"You needn't speak unless you feel like it," he said. "I can do the talking for both of us. You're tied up, it's true, but you're treated better than most prisoners. I've been hearing a good deal about you. A particular friend of yours, one Braxton Wyatt, a most promising lad, has told me a lot of stories in which you have a part." "I know Braxton Wyatt very well," said Henry, "and I'm glad to say that I've helped to defeat some of his designs. He has a great ambition." "What is that?" asked Girty. "To become as bad a man as you are." But Girty was not taken aback at all. His lips twisted into a peculiar grin of cruel satisfaction. "They do fear me," he said, "and they'll fear me more before long. I've joined the Indians, I like them and their ways, and I'm going to make myself a great man among them." "At the expense of your own kind?" "Of course. What is that to me. I'm going to get all the tribes together, and sweep the whites out of the Ohio Valley forever." "I've heard that these same Indians with whom you're so thick burned your step-father at the stake?" said Henry. "That's true," replied the renegade without the slightest feeling. "That was when I was a little child, and they captured our family. But they didn't burn me. So what have I to complain of?" Henry could not repress a shudder, but Girty remained as cool as ice. "Why shouldn't I be a great man among the Indians?" he said. "I know the tricks of both white and red now. The Continentals, as they call themselves--rebels I call them--held McKee, Eliot and myself prisoners at Fort Pitt, the place they call Pittsburgh, but we escaped and here we are. We've been joined by Blackstaffe, Quarles, and the boy, Braxton Wyatt. The Indians trust us and listen to us; we're going to draw all the valley Indians together--Shawnees, Miamis, Wyandots, Ottawas, Delawares and Illinois--and we'll light such a flame on both sides of the river that no white man will ever be able to put it out." "You've got to reckon with some brave men first," said Henry. "Yes, I know that the settlers have good woodsmen, Boone and Kenton--Simon Kenton was my comrade once--but they are too few, and as for this expedition to which you belonged, that is coming up the river, we're going to cut that off, too, not only because we'll be glad to wipe out those people, but because we want the rifles, the ammunition, the stores, and, above all, the cannon that your fleet carries. What will the wooden walls in Kentucky be to us when we get those big guns?" "When you get them!" said Henry defiantly. This man inspired increasing horror and repulsion. The exulting way in which he talked of destroying his own people would have been incredible, had Henry merely heard of it from others. But the man was here before his face, glorying in the deeds that he expected to commit.