“I guess they heard their elders say it. It wouldn’t have come popping into their heads alone.”
“You don’t catch me minding,” said Jimmy, throwing his head back. “I’m not through with Fish Creek settlement yet.”
There was a long silence, broken only by their feet in the crusted snow. Milly thought pityingly of the thankless home that Maria Claiborne had made for Jimmy and his grandfather. She wished that Marion had not said so positively that he would not have Jimmy on the ark. She would talk to Marion to-morrow and try to win him over. Now that the Claiborne cargo was destroyed, he would be apt to reconsider.
“You may get a chance to go to New Orleans, after all,” she said. “You mustn’t blame Marion, Jimmy. Think of the responsibility he will have, every day and night of that long journey—and, perhaps, fighting.”
“Well, I guess I can hold up my end of the fighting,” said Jimmy. “I never failed to do it yet.”
“That’s the trouble,” said Milly. “You and Kenton and MacAfee are so quarrelsome.”
“I know what you mean, Milly,” said Jimmy, feeling his heart harden against even her friendliness. “You’re going to try to persuade Marion to take me. Well, I ain’t going to have you do it. I won’t go. Not that way. Marion’s got to take me because I’m as good a man as the rest of ’em, or I don’t go. And if he should happen to change his mind and want me, he’ll have to ask me mighty perticular. I won’t be hanging round having every one point to me as the boy that set fire to the building shed.”
“What are you going to do?” she asked, anxiously. “Oh, Jimmy, _promise_ me that it won’t be something you’ll be sorry for.”
“Sorry? I guess not. I haven’t decided what I’ll do yet,” he added. “I’m going down to my place and think about it, and mebby get some beaver skins. The last time I was down I saw signs of them on a little creek. They’re mighty scarce now. Uncle Amasa says they won’t be a beaver between here and Cincinnati next year.”
Milly felt relieved. The place Jimmy spoke of was an almost unbroken strip of forest, about five miles away, on which Jimmy had made “tomahawk improvements”—girdled a few trees and planted a little patch of corn. He and Uncle Amasa had built a cabin there, and sometimes stayed there for weeks on end when Maria was more than usually fiery-tempered. Trappers knew the little cabin well.