“You’re smokin’ the reason. ’Most any man round here would have kilt that catamount. That’d be fun. But none of ’em would use up his last smokin’ on a woman—not if both her legs were busted. A feller that would do that is worth trustin’.”

He threw up his hands.

“Talk about feminine logic! That beats ’em all,” he laughed. “Well, fair dam—I beg pardon—young woman, just who are you, if I may ask?”

The answer staggered him.

“Me? Oh, I’m only Nigger Nat’s girl.”

Over his pipe he blinked at her.

“My name’s Marry,” she went on. “Marry Oaks. My whole name is Marryin’, but it’s Marry for short.”

[34]“Marion,” he repeated absently. “But who’s Nigger Nat? Not a colored man!”

[34]

The frank eyes looked steadily back at him.

“Why, yes he is. He’s yeller—half nigger. He’s my pop. And mom’s part Injun.”

[35]

CHAPTER III PIPE-SMOKE—AND POWDER-SMOKE

Dawn swept across the Shawangunks.

Dawn

From the far-off crests of the Berkshires light leaped athwart the silvery Hudson and smote the frowning cliffs of the Great Wall of the Wallkill Valley: a grim gray precipice stretching mile after mile to the northeast, towering eight hundred feet upward from the lower lands; unscalable, impenetrable save at one small high gap—the Jaws of the Traps, whence in other days the redskin had slipped forth in bloody foray on the settlers below, and where in turn the white man had lurked in retaliatory ambush. Through that gap now wormed the sandy road of the descendants of those pioneers, and along that road at this early hour passed nothing more sinister than dawn-sheen and morning breeze.

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