“Av yees could but hear what he do be sayin’ this blissed minit,” declared Pat, “sure, it’s on a good foundation ye build yer faith. Listen to him till that he was sore wounded, and how ye two byes did bring him intil yees own wigwam, h’alin’ his hurts, so that instead av dyin’ he lived. Now, it is av thot same kind mither av yees that he do be spakin’, and how she bound up his bullet wound wid salve, an’ trated him as though he might be her own boy. For thot he can niver be anything but the frind av the Arrmstrong family. An’ already has he parrt convinced Little Turtle, becase, ye know, gratitude is the bist trait av the ridskins.”
“But now the other seems to be changing his talk, and appealing to him in another way. Tell us what he is saying, Pat, please,” insisted Sandy.
The Irish trapper listened for a minute, and then nodded.
“That wor a cliver shot av Blue Jacket, on me worrd,” he muttered. “Yees say, the ould chief he do be tillin’ him that his brothers, the Shawanees, are always on the warpath aginst the palefaces; and that, while it may be all right for him to keep frinds wid yer family, he ought to take up arrms aginst the rist av the sittlement. But Blue Jacket replied by tillin’ him av what ye byes did for the great sachem, Pontiac, only last autumn, and what it meant for the sacred wampum belt of the same to be hangin’ in the Arrmstrong cabin.”
“Oh! yes,” Sandy went on; “that ought to convince Little Turtle that Pontiac is the friend of our settlement, just because we live there; and an injury to one would be an injury to all. All these months, now, while other places have been attacked, there has come no evil against our neighbors. Much though they feared the coming of the Indians, not once has a hostile shot been fired since that day when Pontiac gave us his wonderful belt.”
“Do you notice, Pat,” remarked Bob just then, in a whisper intended only for the ears of the one he addressed, “that the man you called Simon Girty is edging off to the left, a little at a time? I do not like the look in his eye. He scowls as though he meant us harm.”
“’Tis mesilf that do be after watchin’ the sarpint av the forest,” replied the trapper. “And yees spake rightly whin ye say he has evil in his mind; but me finger is on the trigger, an’, be the powers, wan hostile move on his parrt manes for me to fire. I cud hit the eye av a rid squirrel at this distance, and surely must find his black heart wid me bullet.”
He spoke louder than before, and for a reason. Evidently his words must have reached the ear of the renegade, for he no longer tried to keep on moving, a little at a time, toward the left. Doubtless Girty knew well what a splendid shot Pat O’Mara was; and also that the trapper would willingly rid the border of such a pest, if given half an excuse.
The two Indians had by this time come to an understanding. What Blue Jacket had told concerning the gratitude of Pontiac, and the bestowing of his wampum belt on the young pioneers, because of their saving his life, must have impressed the Miami chief greatly. At that time Pontiac’s name was one to conjure with among the confederated red men of the region lying between the Alleghenies and the Mississippi; while Little Turtle had not yet come to the zenith of his fame.