfully. “Then there’s the childer. I’d shoot down the redskins, and shed my last drop of blood for ’em; but would it save ’em if the beasts came?”
“Then you think we ought to go to the garrison house?”
“It would be safer. I don’t care for mysel’, Nancy; but when I think of Jimmy’s childer, I can’t peril them; for what would he say when he comes back, and finds them gone because of their mother’s foolhardiness?”
“But I don’t like the fort with the cabins so close together, and the blockhouses so threatening and ugly. I do love the freedom of our own clearing. I don’t believe the Indians have an idea of coming here; the settlement is too big, and it is only a rumor that they have been seen in the neighborhood. I think we might wait awhile and enjoy our freedom.”
“Land o’ mercy, Nancy! I’m no better pleased than you to go; but if there’s a chance of our being in danger, we must be on the safe side. I am as daring as the next; but I must say when we beeta have Injuns for visitors, I want to git out.”
Therefore Agnes reluctantly packed up the things she most cared for—her favorite wolfskin that Archie had given her in place of the one she had taken such pride in at the first settlement; a little bowl quaintly carved, a belt ornamented with porcupine quills, and such like things. Polly’s feather-beds and the rest of the family necessities were packed on two horses, and the children were established in crates at the sides of these beasts of burden; and so the journey was taken to the fort, now the centre of quite a large, though scattered, community.
Several families, at the report of Indians near, had come into the fort, but there was still a number of the clearings occupied by those who did not easily take alarm, and who waited for a confirmation of the news before they should leave their comfortable quarters.
Jeanie insisted that Agnes should come immediately to her, but Agnes refused to leave her father altogether, though she spent many a day at the M’Cleans’ clearing, and there made the acquaintance of David Campbell, who, being a near neighbor, found it convenient to drop in often, despite the fact that Jeanie obstinately declared that she did not like him.
“He is a good fellow,” Agnes insisted, “and I don’t see why you don’t like him. You must and shall,” which was a sure way of encouraging Jeanie in her decision not to like him.
“It is a pity Archie is your brother, for then you could take him and give me David,” said Agnes, one day, when Jeanie had been singing Archie’s praises.