Brant’s daughter rode with a heavy heart the balance of the journey, for she knew her lover’s nature. The Indian bodyguards were equally downcast, for they had sworn to deliver[deliver] her safe and sound at the forks of the Susquehanna.
When she reached the handsome colonial gray stone house, on a headland overlooking the “meeting of the waters,” her lover, a handsome upstanding youth, with a sports suit made of his old officer’s buff uniform, and surrounded by a pack of his hunting dogs, came out to greet her. His manner was not very cordial. With penetrating eyes he saw that she was disturbed over something, so he quickly asked if she suffered from fatigue after the long overland journey.
“No, Major,” she replied, “I am not at all tired in body, but I am in heart. I cannot postpone the evil moment. On the Boone Road we were stopped by three highwaymen, armed, who took from me half of my dowry.”
The Major’s handsome countenance darkened. “Why did you not tell them you needed it to get married?” he blurted out angrily. “A pretty wench like you could have honey-foogled them to keep it.” “replied the girl, confidently, “and for that reason the chief of the band, a very pretty man, let me keep the one-half, but he had to retain the rest for his companions.” “ “I think I came off well,” she said, hanging her pretty head, her cheeks all crimson flush. She was sitting on the horse, her feet dangling out of the stirrups, her skirts turned up revealing those shapely legs, and he had not asked her to dismount.
The Major drew nearer, with an angry gesture. “I have a mind to smack your face good and hard for your folly,” he stormed. “What do you think I have been waiting for, a paltry fifteen hundred dollars?”
Brant’s daughter turned her belt and handed him the pouch of gold, which he threw down testily. It was quickly picked up by one of his German redemptioner servants, who carried it into the house.
“Aren’t you going to ask me to come in?” pleaded the now humiliated love-sick girl. “You can slap me all you want. Punish me any way you will,” offering him her stiff riding crop, “only don’t cast me off.”[off.”]
“Come down if you wish; I don’t care,” he mumbled in reply. “I wouldn’t exert myself enough to whip you, but your hide ought to be tanned for your stupidity.”
Cut to the heart, yet still loving abjectly, she slid off the horse and meekly followed the imperious Major into the mansion. During the balance of the afternoon, and at supper, and until she begged to be allowed to retire, she was reviled and humbled in the presence of his redemptioners. He declared that no one man in a thousand, in his station of life, would consider marriage with a person of Indian blood; that it was worth twice three thousand dollars, the figure he had originally named. Nevertheless, he had carefully put the money bag in his strong box, even though saying nothing about setting a date for a marriage.
She was shown into an unfinished room. There was no bed, only a few chairs, and two big walnut chests. Tearful and nervously unstrung, she took off her shoes and, wrapping herself in her cloak, lay down on the cold wooden floor. She could have called for blankets, and doubtless gotten them, but her pride had rebelled and she resolved to make the best of conditions. She could not sleep, and her mind was tortured with her love for the Major, anger at his ungrateful conduct, and an ever-recurring vision of the highwayman on the Boone Road. She heard the great Irish clock in the hall below strike every hour until one.