CHAPTER VIII
IN ABB’S VALLEY
Orioles and mocking-birds sang in the openings, and startled deer fled before our advance as Shelby Cousin and I rode for the Clinch. The heat of July was tempered by a breeze out of the north, and the heavens were filled with hurrying white argosies. So it had ever been since the white man came to these pleasant ridges and rich bottom-lands; perfume, song, gracious valleys, and the lurking red evil.
Cousin had regained his self-control overnight and outwardly appeared to be thoroughly composed. He talked but little, and then only when I took the lead. I refrained from mentioning the tragedy of yesterday and the sun was noon-high before he brought the matter up.
“I couldn’t kill that feller,” he abruptly informed me.
There was no preface to indicate whom he meant, but I knew and nodded sympathetically.
“An’ I’d ruther kill him than all the rest o’ the Injuns ’tween here ’n’ Detroit,” he added after a long pause.
“She will never come back to us?” I asked; for he had given no details of his interview with his sister.
“She’ll never come back. For a time I’d a mind to drag her away, but she was so cold to me, so Injun-like in her way of lettin’ me know it wouldn’t do no good, that I give it up. You see she was only a child when captured. Women caught when much older’n her have gone for to choose a wigwam to a cabin.”
“Do you wish I had shot him?”