Bowing his head, in acknowledgment of his error, he stepped a little back, and placing himself in an attitude of easy dignity, he began to speak with the confidence of one who had been no less distinguished for eloquence, than for deeds in arms.
Keeping his eyes riveted on the unconscious bride of Middleton, he proceeded in the following words—
“I am a man with a red skin, but my eyes are dark.
They have been open since many snows.
They have seen many things—they know a brave from a coward.
When a boy, I saw nothing but the bison and the deer.
I went to the hunts, and I saw the cougar and the bear.
This made Mahtoree a man.
He talked with his mother no more.
His ears were open to the wisdom of the old men.
They told him every thing—they told him of the Big-knives.
He went on the war-path.
He was then the last; now, he is the first.
What Dahcotah dare say he will go before Mahtoree into the hunting grounds of the Pawnees?
The chiefs met him at their doors, and they said, My son is without a home.
They gave him their lodges, they gave him their riches, and they gave him their daughters.
Then Mahtoree became a chief, as his fathers had been.
He struck the warriors of all the nations, and he could have chosen wives from the Pawnees, the Omawhaws, and the Konzas; but he looked at the hunting grounds, and not at his village.
He thought a horse was pleasanter than a Dahcotah girl.
But he found a flower on the prairies, and he plucked it, and brought it into his lodge.
He forgets that he is the master of a single horse.
He gives them all to the stranger, for Mahtoree is not a thief; he will only keep the flower he found on the prairie.
Her feet are very tender.
She cannot walk to the door of her father; she will stay, in the lodge of a valiant warrior for ever.”
When he had finished this extraordinary address, the Teton awaited to have it translated, with the air of a suitor who entertained no very disheartening doubts of his success.
The trapper had not lost a syllable of the speech, and he now prepared himself to render it into English in such a manner as should leave its principal idea even more obscure than in the original.
But as his reluctant lips were in the act of parting, Ellen lifted a finger, and with a keen glance from her quick eye, at the still attentive Inez, she interrupted him.
“Spare your breath,” she said, “all that a savage says is not to be repeated before a Christian lady.”
Inez started, blushed, and bowed with an air of reserve, as she coldly thanked the old man for his intentions, and observed that she could now wish to be alone.
“My daughters have no need of ears to understand what a great Dahcotah says,” returned the trapper, addressing himself to the expecting Mahtoree. “The look he has given, and the signs he has made, are enough.
They understand him; they wish to think of his words; for the children of great braves, such as their fathers are, do nothing with out much thought.”
With this explanation, so flattering to the energy of his eloquence, and so promising to his future hopes, the Teton was every way content.
He made the customary ejaculation of assent, and prepared to retire.
Saluting the females, in the cold but dignified manner of his people, he drew his robe about him, and moved from the spot where he had stood, with an air of ill-concealed triumph.
But there had been a stricken, though a motionless and unobserved auditor of the foregoing scene.
Not a syllable had fallen from the lips of the long and anxiously expected husband, that had not gone directly to the heart of his unoffending wife.
In this manner had he wooed her from the lodge of her father, and it was to listen to similar pictures of the renown and deeds of the greatest brave in her tribe, that she had shut her ears to the tender tales of so many of the Sioux youths.
As the Teton turned to leave his lodge, in the manner just mentioned, he found this unexpected and half-forgotten object before him.
She stood, in the humble guise and with the shrinking air of an Indian girl, holding the pledge of their former love in her arms, directly in his path.
Starting, the chief regained the marble-like indifference of countenance, which distinguished in so remarkable a degree the restrained or more artificial expression of his features, and signed to her, with an air of authority to give place.
“Is not Tachechana the daughter of a chief?” demanded a subdued voice, in which pride struggled with anguish: “were not her brothers braves?”
“Go; the men are calling their partisan.
He has no ears for a woman.”
“No,” replied the supplicant; “it is not the voice of Tachechana that you hear, but this boy, speaking with the tongue of his mother.
He is the son of a chief, and his words will go up to his father’s ears.
Listen to what he says.
When was Mahtoree hungry and Tachechana had not food for him?
When did he go on the path of the Pawnees and find it empty, that my mother did not weep?
When did he come back with the marks of their blows, that she did not sing?
What Sioux girl has given a brave a son like me?