“That’ll be her family, I should think,” he said. “Maybe they’ll tell her to sell it to me.” He wound the leather thong round the coin, making a little package of it. “I reckon I’ll speak to them,” he said.

By now the girl was visibly distressed. She thrust out her hand again, urgently.

“Give it back to her, Pa,” said Frank suddenly. “Leave her alone.”

His father turned to him with a frown, surprised. “What’s the matter, son?”

“It’s hers, Pa. You should give it back to her.”

His father paused a moment. “I thought maybe you might have liked it.”

“No.”

His father wasn’t too pleased, but he handed the coin back to the girl with a shrug. She took it and, clasping it tightly, ran back across the grass to her family.

His father stared out irritably at the water.

“Well,” he said, “I guess that’s Niagara Falls.”

After they had started back along the path, his father said: “Don’t get emotional when you’re trading, Frank.”

“I won’t, Pa.”

“That girl. She may have got white blood, somewhere back, but she’s still a savage, you know.”

That evening, they ate with the governor in a big hall, and all the people who were coming on the boat tomorrow toasted the new canal and said how grand it would be. Frank was pretty excited at the thought of the trip ahead, and all the locks they would be going through.

Then after the meal, while the men were sitting at the table, drinking and smoking their cigars, Frank asked his father if he could go outside for a while.

“Course you can, son—only don’t go too far. Then when you come back, we’ll go to the lodgings and turn in. Get a good night’s sleep before tomorrow.”

Buffalo was quite small. People referred to it as a village, but Frank reckoned it was a small town really, and you could see the place was expanding. There was no one about, so it was quiet. It was clear overhead, but it wasn’t cold.

He crossed over the canal and came to a short stretch of riverfront where there was an open area, with some rocks and a stand of pine trees, and he sat on one of the rocks and gazed at the water. He could feel a light breeze pressing softly on his cheek, and soon he reckoned that it was getting a little stronger because he could hear it, now, up in the trees.

And as he sat there, the image of the girl came into his mind, and he thought about her for a while. He was glad for what he had done, and he wondered where she was now, and if maybe she was thinking about him too. And he hoped she might be. So although he was getting a little cold, he stayed there some time, and thought of her some more, and listened to the voice of the wind, sighing in the trees.