“Listen!” she flamed. “Listen while I speak. I bring you news that the tomahawks are up against you. In return you call me scum. It is well. I want not your good will. Think you I bring you news because I love you? Not so! I hate you! I hate you all, dogs and murderers that you are. Gladly would I see you all at the stake. My heart is not white, it is red. Why, then, do I warn you? I warn you because my friend, Jack Telfair, one of your own blood, one of a family high in the councils of the great white father at Washington--because he is ill and unprotected. I ask not your help for myself. I ask it for him and for Peter Bondie and his sister, who at my bidding took their lives in their hands to bring you warning. Metea and the Pottawatomies keep watch upon us. At dawn they will come. Are we to be murdered because we warn you?” Hibbs glared at the girl. But he was plainly uneasy. He had forgotten about Jack. Now he remembered. He remembered, too, that information had come to him lately that the young fellow’s family was of importance. Still he blustered. “Hear the young cockerel crow!” he jeered. “What’s this Metea fellow coming to you at dawn for?” Alagwa colored. She had forgotten her anomalous position. As she hesitated Williams burst in. “What’s he coming for?” he jeered. “What you reckon he’s coming for? These Injun-bred cubs are always snakes in the grass. I’ll bet this boy’s been playing spy for the Britishers and the Shawnees ever since he’s been here.” Alagwa gasped. Williams had hit upon the truth. That he did not know that he had hit upon it made his words little less appalling to the girl. After all she was only a girl, a child in years, trying desperately hard to play the man. Stickney was ill and Bondie incapable. She was practically alone against a dozen men. The fury that had sustained her went out of her, and she shrank back. Williams saw her terror and jeered at her. “What’d I tell you,” he cried. “The cub’s a liar and a spy. He ought to be shot, d-- him!” For a moment more the girl faced the mocking men. Her lips quivered; her breast heaved. Desperately she fought for self control. Then all at once she gave way. Across her face she flung her arm, and bent forward, her whole body shaking with wild hysterical sobs. Instantly Williams sprang forward, crying out in evil triumph. “I knowed it!” he yelled. “I knowed it. Look at him. Look at his figger. He ain’t no boy. He’s a girl. I’d a guessed it long ago, but she was so d-- slim and straight. But she’s been a-growing and developing. Look at her now. She’s a girl, a girl, a girl, an’ she’s been travelling around with that Jack Telfair. The hussy! The baggage!”