An unexpected turn came to this stately and pacific interview.  Mrs. Woods was piqued at the deference that the tall schoolmaster had shown to the chief and his son.  She walked about restlessly, cut a rod from one of the trees with a large knife which she always carried with her, and at last called the master aside again.

“Say, mister, here.  You ain’t going to take that young Injun into your school, are you?  There’ll be trouble, now, if you do.  Know Injuns—­you don’t.  You are young, but ’tain’t best for you to eat all your apples green.  I’ve always been very particular about the company I keep, if I was born poor and have had to work hard, and never studied no foreign languages.  I warn you!”

She raised her voice, and Benjamin heard what she had said.  He suspected her ill-will toward him from her manner, but he comprehended the meaning of her last words.

He at first looked puzzled and grieved, then suddenly his thin lips were pressed together; the passion of anger was possessing him, soon to be followed by the purpose of revenge.

Mrs. Woods saw that she had gone too far in the matter, and that her spirit and meaning had been discovered by the son of the chief.  The danger to which she had exposed herself made her nervous.  But she began to act on her old principle never to show fear in the presence of an Indian.

“Here, mister, I must go now,” she said, in a loud voice.  “Take this rod, and govern your school like a man.  If I were a teacher, I’d make my scholars smart in more ways than one.”  She held out the rod to the master.

There was a movement in the air like a flash.  Benjamin, with noiseless feet, had slipped up behind her.  He had conceived the idea that the offer of the rod somehow meant enmity to him.  He seized the rod from behind the woman, and, sweeping it through the air, with kindled eye and glowing cheeks, wheeled before the master.

“Boston tilicum, don’t you dare!”

“Boston tilicum” was the Chinook for an American, and the Chinook or trade language had become common to all the tribes on the Columbia.  The early American traders on the Northern Pacific coast were from Boston.

He raised the rod aloft defiantly like a young champion, and presented a heroic figure, which excited the tremulous admiration and wonder of the little group.  He then pointed it toward Mrs. Woods, and said contemptuously in Chinook: 

“Cloochman!” (woman).

The scene changed to the comical.  Mrs. Woods snatched off her broad sun-bonnet, revealing her gray hair, and assumed an appearance of defiance, though her heart was really trembling with fear.

“I ain’t afraid of no Injuns,” she said, “and I don’t take any impudence from anybody.  I’ve had to fight the whole world all my life, and I’ve always conquered.  There—­now—­there!”

She whipped the rod out of the young Indian’s hand.

Benjamin’s eyes blazed.