The eye of Hard-Heart was fixed, composed, and a little anxious; but as to every other emotion, impenetrable.
He neither spoke himself, nor seemed willing to invite discourse in his visiters; it was therefore necessary for Middleton to adopt the patient manners of his companions, and to await the issue for the explanation.
When they entered the town, its inhabitants were seen collected in an open space, where they were arranged with the customary deference to age and rank.
The whole formed a large circle, in the centre of which, were perhaps a dozen of the principal chiefs.
Hard-Heart waved his hand as he approached, and, as the mass of bodies opened, he rode through, followed by his companions.
Here they dismounted; and as the beasts were led apart, the strangers found themselves environed by a thousand, grave, composed, but solicitous faces.
Middleton gazed about him, in growing concern, for no cry, no song, no shout welcomed him among a people, from whom he had so lately parted with regret.
His uneasiness, not to say apprehensions, was shared by all his followers.
Determination and stern resolution began to assume the place of anxiety in every eye, as each man silently felt for his arms, and assured himself, that his several weapons were in a state for service.
But there was no answering symptom of hostility on the part of their hosts.
Hard-Heart beckoned for Middleton and Paul to follow, leading the way towards the cluster of forms, that occupied the centre of the circle.
Here the visiters found a solution of all the movements, which had given them so much reason for apprehension.
The trapper was placed on a rude seat, which had been made, with studied care, to support his frame in an upright and easy attitude.
The first glance of the eye told his former friends, that the old man was at length called upon to pay the last tribute of nature.
His eye was glazed, and apparently as devoid of sight as of expression.
His features were a little more sunken and strongly marked than formerly; but there, all change, so far as exterior was concerned, might be said to have ceased.
His approaching end was not to be ascribed to any positive disease, but had been a gradual and mild decay of the physical powers.
Life, it is true, still lingered in his system; but it was as if at times entirely ready to depart, and then it would appear to re-animate the sinking form, reluctant to give up the possession of a tenement, that had never been corrupted by vice, or undermined by disease. It would have been no violent fancy to have imagined, that the spirit fluttered about the placid lips of the old woodsman, reluctant to depart from a shell, that had so long given it an honest and an honourable shelter.
His body was placed so as to let the light of the setting sun fall full upon the solemn features.
His head was bare, the long, thin, locks of grey fluttering lightly in the evening breeze.
His rifle lay upon his knee, and the other accoutrements of the chase were placed at his side, within reach of his hand.
Between his feet lay the figure of a hound, with its head crouching to the earth as if it slumbered; and so perfectly easy and natural was its position, that a second glance was necessary to tell Middleton, he saw only the skin of Hector, stuffed by Indian tenderness and ingenuity in a manner to represent the living animal.
His own dog was playing at a distance, with the child of Tachechana and Mahtoree.
The mother herself stood at hand, holding in her arms a second offspring, that might boast of a parentage no less honourable, than that which belonged to the son of Hard-Heart.
Le Balafre was seated nigh the dying trapper, with every mark about his person, that the hour of his own departure was not far distant.
The rest of those immediately in the centre were aged men, who had apparently drawn near, in order to observe the manner, in which a just and fearless warrior would depart on the greatest of his journeys.
The old man was reaping the rewards of a life remarkable for temperance and activity, in a tranquil and placid death.
His vigour in a manner endured to the very last.
Decay, when it did occur, was rapid, but free from pain.
He had hunted with the tribe in the spring, and even throughout most of the summer, when his limbs suddenly refused to perform their customary offices.
A sympathising weakness took possession of all his faculties; and the Pawnees believed, that they were going to lose, in this unexpected manner, a sage and counsellor, whom they had begun both to love and respect. But as we have already said, the immortal occupant seemed unwilling to desert its tenement.
The lamp of life flickered without becoming extinguished.
On the morning of the day, on which Middleton arrived, there was a general reviving of the powers of the whole man.
His tongue was again heard in wholesome maxims, and his eye from time to time recognised the persons of his friends.
It merely proved to be a brief and final intercourse with the world on the part of one, who had already been considered, as to mental communion, to have taken his leave of it for ever.
When he had placed his guests in front of the dying man, Hard-Heart, after a pause, that proceeded as much from sorrow as decorum, leaned a little forward and demanded—
“Does my father hear the words of his son?”
“Speak,” returned the trapper, in tones that issued from his chest, but which were rendered awfully distinct by the stillness that reigned in the place. “I am about to depart from the village of the Loups, and shortly shall be beyond the reach of your voice.”
“Let the wise chief have no cares for his journey,” continued Hard-Heart with an earnest solicitude, that led him to forget, for the moment, that others were waiting to address his adopted parent; “a hundred Loups shall clear his path from briars.”
“Pawnee, I die as I have lived, a Christian man,” resumed the trapper with a force of voice that had the same startling effect upon his hearers, as is produced by the trumpet, when its blast rises suddenly and freely on the air, after its obstructed sounds have been heard struggling in the distance: “as I came into life so will I leave it.
Horses and arms are not needed to stand in the presence of the Great Spirit of my people.
He knows my colour, and according to my gifts will he judge my deeds.”
“My father will tell my young men, how many Mingoes he has struck, and what acts of valour and justice he has done, that they may know how to imitate him.”
“A boastful tongue is not heard in the heaven of a white man,” solemnly returned the old man. “What I have done, He has seen.
His eyes are always open.
That, which has been well done, will He remember; wherein I have been wrong will He not forget to chastise, though He will do the same in mercy.
No, my son; a Pale-face may not sing his own praises, and hope to have them acceptable before his God.”
A little disappointed, the young partisan stepped modestly back, making way for the recent comers to approach.
Middleton took one of the meagre hands of the trapper, and struggling to command his voice, he succeeded in announcing his presence.
The old man listened like one whose thoughts were dwelling on a very different subject, but when the other had succeeded in making him understand, that he was present, an expression of joyful recognition passed over his faded features—“I hope you have not so soon forgotten those, whom you so materially served!” Middleton concluded. “It would pain me to think my hold on your memory was so light.”