“Wah!” said Scarouady.
“You have a Cherokee scalp at your belt. I am from the south.” Christopher Gist used signs as well as words. “You are from the north. The Cherokee are wolves that travel between. They are to be struck, so that the road shall be kept open to brothers.”
“Wah!” said Scarouady. “It is said. I have heard of my brother. He is called Gist, and the Cherokee fear him. Has he changed his hunting ground?”
“I live upon the river called Yadkin, in the land called North Carolina,” said Christopher Gist. “Now I am coming to the Mingo.”
“Wah!” exclaimed Scarouady surprised. “Will my brother live among the Mingo?”
“He thinks to do so,” said Christopher Gist. “He is coming now to speak with the Mingo for the Washington company?”
“Wah!” Scarouady exclaimed again. “Does Washington come too?”
“Listen, brother,” continued Christopher Gist: “You say the French of Onontio are spying out that land and claiming it. We know it is not French land, but Indian land and English land. The Washington Company will march into it and build houses along the Ohio to keep the French out. But first they send me, to learn the trail and to look upon the land and to sit in council with the Mingo so that the Long House of the Iroquois will know the talk.”
“Why does not Washington come?” asked Scarouady.