His father looked at the girl, considering. “I wonder if she’d sell it to me,” he said. He made a sign to the girl that he wanted to buy it. She looked alarmed, and shook her head. “Hmm,” said his father. He thought for a moment. Then he pointed to the wampum belt. “Trade?”

Frank saw the girl hesitate, but only for a moment. Then she shook her head again, and put out her hand for the coin. She looked unhappy.

But his father wasn’t a man to give up easily. He smiled at her and offered again, keeping the coin well out of her reach.

Again she shook her head and held out her hand.

His father looked over to where the Indians were sitting. They were watching impassively.

“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.