“Old as I am, and miserable and helpless as I now stand, to what I once was, I may live to see the sun go down in the prairie.
Does my son expect to do as much?”
“The Tetons are counting the scalps on my lodge!” returned the young chief, with a smile whose melancholy was singularly illuminated by a gleam of triumph.
“And they find them many. Too many for the safety of its owner, while he is in their revengeful hands.
My son is not a woman, and he looks on the path he is about to travel with a steady eye.
Has he nothing to whisper in the ears of his people, before he starts?
These legs are old, but they may yet carry me to the forks of the Loup river.”
“Tell them that Hard-Heart has tied a knot in his wampum for every Teton,” burst from the lips of the captive, with that vehemence with which sudden passion is known to break through the barriers of artificial restraint “if he meets one of them all, in the prairies of the Master of Life, his heart will become Sioux!”
“Ah that feeling would be a dangerous companion for a man with white gifts to start with on so solemn a journey,” muttered the old man in English. “This is not what the good Moravians said to the councils of the Delawares, nor what is so often preached, to the White-skins in the settlements, though, to the shame of the colour be it said, it is so little heeded.
Pawnee, I love you; but being a Christian man, I cannot be the runner to bear such a message.”
“If my father is afraid the Tetons will hear him, let him whisper it softly to our old men.”
“As for fear, young warrior, it is no more the shame of a Pale-face than of a Red-skin.
The Wahcondah teaches us to love the life he gives; but it is as men love their hunts, and their dogs, and their carabines, and not with the doting that a mother looks upon her infant.
The Master of Life will not have to speak aloud twice when he calls my name.
I am as ready to answer to it now, as I shall be to-morrow, or at any time it may please his mighty will.
But what is a warrior without his traditions?
Mine forbid me to carry your words.”
The chief made a dignified motion of assent, and here there was great danger that those feelings of confidence, which had been so singularly awakened, would as suddenly subside.
But the heart of the old man had been too sensibly touched, through long dormant but still living recollections, to break off the communication so rudely.
He pondered for a minute, and then bending his look wistfully on his young associate, again continued—
“Each warrior must be judged by his gifts.
I have told my son what I cannot, but let him open his ears to what I can do.
An elk shall not measure the prairie much swifter than these old legs, if the Pawnee will give me a message that a white man may bear.”
“Let the Pale-face listen,” returned the other, after hesitating a single instant longer, under a lingering sensation of his former disappointment. “He will stay here till the Siouxes have done counting the scalps of their dead warriors.
He will wait until they have tried to cover the heads of eighteen Tetons with the skin of one Pawnee; he will open his eyes wide, that he may see the place where they bury the bones of a warrior.”
“All this will I, and may I, do, noble boy.”
“He will mark the spot, that he may know it.”
“No fear, no fear that I shall forget the place,” interrupted the other, whose fortitude began to give way under so trying an exhibition of calmness and resignation.
“Then I know that my father will go to my people. His head is grey, and his words will not be blown away with the smoke.
Let him get on my lodge, and call the name of Hard-Heart aloud.
No Pawnee will be deaf.
Then let my father ask for the colt, that has never been ridden, but which is sleeker than the buck, and swifter than the elk.”
“I understand you, boy, I understand you,” interrupted the attentive old man; “and what you say shall be done, ay, and well done too, or I’m but little skilled in the wishes of a dying Indian.”
“And when my young men have given my father the halter of that colt, he will lead him by a crooked path to the grave of Hard-Heart?”
“Will I! ay, that I will, brave youth, though the winter covers these plains in banks of snow, and the sun is hidden as much by day as by night.
To the head of the holy spot will I lead the beast, and place him with his eyes looking towards the setting sun.”
“And my father will speak to him, and tell him, that the master, who has fed him since he was foaled, has now need of him.”
“That, too, will I do; though the Lord he knows that I shall hold discourse with a horse, not with any vain conceit that my words will be understood, but only to satisfy the cravings of Indian superstition. Hector, my pup, what think you, dog, of talking to a horse?”
“Let the grey-beard speak to him with the tongue of a Pawnee,” interrupted the young victim, perceiving that his companion had used an unknown language for the preceding speech.
“My son’s will shall be done.
And with these old hands, which I had hoped had nearly done with bloodshed, whether it be of man or beast, will I slay the animal on your grave!”
“It is good,” returned the other, a gleam of satisfaction flitting across his features. “Hard-Heart will ride his horse to the blessed prairies, and he will come before the Master of Life like a chief!”
The sudden and striking change, which instantly occurred in the countenance of the Indian, caused the trapper to look aside, when he perceived that the conference of the Siouxes had ended, and that Mahtoree, attended by one or two of the principal warriors, was deliberately approaching his intended victim.
CHAPTER XXVI
I am not prone to weeping, as our sex Commonly are. —But I have that honourable Grief lodged here, which burns worse than Tears drown
—Shakspeare.
When within twenty feet of the prisoners, the Tetons stopped, and their leader made a sign to the old man to draw nigh.
The trapper obeyed, quitting the young Pawnee with a significant look, which was received, as it was meant, for an additional pledge that he would never forget his promise.
So soon as Mahtoree found that the other had stopped within reach of him, he stretched forth his arm, and laying a hand upon the shoulder of the attentive old man, he stood regarding him, a minute, with eyes that seemed willing to penetrate the recesses of his most secret thoughts.
“Is a Pale-face always made with two tongues?” he demanded, when he found that, as usual, with the subject of this examination, he was as little intimidated by his present frown, as moved by any apprehensions of the future.