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Make sure that does not happen to you.”
    I smiled at them. My musket was in my hand, and in my belt were two pistols. “I must ask your pardon,
gentle
men, but be sure I do not end there. If I should be put in your stocks for no more than coming to your town, I can promise it would cost you much.
    â€œI have come only to do what you yourselves should have done. I shall not leave until I have accomplished what I have begun. You are, no doubt, good enough men in your ways, but those ways are not mine.
    â€œTwo girls are missing. I understand others have disappeared before this.”
    â€œOthers?” They looked startled. “But that was long ago. It was—”
    â€œLast year,” I answered. “Are you so careless, then? Have you not asked yourself why it is girls who vanish?” I knew nothing myself. I was but giving them that on which to think. “The forests are wide and deep, but are they selective?”
    â€œI do not know what you mean,” the speaker said. Yet he was disturbed. Had he, perhaps, thought of this, also? “It is true—”
    â€œYou have suggested I leave. Very well, I go. But I shall not leave until I know what has happened here. You no doubt think of yourselves as Christians, as God-fearing men, yet you call off a search and condemn those girls to death in the wilds, perhaps, just because of your foolish superstition.”
    â€œBe careful!” The spokesman’s face lost its look of indecision. “You do not speak of superstition here! What we have seen is the work of the devil!”
    I shrugged. “I go now.” I stepped around them but did not put my back to them. “I shall do what I can do and what you did not do.”
    â€œWe could not.” One of the others spoke for the first time. “There were no tracks.”
    â€œThere were tracks, but badly trampled tracks, yet any Indian could have found the trail. Any tracker could find it.”
    â€œWe have one of the best. He could not!”
    â€œCould not? Or did not?”
    Stepping through the door, I closed it behind me. I was angry, and I knew the folly of that. Anger can blind one too easily, and thoughtlessly and foolishly I stepped away from the wall. There was a sudden
whoosh
in the night and a thud. A knife quivered in the log wall behind me.
    I lay on the ground. I had dropped a moment too late, for I had been narrowly missed by a thrown knife but in time to avoid a second. I had not merely hit theground but had moved swiftly off to one side, then farther. I could see nothing.
    The night was dark, but there was starlight, and already my eyes were growing accustomed to it. An attempt to kill me because I was here? Or had somebody listened to what was said inside?
    Ghosting away, I reached the forest and slid into its dark accepting depths. In less than an hour I was near where our camp had been; it was there no longer.
    Yance was there.
    â€œHad trouble?” At my assent he added, “I figured so. There was some coming an’ going in the woods about, but I moved my camp yonder.
    â€œI found tracks,” he added, “far out where nobody took time to look.”
    â€œIndians?”
    â€œWhite men, wearin’ moccasins, like you an’ me.” We moved off into the darkness, traveling swiftly for some minutes. When we slowed down again to listen, he said, “You see that Pittingel again?”
    â€œOthers.”
    â€œWhen I was in the stocks, there was a sailor man in them right beside me. He’d been drunk and roisterin’ about, but he was sober enough in the night, and we talked some.
    â€œI’ve been recallin’ things he said, like this Pittingel now. He owns a couple of ships, sends timber to England, corn to the West Indies, and he brings back sugar, rum, and coffee, but that wasn’t all.
    â€œAfter everybody was asleep, we talked a good deal. It wasn’t very nice, settin’ in those stocks,