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"The head of my father is very grey; he has always lived with men, and he has seen everything. What he does is good; what he speaks is wise. Now let him say, is he sure that he is a stranger to the Big-knives, who are looking for their beasts on every side of the prairies and cannot find them?" "Dahcotah, what I have said is true.
During this moment of suspense, the dark, threatening, eye of Mahtoree rolled from one of the strange parties to the other, in keen and hasty examination, and then it turned its withering look on the old man, as the chief said, in a tone of high and bitter scorn "The Big-knives are fools! It is easier to catch the cougar asleep, than to find a blind Dahcotah.
Not a few of the young men, it is true, were indifferent about lavishing civilities on one of so doubtful a profession, but the worthy naturalist found some consolation in the more matured politeness of the old men, who had inferred, that though not of much use in war, the medicine of the Big-knives might possibly be made serviceable in peace.
No doubt the Great Spirit of the Pale-faces often looked darkly on his children. Such as were abandoned to the worker of evil could never be brave or virtuous, let the colour of the skin be what it might. He bade his young men look at the hands of the Big-knives. They were not empty, like those of hungry beggars. Neither were they filled with goods, like those of knavish traders.
He knew the air, the stature, the dress, and the features, even to the colour of the eyes and of the hair, of every one of the Big-knives, whom he had thus strangely encountered, and deeply had he ruminated on the causes, which could have led a party, so singularly constituted, into the haunts of the rude inhabitants of his native wastes.
"What new flag mean?" he demanded, waving the bow's end toward the fort and bending his head down close to hers. "Who yonder?" "The great American Father has taken us under his protection," she explained. "We are big-knives now." It almost choked her to speak. "Ugh! heap damn fools," he said with a dark scowl. "Little friend much damn fool."
"The runners from the people on the Big-river, tell us that your nation have traded with the Tawney-faces who live beyond the salt-lake, and that the prairies are now the hunting grounds of the Big-knives!" "It is true, as I hear, also, from the hunters and trappers on La Platte. Though it is with the Frenchers, and not with the men who claim to own the Mexicos, that my people have bargained."
Thoroughly understanding the character of this Indian, the old man lost no time in getting rid of him also. Riding to his side he said, in an affected whisper "Has Weucha drunk of the milk of the Big-knives, to-day?" "Hugh!" exclaimed the savage, every dull thought instantly recalled from heaven to earth by the question.
The lowering aspect of the Teton warrior so far lost its severity, as to suffer a gleam of pleasure and triumph to lighten its ferocity, as sweeping his arm in an entire circle around his person he answered "What tribe or nation has not felt the blows of the Dahcotahs? Mahtoree is their partisan." "And has he found the Big-knives women, or has he found them men?"
"And if we meet the Tetons?" demanded the trapper, who wished to understand, thoroughly, the more important conditions of this new alliance. "The enemy of the Big-knives shall feel the blow of the Pawnee." "It is well. Now let my brother and I meet in council, that we may not go on a crooked path, but that our road to his village may be like the flight of the pigeons."
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