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Updated: June 1, 2025
Then a clasp as of steel enclosed her; she felt herself swinging easily into the air, and over the muddy brook. Farther down the mountain this troublesome brook again crossed the trail, this time much wider and more formidable. Helen looked with some vexation and embarrassment into the borderman's face. It was always the same, stern, almost cold. "Perhaps I'd better wade," she said hesitatingly.
Years ago he had accepted a borderman's destiny, well content to be recompensed by its untamed freedom from restraint; to be always under the trees he loved so well; to lend his cunning and woodcraft in the pioneer's cause; to haunt the savage trails; to live from day to day a menace to the foes of civilization. That was the life he had chosen; it was all he could ever have.
Brandt acknowledged Jonathan's bow with an awkwardness which had certainly been absent in his greeting to Helen. He started slightly when she spoke the borderman's name. A brief pause ensued. "Good night," said Jonathan, and left them. He had noticed Brandt's gesture of surprise, slight though it was, and was thinking about it as he walked away.
Wetzel's head was bowed; but there was no merriment in the serious face exposed to the borderman's scrutiny. "Lew, you're jokin'." "Not me. Some day, when you're ketched good, an' I have to go back to the lonely trail, as I did afore you an' me become friends, mebbe then, when I'm the last borderman, I'll tell you."
Thousands of times his borderman's trail had been crossed, yet never to his sorrow until now when it had been crossed by a woman. Sick at heart, hurt in his pride, darkly savage, sad, remorseful, and thrilling with awakened passion, all in turn, he roamed the woodland unconsciously visiting the scenes where he had formerly found contentment.
Do you think this white thief had anything to do with carrying her away?" "No. Wetzel says that's Bing Legget's work. The Shawnees were members of his gang." "Well, Jack, what'll I do?" "Keep quiet an' wait," was the borderman's answer. Colonel Zane, old pioneer and frontiersman though he was, shuddered as he went to his room. His brother's dark look, and his deadly calmness, were significant.
To offer tobacco to anyone was absolutely a borderman's guarantee of friendliness toward that person. Jeff expectorated half a dozen times, each time coming a little nearer the stone he was aiming at, some five yards distant. Possibly this was the borderman's way of oiling up his conversational machinery. At all events, he commenced to talk. "Yer brother's goin' to preach out here, ain't he?
No thicket, fallen tree, or splintered rocks, such as Indians utilized for an ambush, could be seen. Indians always sought the densely matted underbrush, a windfall, or rocky retreat and there awaited a pursuer. It was one of the borderman's tricks of woodcraft that he could recognize such places.
They welcomed the newcomers most heartily. Beds were made in several of the newly erected cabins; the village was given over for the comfort of the frontiersmen. Edwards conducted Captain Williamson through the shops and schools, and the old borderman's weather-beaten face expressed a comical surprise.
Even Betty's face, always so warm, piquant, and wholesome, had taken on a shade of doubt, of gloom, of something almost sullen, which blighted its dark beauty. What hurt Helen most cruelly was the borderman's glittering eyes. She fought against a shuddering weakness which threatened to overcome her. "Whose prisoner is Brandt?" she asked of Colonel Zane.
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