hey plan? What will they do with me?" her dry lips demanded.

Ward, enraged by her show of aversion, seized her by the shoulder, ripping
the cloth, and dragged her to her feet, and informed her:

"Catahecassa ordered his men to burn you. I made him give you to me. You
are my woman. You are lucky I am not a red man."

"No! No! I'll burn, you monster! I'll burn a hundred times," she panted.
And she struck her hand into his face, whereat the savages shouted in
merriment.

I believed he would kill her then and there, for he groaned aloud from
rage and raised his ax over his head.

"Strike me!" she begged, facing the uplifted ax unflinchingly; and
although not of the border she displayed the fine courage of the Widow
McCabe and other frontier women.

With a whimpering, bestial note Ward managed to say:

"No! You shall live, and many times beg me to kill you. But you shall
still live till I trade you to some red hunter."

"I will kill myself some way before you can harm me!" she defied.

Ward slowly lowered his ax and began chuckling. He told her, pointing to
me:

"This man. He loved you. He was a fool. I say was because his life is
behind him. It is something that is finished, a trace followed to the end.
He is a dead man as he lies there. He loved you. I believe you loved him.
He is my prisoner. Now you can guess why I know you will not harm
yourself."

I knew. She was suffering too much to reason clearly. But he was eager to
help her to understand He amplified by explaining:

"It will be for you to say if he is to be tortured. He is young and
strong. We could keep him alive many days after the fire began to burn
him. It will be a fine game to see whom you love the better, yourself or
him. You will be free to go about the camp. But this man will be watched
all the time. After we take the fort to-night you will come to me and ask
to be my woman.

"I had planned to take your father for my second prisoner. My medicine
tells me to take this man as he will live longer. Remember; you will ask
to be my squaw. That sapling was trimmed for you; it will do for this man.
You will come to me, or he goes to the stake. Now, go!"

And he reached out his hand and sent her spinning and reeling toward her
father.

"You dog! Set me free, empty-handed, and you take a knife and ax, and I
will show the Shawnees what a poor dog you are," I told him in Shawnee.

But he was not to be tempted into any violence just now. He mocked: