“Oh, pshaw; you ought to know that they are darned good at takin’ things but they don’t give back wuth a cent. You may as well build a village over yender.”
“That they may come and take it again,” replied Black-Hawk, with a bitter laugh. “Let us speak no more, for my tongue grows bitter in my mouth. Sons of the Sac, let us go for corn.”
The Indian stalked away, followed by a shouting crowd of his adherents, and Cooney Joe looked uneasily at Wescott.
“I don’t like this, ’square. You see our fellers ar’ mighty rough on the Injins, and I heard some on ’em say that ef the Sacs came over to steal corn they’d give ’em an all-fired lickin’. Now if they do that it means war.”
“I hope our men will not be so impudent,” said Wescott. “They ought to give the poor fellows a chance to carry away corn for their suffering families, since they have dispossessed them of their land.”
Half an hour passed, when suddenly there came a great tumult from the direction in which the Indians had gone. The shouts of men, the loud and continuous barking of dogs, and the occasional crack of fire-arms, could be heard.
Cooney Joe caught up his weapons, and followed by Mr. Wescott, hurried away in the direction from which the sound came. They had not gone half a mile when they came upon a great rabble of whites surrounding the party which had come over for corn, abusing them in every possible way. Showers of stone were hurled upon them, clods of earth and filth of every description was cast upon them, and they were fighting their way slowly back toward the stream, apparently unconscious of the insults heaped upon them. Foremost among them, walking with a firm step, but with a dark cloud gathering upon his brow, strode Black-Hawk. A stone had struck him on the forehead, and the blood was trickling slowly down his face, but he did not seem to be aware of the fact. Once or twice he turned his head when some unusually vile epithet was heaped upon him, with a haughty glance at the offender, which they remembered in the after times, for two men who struck him, and whom he marked for destruction, were the first to fall when the struggle commenced in earnest.
“White men,” cried the chief, halting, at length. “Do not dare to stand in the track of Black-Hawk, upon his own land.”
“Your land, you old thief,” roared a man named Churchill. “You lie! It is ours—fairly bought—and we will keep it.”
“Black-Hawk does not waste words with a man with a double tongue, who is only fit to sit with the women when the warriors are on the battle-field,” replied the chief.