Rewards and Fairies - Penn State University

Rewards and Fairies
at that particular moment of time, so far as blanket, hair- We crossed the Juniata by Fort Granville, got into
band, moccasins, and sunburn went, there wasn’t much odds Shippensberg over the hills by the Ochwick trail, and then to
‘twix’ me and a young Seneca buck. You may laugh’—he Williams Ferry (it’s a bad one). From Williams Ferry, across
smoothed down his long-skirted brown coat— ‘but I told the Shanedore, over the Blue Mountains, through Ashby’s
you I took to their ways all over. I said nothing, though I was Gap, and so south-east by south from there, till we found the
bursting to let out the war-whoop like the young men had President at the back of his own plantations. I’d hate to be
taught me.’
trailed by Indians in earnest. They caught him like a partridge
‘No, and you don’t let out one here, either,’ said Puck be- on a stump. After we’d left our ponies, we scouted forward
fore Dan could ask. ‘Go on, Brother Square-toes.’
through a woody piece, and, creeping slower and slower, at
‘We went on.’ Pharaoh’s narrow dark eyes gleamed and last if my moccasins even slipped Red Jacket ‘ud turn and
danced. ‘We went on—forty, fifty miles a day, for days on frown. I heard voices—Monsieur Genet’s for choice—long
end—we three braves. And how a great tall Indian a-horse- before I saw anything, and we pulled up at the edge of a clearback
can carry his war-bonnet at a canter through thick timing where some niggers in grey-and-red liveries were holding
ber without brushing a feather beats me! My silly head was horses, and half-a-dozen gentlemen—but one was Genet—
banged often enough by low branches, but they slipped were talking among felled timber. I fancy they’d come to see
through like running elk. We had evening hymn-singing ev- Genet a piece on his road, for his portmantle was with him. I
ery night after they’d blown their pipe-smoke to the quarters hid in between two logs as near to the company as I be to that
of heaven. Where did we go? I’ll tell you, but don’t blame me old windlass there. I didn’t need anybody to show me Big
if you’re no wiser. We took the old war-trail from the end of Hand. He stood up, very still, his legs a little apart, listening
the Lake along the East Susquehanna through the Nantego to Genet, that French Ambassador, which never had more
country, right down to Fort Shamokin on the Senachse river. manners than a Bosham tinker. Genet was as good as order-
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