"'T is a good lesson to teach him discretion," said Winslow. "Certes he stirred up strife between us and the sachem with his cock-and-bull stories."
"Especially when he sent his squaw to warn us that Canonicus with Massasoit and Corbitant were on the way from Namasket to devour us."
"Ay, no wonder Massasoit was aggrieved at being so slandered, and could he have got Tisquantum once within his clutches 't would have gone hard with the poor fool. But never burnt child dreaded fire as he now doth the outside of the palisado."
"Didst hear, Winslow, that t' other day when some of us were unearthing a keg of powder buried there in the Fort, Squanto and a savage guest of his clomb the hill to see what was going on? The magazine is passably deep as you know, and Squanto himself had never seen it opened; so when they saw Alden hand up the keg to Hopkins, the guest asked in the Indian tongue what was in it, and Squanto told him 't was the plague which just before our coming swept the land, and that the white men had captured it and buried it here upon the hill to let loose upon their enemies; and in the end the knave got a goodly price from his visitor for assurance that the plague should not be liberated till he had time to reach Sandwich."
All three men laughed, but Bradford said,—"I fear me Squanto hath done us no little harm with his double dealings, his jealousy of Hobomok, and his craving for bribes; but withal he hath been so good a friend to us, more than useful at the first when we knew naught of the place or how to live, or plant, or fish, that I thought right to risk even Massasoit's enmity rather than to give our poor knave up to his wrath."
"And then I never can forget," said Winslow, "that Squanto as only survivor of the Patuxets was in some sort lord of the soil whereon we pitched."
"Yes truly," responded the captain with a short laugh. "Like myself he was born to great estates and sees them enjoyed by others."
"Well then, since nothing is imminent in this matter of the Weymouth colonists and their quarrel with the Indians, we had better, now that the palisado around the town is complete"—
"Gates, bolts, bastions, all complete from the great rock around to the brook," interposed Standish, his figure visibly dilating with satisfaction. Bradford smiled and allowed his eyes to rest affectionately for an instant upon his comrade, then continued in a lighter tone,—
"So having fortified your hold, Captain, it is now fitting that you should provision it. Thou knowest how in my journeyings last month I bought and stored corn at Nauset, and Manomet, and Barnstable, and now that we have a moment's breathing space, it were well that some one should take the pinnace and fetch it. At the same time there will be good occasion to feel the pulse of the various chiefs, and determine what is their intended course and so settle our own."