“My child,” returned Claire, fretfully, “I do not care if the Iroquois see me and scalp me.”
“And me also?”
“No, not you.”
“Have a little more patience, madame, for I do see specks like wild ducks riding yonder. They may be the Huron canoes.”
The little more patience, wrung like a last tax from exhaustion, was measured out, and not vainly.
The specks like wild ducks rode nearer, shaping themselves into Huron canoes.
In rigid calm the half-breed girl watched them approach, fly past with regular and beautiful motion of the paddles, and make their entrance into the Ottawa. Her eyes shone across the leaves, but Annahotaha, sweeping all the horizon with a sight formed and trained to keenest use, caught no sign of ambush or human life on the islands.
When the fleet was far off, his young daughter rose up and unsheathed her knife to cut raftwood.
“My father is a great man,” was the only weakness she allowed herself, and in this her gratified pride was restricted to a mere statement of fact.