CHAPTER SIX: PUSHING EASTWARD.
No person in all the world is so quick to detect deception as a mother.
It is simply wonderful the way she will sometimes read one's thoughts.

I am sure you boys who have lagged on the road when sent on an errand, had a scrimmage with some other boy, or done any one of the numerous acts in which a mother persists in asking annoying questions, will agree with me.
While Omas, the Delaware warrior, stood with his face turned away from the camp fire and looking off in the gloom, as if he was trying to discover something in the darkness, Mrs.Ripley was sure she knew what the trouble was: he was trying to decide whether he should stay longer with the little party or leave them to make the rest of their way through the woods without him.
He might well say they were now so far from Wyoming that they were in little danger.

They had but to keep on tramping for several days and nights, and they would reach the little town of Stroudsburg, which, you may know, is near Delaware Water Gap.

There they need have no fear of the red men.
Mrs.Ripley knew all this as well as Omas himself, but she did not wish him to go back and join the hostile Iroquois, as he wanted to do.

She felt it would be far better if he would stay with them, for then he would do no further harm to the white people.
When, therefore, he turned about and bade them goodbye, all doubt was gone.