United States or North Macedonia ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
At least they were not the fools. With the coming of the white man and the two white women with their several Indian followers the life of the Shaunekuks at Fort Duggan was completely revolutionized. Before the foolish Indians knew what was happening they were captured body and soul. They quickly learned that the white man was to be feared rather than loved.
There were twenty or more of the darn Shaunekuks around. Guess I was mad at the time. But I had to laff after." The unmoving eyes of the woman on the bed were reading him. No mood of his could deceive her. She had learned her lesson bitterly in something like seventeen years. The man was acting now. He was laughing over an incident which filled him with a consuming rage.
Oh, yes, they were Indians, Northern Indians, but they were foreigners. They were slim, tough creatures who gazed in silent contempt upon the undersized people who came to observe them. But the Shaunekuks were not concerned deeply with the men of their own colour. It was the white man and the white women who chiefly aroused their curiosity.
The standing veins at his temples visibly pulsed, and Keeko knew he was only gathering afresh the forces which her action had momentarily paralyzed. With lightning impulse she seized the chance afforded her. "You cur! You filthy brute!" she cried fiercely. "Do you think you can play me as you play the miserable women of the Shaunekuks? Get sense as quick as you know how. Get sense. Do you hear?
He assured them that he had come to give away all these splendid things in exchange for the furs, which only great hunters like the Shaunekuks knew how to obtain. Capitulation was instant. The Indians forthwith held a council of their wise men, and set about inundating the fort with priceless furs. So it had gone on ever since. In a year the white man was complete master of the situation.
Between these points it lay there, a broad, sluggish stretch of water upon which the old fort looked down from the rising foreshore. The benighted instincts of the Shaunekuks know no half measure. Fort Duggan to them was the gateway of Unaga, which was the home of all Evil Spirits. So they looked upon the fort without favour, and left it severely alone. But now all that was changed.
It was there in the bottom of the light vessels, in the drawn faces and attenuated bodies of the paddler crew of Shaunekuks. It was in the display of Steve's side-arms strapped to a strut of the canoe ready to his hand, with holsters agape, and his loaded guns protruding threateningly. It was in a similar display in the second boat, which the well-nigh demented Julyman had commanded. Oh, yes.
Guess we're not yearning for the scalliwag Shaunekuks thieving around. It'll be two hours. The sun'll be shining there," she pointed, indicating an immense bank of forest trees. "Where's Med'cine Charlie? By the teepees of the Shaunekuks? He's most generally that way." Little One Man nodded, and grinned in his crumpled way. "Oh, yes," he said. "But I get 'em." "Good. See to it." The girl nodded.
The Shaunekuks were good Indians, and they gave the strangers food, and milk, and clothes to replace those the evil spirits had devoured. They also had the canoes which the white man had left with them a year ago. He, the messenger, was on a visit to the Shaunekuks at the time, for a caribou hunt. But he abandoned the hunt at the white man's request, who said he, the doctor, would pay him well.
Word Of The Day