CHAPTER XI
WHEN THE GOOD SHIP SAILED
EVEN Mistress Hopkins must at last somewhat overcome her fear of the savages, else her life would have been miserable beyond endurance. For Massasoit having plainly made the treaty in good faith, his people were ready at all times to visit their English allies and eat of their food. Coppery faces grew so common a sight in the single street of New Plymouth that each boy in the colony had his own little tale of a friendly Indian encounter, and Miles Rigdale was no longer alone in his experiences.
Still further to rob Miles of his prestige among his fellows, his own particular Indian, the Sagamore Samoset, with his hat and his shirt, which he used in wet weather to remove carefully, lest they be damaged, took himself off to his own land to the eastward; and Miles found no one to fill his place.
To be sure, Plymouth had now a resident pensioner in the Indian Squanto, but he lived with Master Bradford, and so was accessible to other boys as well as to Miles. "I see not why he is let dwell among us," the latter said jealously, in the early days of Squanto's stay.
"Because, if he were any but a heathen, one might say this land where we have planted belongs to him," Master Hopkins made a brief explanation, which to Miles was no explanation at all.
But later, of a morning when Master Hopkins's force of laborers was busied in building a fence round the garden patch, Giles, who had listened to the talk of his elders, took the trouble to set forth the substance of it to Miles. "You'll understand, this Squanto truly belongs at Plymouth. Back in the time when an Indian village, Patuxet, stood where we have settled, he dwelt here. But there came an Englishman named Hunt—"
"Who was rather more of a knave than even a trader should be," parenthesized Ned Lister, who, seated comfortably on the ground near by, was hammering the palings together.
"He was a scoundrel," said Giles, warmly. "He toled Squanto and nineteen others from Patuxet, and some from among the Nausets, on board his ship, pretending he would truck with them; and then he hoisted sail and steered away for Spain, where he sold them all for twenty pound apiece. But somehow this fellow Squanto made shift to reach England, where a good merchant of London cared for him. 'Twas there he came by the knowledge of our tongue that he has. And at last they sent him back hither to his own country; but meantime the plague had been among them at Patuxet, and all were dead."
"The Lord removed the heathen to make way for a better growth," said Dotey, who had just come thither with an armful of fresh palings.