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A cry of joy came from the lips of the missionary, and he worked harder still. At last the eyes opened wide, stayed open, saw the figure bent over him, and the lips whispered, "Oshondonto my master!" as a cup of brandy was held to his lips.
Upon a point below the first rapids of the Little Manitou they waited with their camp-fires burning and their pipe of peace. When the canoes bearing Oshondonto and his voyageurs shot the rapids to the song of the river, with the shrill voices of the boatmen rising to meet the cry of the startled water-fowl, the Athabascas crowded to the high banks.
But he saw that the Indians despised him for his youth, his fatness, his yellow hair as soft as a girl's, his cherub face, browned though it was by the sun and weather. As he handed the pipe to Knife-in-the-Wind, an Indian called Silver Tassel, with a cruel face, said, grimly: "Why does Oshondonto travel to us?"
Assembling the Indians, who had watched his movements closely, he told them that he was going through the storm to the nets on the lake, and asked for a volunteer to go with him. No one replied. He pleaded for the sake of the women and children. Then Knife-in-the-Wind spoke. "Oshondonto will die if he goes. It is a fool's journey does the wolverine walk into an empty trap?"
He had no deep faith that he could quite civilise them; he knew that their conversion was only on the surface, and he fell back on his personal influence with them. By this he could check even the excesses of the worst man in the tribe, his old enemy, Silver Tassel of the bad heart, who yet was ready always to give a tooth for a tooth, and accepted the fact that he owed Oshondonto his life.
Let Oshondonto ask." Again, when they all were hungrier, he went among them with complaining words. "If the white man's Great Spirit can do all things, let him give Oshondonto and the Athabascas food."
Assembling the Indians, who had watched his movements closely, he told them that he was going through the storm to the nets on the lake, and asked for a volunteer to go with him. No one replied. He pleaded-for the sake of the women and children. Then Knife-in-the-Wind spoke. "Oshondonto will die if he goes. It is a fool's journey does the wolverine walk into an empty trap?"
Opening a bale, he brought out beads and tobacco and some bright red flannel, and two hundred Indians sat round him and grunted "How!" and received his gifts with little comment. Then the pipe of peace went round, and Oshondonto smoked it becomingly.
But he saw that the Indians despised him for his youth, his fatness, his yellow hair as soft as a girl's, his cherub face, browned though it was by the sun and weather. As he handed the pipe to Knife-in-the-Wind, an Indian called Silver Tassel, with a cruel face, said grimly: "Why does Oshondonto travel to us?"
When famine crawled across the plains to the doors of the settlement and housed itself at Fort O'Call, Silver Tassel acted badly, however, and sowed fault-finding among the thoughtless of the tribe. "What manner of Great Spirit is it who lets the food of his chief Oshondonto fall into the hands of the Blackfeet?" he said. "Oshondonto says the Great Spirit hears. What has the Great Spirit to say?
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