The two captains listened with serious attention when she detailed this conversation to them, having repaired to the fort for the purpose, and being received as a guest of much distinction in the great hall, summarily cleared of the junior officers, and, not so summarily, of the clouds of tobacco smoke. They both instantly commended her course in leaving the impression on the minds of the Indian women as it had chanced to be made, and in dismissing them in unimpaired good humor with some little presents—a tiny mirror set locket-wise and an ivory bobbin wound around with red thread. The women had evidently derived special pleasure from the slyness and presumable secrecy of their interview, skulking out with a craft of concealment that completely eluded the notice of Sandy and "Dill," and this had given Odalie a sense of disapprobation and repulsion.
"Why should you care?" demanded Demeré, always sympathetic with a woman's whim-whams, even when he could not feel with them. "No amount of explanation could enable the Indian women to comprehend the situation from your standpoint."
And Captain Stuart could not restrain his laughter at her discomfiture.
"Do you consider yourself so free, then? Do you call it freedom—in the holy bonds of matrimony? I had no idea how much you object to hear the clanking of your chains!"
As he noted her long-lashed glance of disdain,—"Doesn't the holy Scripture call it a 'yoke,'" he persisted, bursting out laughing afresh.
She would not reply but sat listening to Captain Demeré, who began to reason,—"This impression on the part of the Cherokee women might afford us—I don't know how—some means of learning and frustrating the treacherous plans of the savages. It gives us a source of information through you that we can trust."
"I don't relish the deceitful part assigned to me," she protested.
"What would we do with any information, Mrs. MacLeod, supposing we gain aught of value," returned Demeré with some haughtiness, "except to use it for the defense of the fort, and your own outlying station? Are we here to wage war or to maintain peace?"
She was silent, a trifle mortified because of her own mortification to be supposed a mere captive.
"Everybody else knows that you are the commanding officer at MacLeod's Station," said Stuart in pretended consolation, only half smothering a laugh.