"Maman was cross like a bear and Francois whipped me." "And she let him do it?" "Non, but she was so cross I wouldn't tell her. Francois was tipsy." "The drunken dog! I'd like to horsewhip him. Well, you run back, and when Ahneota is sober tell him I've not run away but will come back when the carousal is ended. Don't say anything to any one else about me. If Francois beats you again tell Maman." Louis turned back toward the village and, at a turn in the path, met the tipsy Francois. Rodney saw the meeting, and concealed himself behind a tree. The voyageur had no arms other than the knife in his belt. When he saw Louis he cried, "_He bien! Tiens! prends cela_," slapping the little fellow's face and knocking him down. Seeing this Rodney was infuriated and forgot all caution. In a few bounds he reached the voyageur and, as the latter turned, hit him a stinging blow on the nose, following it with a well directed one on the Frenchman's chin. The fellow went down like a log and Rodney on top of him. He rolled the dazed man on to his face and bound his arms behind his back with a leather thong he carried. "I'll fix you if you ever strike Louis again. You get back to the village and, if you want to live, you behave yourself." Francois was a sorry sight with the blood streaming from his nose. He was sobered and scared but he was to have revenge. [Illustration: "HE ROLLED THE DAZED MAN ON TO HIS FACE AND BOUND HIS ARMS BEHIND HIS BACK."] CHAPTER XI FATHER MOURNING FOR SON What of David Allison's fortunes? Weeks had lengthened into months and no word had come back to Charlottesville from the man whom the great woods had swallowed. After several weeks of weary travel, through forest and by river, the party had reached the location they sought. It was one that would attract even the most practical and stolid of frontiersmen: a plain of several hundred acres surrounded by the forest, a detached part of those great plains farther west, which stretched hundreds of miles with scarcely a tree to dot the expanse. Along each of two sides of the plain a small stream ran, the two uniting in quite a respectable little river that joined the Great Kanawha River a few miles distant. Through the tall grass of this little prairie were great "traces" or paths beaten by the feet of passing buffalo, elk and deer. Fish swam in the streams and the wild turkey's call was heard in the forest. "The Garden of Eden with a redskin for sarpint," was the remark of weather-beaten Dick Saunders, when first he looked upon it. "We'll do him no ill an' consider weel before taking his advice aboot forbidden fruit," replied David Allison. On the eastern side of the little prairie, near the forest, a stockade was built of big logs, sharpened at both ends and set close together in the ground, enclosing about an acre in the form of a rectangle, on one side of which, and forming part of the stockade, were several cabins.