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"How hive in danger?" demanded Elksfoot, who was very much of a matter-of-fact person. "No see him, no hear him else get some honey." "Honey you can have for asking, for I've plenty of it already in my cabin, though it's somewhat 'arly in the season to begin to break in upon the store.
"Perhaps the savages in the canoes belong to the same party as the warrior you call Elksfoot, and that they have had the means of learning his death, and by whose hand he fell." The bee-hunter was surprised at the quickness of the girl's wit, the suggestion being as discreet as it was ingenious.
That moment did not arrive for some time, though it came at last. Almost five minutes after Elksfoot had made the allusion mentioned, the Ojebway, or Chippewa, removed his pipe also, and looking courteously round at his host, he said with emphasis: "Bad summer come soon. Pale-faces call young men togedder, and dig up hatchet."
His attention was on his own trade, or present occupation; and when it wandered at all, it was principally bestowed on the Indians; more especially on the runner. Of Elk's foot, or Elksfoot, as we prefer to spell it, he had some knowledge by means of rumor; and the little he knew rendered him somewhat more indifferent to his proceedings than he felt toward those of the Pigeonswing.
The bee-hunter observed that neither of the Indians said anything to the other touching the path he was about to travel, but that each seemed ready to pursue his own way as if entirely independent, and without the expectation of having a companion. Elksfoot left the spot the first.
Although le Bourdon was personally a stranger to Elksfoot, news flies through the wilderness in an extraordinary manner; and it was not at all unlikely that the fact of a white American's being in the openings should soon spread, along with the tidings that the hatchet was dug up, and that a party should go out in quest of his scalp and the plunder.
This was the simple explanation of the manner in which Pigeonswing had fallen into the hands of his enemies. It would seem that Elksfoot had come in a canoe from the mouth of the St. Joseph's to a point about half-way between that river and the mouth of the Kalamazoo, and there landed.
Gershom made a wry face, but he did not move. "Is there any news stirring among the tribes?" asked the bee-hunter, waiting, however, a decent interval, lest he might be supposed to betray a womanly curiosity. Elksfoot puffed away some time before he saw fit to answer, reserving a salvo in behalf of his own dignity.
"Thankee" he said, in the brief way in which he clipped his English "good supper good sleep good breakfast. Now go. Thankee when any friend come to Pottawatamie village, good wigwam dere, and no door." "I thank you, Elksfoot and should you pass this way, ag'in, soon, I hope you'll just step into this chiente and help yourself it I should happen to be off on a hunt.
"I am aware of all that, Pigeonswing, and wish it had not been so. I found the body of Elksfoot sitting up against a tree soon after you left me, and knew by whose hands he had fallen." "Didn't find scalp, eh?" "No, the scalp had been taken; though I accounted that but for little, since the man's life was gone.
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