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Although, owing to this insufficient force of men, the fight was not a complete victory for our troops, it was nevertheless a most stinging blow to the Nez Percés.
His face was also of the rotund shape the features all tolerably regular, with the exception of the nose that, like the nasal organ of his comrade, was nez retrousse the turn-up being infinitely more pronounced. The expression was equally indicative of good-nature and good-fellowship as the apple-like bloom of his cheeks, and the ochreous tinge upon the tip of the nose, sufficiently testified.
A half-breed in the camp, familiar with the Nez Percé tongue, heard White Bird encouraging his men and urging them to charge, assuring them that the white soldiers' ammunition was nearly gone. But he was unable to raise their courage to the desired point, and no assault was made.
On the third day I saw the lodges of the Nez Perces before me. I paused for a moment, and had no heart to go on; but my horse neighed, and I took it as a good sign, and suffered him to gallop forward. In a little while I was in the midst of the lodges. As I sat silent on my horse, the people gathered round me, and inquired whence I came. I told my story.
Whether it would, after all, have killed him, he was never to know, for, just as he was staggering to his feet, a Nez Percé Indian boy charged upon him with a long lance, while a large and ambitious dog rushed in and seized him by the throat. He was taken at an advantage.
He was doubly guilty: first, in having robbed their good friends, the Big Hearts of the East; secondly, in having brought a doubt on the honor of the Nez Perce tribe. He was, accordingly, swung aloft, and pelted with stones to make his death more certain.
But the common impulses of humanity found expression in more direct ways, without need for interpretation. Whether as friends or foes, the Nez Percés have always been celebrated for their generosity; and in those hard days they seemed to be just in their element. They could not do enough to show their good will.
A long-nosed people will require one shaped pair of spectacles, an aquilline-nosed another, a nez retrousse a third; and accordingly we find that spectacles nicely adjusted to such peculiarities are fabricated, one kind supplying the American, a second the Spanish, a third the English market, and so on. So wonderfully quick is the process that a pair of spectacles can be made for three-halfpence!
It is true, the latter professed to be their allies; but they had been guilty of so many acts of perfidy, that the Cottonois had, latterly, renounced their hollow friendship and attached themselves to the Flatheads and Nez Perces. These they had accompanied in their migrations rather than remain alone at home, exposed to the outrages of the Blackfeet.
Right in the eastern, edge of one of these mountain ridges, one warm September morning, not long ago, a band of Nez Percé Indians were encamped. It was in what is commonly called "the Far West," because always when you get there the West is as far away as ever.
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