“I saw it, and was sorry it happened, Deerslayer, for I hoped you wouldn't have returned blow for blow, but good for evil.”
“Ah, Hetty, that may do among the Missionaries, but 'twould make an onsartain life in the woods! The Panther craved my blood, and he was foolish enough to throw arms into my hands, at the very moment he was striving a'ter it. 'Twould have been ag'in natur' not to raise a hand in such a trial, and 'twould have done discredit to my training and gifts. No—no—I'm as willing to give every man his own as another, and so I hope you'll testify to them that will be likely to question you as to what you've seen this day.”
“Deerslayer, do you mean to marry Sumach, now she has neither husband nor brother to feed her?”
“Are such your idees of matrimony, Hetty! Ought the young to wive with the old—the pale-face with the red-skin—the Christian with the heathen? It's ag'in reason and natur', and so you'll see, if you think of it a moment.”
“I've always heard mother say,” returned Hetty, averting her face more from a feminine instinct than from any consciousness of wrong, “that people should never marry until they loved each other better than brothers and sisters, and I suppose that is what you mean. Sumach is old, and you are young!”
“Ay and she's red, and I'm white. Beside, Hetty, suppose you was a wife, now, having married some young man of your own years, and state, and colour—Hurry Harry, for instance—” Deerslayer selected this example simply from the circumstance that he was the only young man known to both—“and that he had fallen on a war path, would you wish to take to your bosom, for a husband, the man that slew him?”
“Oh! no, no, no—” returned the girl shuddering—“That would be wicked as well as heartless! No Christian girl could, or would do that! I never shall be the wife of Hurry, I know, but were he my husband no man should ever be it, again, after his death!”
“I thought it would get to this, Hetty, when you come to understand sarcumstances. 'Tis a moral impossibility that I should ever marry Sumach, and, though Injin weddin's have no priests and not much religion, a white man who knows his gifts and duties can't profit by that, and so make his escape at the fitting time. I do think death would be more nat'ral like, and welcome, than wedlock with this woman.”
“Don't say it too loud,” interrupted Hetty impatiently; “I suppose she will not like to hear it. I'm sure Hurry would rather marry even me than suffer torments, though I am feeble minded; and I am sure it would kill me to think he'd prefer death to being my husband.”
“Ay, gal, you ain't Sumach, but a comely young Christian, with a good heart, pleasant smile, and kind eye. Hurry might be proud to get you, and that, too, not in misery and sorrow, but in his best and happiest days. Howsever, take my advice, and never talk to Hurry about these things; he's only a borderer, at the best.”