The American family Robinson

by D. W. Belisle

"Here chief," said the trapper, "Jane is well pleased with your present and desires you to take good care of it for her, and will never be better pleased than when she sees you on its back."

The chief, with a gratified look, led away the colt, and fastening it to a sapling, took a skin from which he cut a long stout halter so that it could have the range of a few rods, and fastening it left it to feed on the wild grass and herbage around.

"Look here, uncle," said Sidney, as the chief walked away, "I wish I was dead or well, I don't particularly care which."

"Why, boy, what is in the wind now? Why the rest of us are trying to make out something good of a bad business, while you are fretting and fuming like a caged lion. Be easy, boy, and if you cannot be easy, do as we do, and be as easy as you can."

"It is well enough to say be easy, crippled, helpless, and obliged to eat of the things the rest of you bring in; to sit here all day long and be pitied, while that black rascal——"

"Hold! hold!—not another word like that," said the trapper, sternly. "We are too much indebted to as noble a heart as ever beat, for a return like this. What matters it, then, that his ways and complexion are not like ours? His father was my father's friend, as well as my own; and him I have known from earliest boyhood, and to this hour have never known him guilty of a mean or dishonest act."

"What greater, more dastardly act of meanness could he perpetrate, than stealing away the heart of that young girl, or are you so blind you cannot see through his manœuvring?"

"Sidney, you are not yourself to-night," said the trapper, "I am convinced of that, and I do wrong to chide you: sickness and suffering, toil and privation have unnerved you. When you are well, you will see things clearer than you do now. Come, I must take you in, the night dew is falling fast and cold around us. I see and know all that is going on, and understand the chief much better than you do. Trust in my management of the affair, and you will have no cause to complain at last, however appearances at times may be against you."

The chief was now as contented and happy as if he had never known other scenes than those that lay around him. The lodge, as he called their abode, was filled with fruit, venison, skins and furs; the antelope accepted his offering, and a half-tamed, high mettled colt was at his command, on which, sometimes for a whole day, he went dashing madly through the forest, a piece of hide around the colt's neck his only accoutrements. Then he was in his element and free, with the fresh mountain air fanning his dusky brow, infusing into his stalwart frame new life and vigor.

Snow now began to fall, and the fierce northern winds swept through the forests, creaking the leafless limbs of the trees as they swayed them to and fro, anon rending them in twain, and scattering the fragments over the white mantled earth. The wanderers now spent most of their time within the temple, by their glowing fire that blazed so cheerfully, the window and door closed tightly by skins, shutting out the cold air. Here they amused themselves in recounting past scenes, and strange wild legends with which they had become familiar. Without a written language, the Indian preserves his national and domestic history solely by oral instruction, handed down from father to son. Thus every tribe has its own legends, while many vague traditions of national history are peculiar to the whole of the North American Indians without regard to tribe.