“Oh! Dick, my boy, we could not let you go from us in that way!”
Of course Dick had expected that his mother would say something like this; but he looked more to his father for the consent that would mean so much. The very thought was staggering to those loving hearts; but in those days boys of fifteen and sixteen were so accustomed to thinking and doing for themselves that they were fully trusted by their elders. And, besides, mothers had been brought up in the hard school of experience, thus learning early in life to look upon danger as an ever-present thing.
If his father could be brought to see the desperate undertaking in the right light, Dick knew that the victory was as good as won; for the former would be able to convince the good wife and mother that it was, after all, a reasonable conclusion, as well as the sole hope of saving their imperiled homes.
Bob Armstrong shook his head, even while his eyes grew dim as they rested on Dick’s eager face.
“God knows, your mother and I understand and appreciate the motive that prompts you to say that, my boy,” he said; “but we could not accept the sacrifice that it would mean. If there is no other way to save our farms, then they must go, and we will have to take up some new land, and start in afresh.”
“But, father, why should you feel that way?” the lad went on to say. “Can you not trust me in the woods? Have I ever failed to take every precaution, and up to now has anything serious ever happened to me?”
“No, it is not that, son,” replied Bob; “a man could not wish to have a better boy than you have always been, and I wager you know more woodcraft right now than either your Uncle Sandy or myself had in our heads at your age. But it would not be right for us to stay comfortably at home here, while our sons were meeting with all manner of perils off in that unknown country.”
Dick smiled on hearing that. He believed that, if there was no stronger argument against the venture, his case was already as good as won. And, having thought it all out, he now proceeded to knock away the props from under the structure founded by his father.
“Please look back, father, to your own boyhood days,” he said, soberly. “How many times have you sat there, and told us of how you and Uncle Sandy started out by yourselves on the trail of that young Iroquois chief who carried Aunt Kate away. Yes, you followed him clear to the Great Lakes, to the country that was teeming with enemies. And, in spite of every peril, you and my uncle, with only the help of that old trapper Pat O’Mara, since gone to the Happy Hunting Grounds, and the friendly Indian, Blue Jacket, did rescue Aunt Kate, and even saved the life of Pontiac, who afterwards gave you the magic wampum belt that has kept us from harm all these years. Father, what I am saying is all true, isn’t it?”