"I am going to take care of him," replied Peleg quietly.
"Make a pet of him, are you? The next rattler I find or the next wolf's cub I run across I will bring back to you, lad, and let you make a pet of that, too. The only trouble is that a rattlesnake is kinder at heart than an Indian."
Peleg shook his head but did not reply to this statement of the hunter.
"It is true, what I am tellin' you," continued Sam, as if somehow he was striving to justify himself. "It's got to be extermination. Either you kill the redskins or they will kill you. There isn't room for both in the same land. They are trying to kill us off, and I am not one to sit down quietly and invite them to bring their tomahawks and brain me. If I can get the drop on them before they can get it on me, that's all to my advantage."
"I think Henry feels——" began Peleg.
"Henry? Who's Henry?" broke in Sam Oliver.
"That's the name I have given this boy. He told me what his name was in Shawnee, but I could not quite get it. It sounded like Tontileaugo, and I offered to call him Tonti for short but he didn't like that."
"You will live to regret the day you ever took him in," warned Sam.
"But he is a white boy," persisted Peleg.