But Braxton Wyatt went on in his gentle, persuading, unabashed manner:
"It is as true as I stand here. I could not take you, too, Paul, to torture and death, and all the while I was hoping that the people on the boat would see, or suspect, and that they would turn back in time. If you had not cried out—and it was a wonderfully brave thing to do!—I think that at the last moment I myself should have done so."
"Liar!" said Paul again, and he turned his back to Braxton Wyatt.
Wyatt looked fixedly at the bound boy, shrugged his shoulders a little, and said:
"I never took you for a fool before, Paul."
But Paul was silent, and Braxton Wyatt went away. An hour or two later Red Eagle came to Paul, unbound his arms, and gave him something to eat. As Paul ate the venison, Braxton Wyatt returned to him and said:
"It is my influence with the chief, Paul, that has secured you this good treatment in spite of their rage against you. It is better to pretend to fall in with their ways, if we are to retain life, and ever to secure freedom."
But Paul only turned his back again and remained silent. Yet with the food and rest the ache died out of his head, and he was permitted to wash off the blood caused by the heavy blow from the flat of a tomahawk. Then he crossed the Ohio with the band.
Paul was in a canoe with Red Eagle and two other warriors, and Braxton Wyatt was in another canoe not far away. But Paul resolutely ignored him, and looked only at the great river, and the thick forest on either shore. He was now more lonely than ever, and the Ohio that he was crossing seemed to him to be the boundary between the known and the unknown. Below it was Wareville and Marlowe, tiny settlements in the vast surrounding wilderness, it was true, but the abodes of white people, nevertheless. North of it, and he was going northward, stretched the forest that savages alone haunted. The crossing of the river was to Paul like passing over a great wall that would divide him forever from his own. All his vivid imagination was alive, and it painted the picture in its darkest and most somber colors.
They reached the northern shore without difficulty, hid the canoes for future use, and resumed their leisurely journey northward. Braxton Wyatt, who seemed to Paul to have much freedom, resumed his advances toward a renewal of the old friendship, but Paul was resolute. He could not overcome his repulsion, Braxton Wyatt might plead, and make excuses, and talk about the terror of torture and death, but Paul remained unconvinced. He himself had not flinched at the crucial moment to undo what Wyatt was doing, and in his heart he could find no forgiveness for the one whom he called a renegade.