Page:Marching on Niagara.djvu/325

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FALL OF FORT NIAGARA
293

Creek. This is my cousin Dave Morris. You helped to steal my little sister Nell. Where is she? Tell me this minute!"

As Henry finished he advanced, as if to strike the prisoner down where he sat. Jean Bevoir grew pale and trembled with fear.

"No! no! do not heet me!" he cried. "I no do zat. Eet ees von mistake! I no see ze gal! I——"

"Don't talk that way to me!" interrupted Henry, whose blood was thoroughly aroused. "You'll tell me where she is, and at once, or I'll—I'll—" he hesitated and looked around, and then caught up a gun standing near. "I'll blow your head off, that's what I'll do!"

It is doubtful whether Henry would have carried out his threat, but his manner was so earnest that for once Jean Bevoir, wounded as he was, was well-nigh scared to death. He put up his hands beseechingly. Then he looked at the rangers gathered around; but no one stepped to his aid, for all had heard of his doings, and of how little Nell and the Rose twins had been carried off into captivity by the Indians and of how Bevoir had plotted to hold them for a ransom. Many looked at him as little short of a brigand, or pirate, and would not have been sorry had his miserable existence been ended then and there.