She rubbed a pink finger against her nose and tilted her head and weighed my words thoughtfully. Obviously I had omitted something; for with a little frown worrying her fair forehead she began:
“But—but there’s something else you haven’t said. What about his influence over the Indians? You thought him foolish to take me over the mountains. You now admit you were foolish to think that?”
She was waiting for me to complete my confessional. If the element of danger had been absent how gladly I would have lied to her! How quickly I would have won her approval by proclaiming myself the greatest dolt in Virginia and her father the wisest man in the world! But to accede to everything she said and believed would be an endorsement of her presence on the creek. I had had no idea of ousting myself from her good graces when I went to find her that morning. Now the test had come, and her welfare was involved; to be true to her as well as to myself I was forced to say:
“I still think it was most dangerous for you to come here. I believe your father acted very unwisely, no matter how much be believes in his influence over the Indians. And I would thank God if you were back in Williamsburg.”
Her hands dropped to her side. The smiling eyes grew hard.
“Go on!” she curtly commanded.
“I’ve damned myself in your opinion already. Isn’t that enough? Don’t make me pay double for being honest.”
“Honest?” she jeered. “You’ve deliberately dodged my question. I asked you what you thought of my father’s power with the Indians. You rant about his wickedness in bringing me here. For the last time I ask you to answer my question and finish your list of my father’s faults.”
As if to make more steep the precipice down which from her esteem I was about to plunge there came the voice of her father, loudly addressing the settlers.
“You people ought to wake up,” he was saying. “Was it your rifles, or was it trade that stopped an attack on these cabins night before last? When will you learn that you can not stop Indian wars until you’ve killed every Indian this side the mountains? Has there ever been a time when you or your fathers could stop their raids with rifles? Well, you’ve seen one raid stopped by the influence of trade.”