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Updated: May 25, 2025
"If you had remained at the cabin, Nat, you would have known that I was your friend," continued Obadiah. "She would have come to you, but now it is impossible. You know. You have been warned?" Nathaniel drew Winnsome's note from his pocket and read it aloud. Obadiah smiled gleefully when he noticed how carefully he kept the handwriting from his eyes.
Nathaniel thought of what Marion had said to him in the forest. "Neil," he said quietly, "do you know that Winnsome loves you not as the little girl whom you toted about on your shoulders but as a woman? Do you know that?" In the other's silence he added, "When I last saw Marion she sent this message to you 'Tell Neil that he must go, for Winnsome's sake.
"He will not go with you at all, Nat," gloated the old man. "Ho, ho, we are playing at his own game treachery. When he calls at my place you will be aboard ship." "But I should like to have a talk with him alone, and in the woods. God I know a man at Grand Traverse Bay whose wife and daughter " "Sh-h-h-h!" interrupted the councilor. "Would you kill little Winnsome's father?" "Her father?
He saw the boat drifting out into the night, and Winnsome standing alone at the water-edge, her sobbing cries of entreaty, of terror, following it unanswered. He tottered down toward her, gaining new strength at each step, but when he reached her the boat was no longer to be seen and Winnsome's face was whiter than the sands under her feet.
But as Nathaniel and Neil burst through the crowd and sped toward the forest Strang's great voice boomed forth like the rumble of a gun. "Arbor Croche, overtake those men and kill them!" With a wild curse the chief of sheriffs dashed down the stairway and as she heard him go the terror of Winnsome's heart seemed to turn her blood cold. She knew what that command meant.
He sent her word that he would call at a certain place for a reply when he was relieved again at five. There was no reply for him not a word from Winnsome." Their silence was painful. It was Nathaniel who spoke first, hesitatingly, as though afraid to say what was passing in his mind. "I killed Winnsome's father, Neil," he said, "and Winnsome has demanded my death.
Darkness enshrouded him but a few moments, when a dash of cool water brought him back into light. He felt himself lowered upon the sand and after a breath or two he twisted himself on his elbow and saw that Neil's white face was held on Winnsome's breast and that Marion was running up from the shore with more water. For a space she knelt beside her brother, and then she hurried to him.
After they had done with the meat and the bread and the cold potatoes he pulled out his beloved pipe and filled it with the last scraps of his tobacco, and as the fumes of it clouded round his head, soothing him in its old friendship, he told of his fight with Strang and his killing of Arbor Croche. "I'm glad for Winnsome's sake," said Neil, after a moment. "Oh, if you'd only killed Strang!"
He turned as if he had just seen the approaching figure. And he whispered softly, "Winnsome's father!" Arbor Croche! Nathaniel gave an involuntary shudder as he turned with Obadiah. Croche, chief of sheriffs, scourge of the mainland the Attila of the Mormon kingdom, whose very name caused the women of the shores to turn white and on whose head the men had secretly set a price in gold!
Life had been given to him again, strong, fighting life, and with it and Winnsome's words there returned his old confidence, his old daring. There was everything for him to win now. His doubts and his fears had been swept away.
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