“Honor!” cried one of the old women, “you go an’ git a bucket o’ water.” The whir stopped instantly, the girl stepped with a sort of slow majesty from the cabin, and, entering the next, paused on the threshold as her eyes caught the powerful figure stretched on the bed and already in heavy sleep. As she stepped softly for the bucket she could not forbear another shy swift glance; she felt the flush in her face and to conceal it she turned her head angrily when she came out. A few minutes later she was at the spring and ladling water into her pail with a gourd. Near by the other two girls were milking—each with her forehead against the soft flank of a dun-colored cow whose hoofs were stained with the juice of wild strawberries. Honor dipped lazily. When her bucket was full she fell a-dreaming, and when the girls were through with their task they turned to find her with deep, unseeing eyes on the dark wilderness. “Boo!” cried Polly, startling her, and then teasingly: “Are you in love with Dave, too, Honor?” The girl reddened. “No,” she whipped out, “an’ I ain’t goin’ to be.” And then she reddened again angrily as Polly’s hearty laugh told her she had given herself away. For a moment the three stood like wood-nymphs about the spring, vigorous, clear-eyed, richly dowered with health and color and body and limb—typical mothers-to-be of a wilderness race. And as Honor turned abruptly for the fort, a shot came from the woods followed by a war-whoop that stopped the blood shuddering in their veins. “Oh, my God!” each cried, and catching at their wet skirts they fled in terror through the long grass. They heard the quick commotion in the fort, heard sharp commands, cries of warning, frantic calls for them to hurry, saw strained faces at the gates, saw Dave bound through and rush toward them. And from the forest there was nothing but its silence until that was again broken—this time by a loud laugh—the laugh of a white man. Then at the edge of the wilderness appeared—the fool. Behind him followed the other two who had gone out that morning, one with a deer swung about his shoulders, and all could hear the oaths of both as they cursed the fool in front who had given shot and war-whoop to frighten women and make them run. Dave stood still, but his lips, too, were busy with curses, and from the fort came curses—an avalanche of them. The sickly smile passed from the face of the fellow, shame took its place, and when he fronted the terrible eyes of old Jerome Sanders at the gate, that face grew white with fear. “Thar ain’t an Injun in a hundred miles,” he stammered, and then he shrank down as though he were almost going to his knees, when suddenly old Jerome slipped his long rifle from his shoulder and fired past the fellow’s head with a simultaneous roar of command: “Git in—ever’body—git in—quick!”