Feeling that all green Englishmen were their legitimate prey for sport, the young bloods of the neighborhood, led by Pat Brennan, Mrs. Corbett's nephew, began to tell Stanley strange and terrible stories of Indians, and got him to send home for rifles and knives to defend himself and the neighborhood from their traitorous raids, "which were sure to be made on the settlements as soon as the cold weather came and the Indians got hungry." He was warned that he must not speak to Mrs. Corbett about this, for it is never wise to alarm the women. "We will have trouble enough without having a lot of hysterical women on our hands," said Pat.
After the weapons had come "The Exterminators" held a session behind closed doors to see what was the best plan of attack, and decided that they would not wait for the Indians to begin the trouble, but would make war on them. They decided that they would beat the bushes for Indians down in the river-bottom, while Stanley would sit at a certain point of vantage in a clump of willows, and as the Indians ran past him, he would pot them!
Stanley had consented to do this only after he had heard many tales of Indian treachery and cruelty to the settlers and their families!
The plan was carried out and would no doubt have been successful, but for the extreme scarcity of Indians in our valley.
All night long Stanley sat at his post, peering into the night, armed to the teeth, shivering with the cold wind that blew through the valley. His teeth chattered with fright sometimes, too, as the bushes rustled behind him, and an inquisitive old cow who came nosing the willows never knew how near death she had been. Meanwhile his traitorous companions went home and slept soundly and sweetly in their warm beds.
"And even after he found out that we were fooling him, he was not a bit sore," said Pat. "He tried to laugh! That is what made me feel cheap--he is too easy; it's too much like taking candy from a kid. And he was mighty square about it, too, and he never told Aunt Maggie how he got the cold, for he slipped into bed that morning and she didn't know he was out."
Another time the boys set him to gathering the puff-balls that grew in abundance in the hay meadow, assuring him that they were gopher-eggs and if placed under a hen would hatch out young gophers.