Aunt Dinah did not speak, for with every eye upon her and the Indian she could not think of a syllable to say. While she was trying to do so, Deerfoot did something which no one ever saw him do before, and which was so strange that it hushed every voice. He leaned still farther from the back of his horse and deliberately touched his lips to the cheek of the colored woman. Then he straightened up, and, without a word, started his animal on a brisk walk to the northward, the others falling into line behind him.
CHAPTER II
THE FIRST CAMP.
IT was inevitable that, during the weeks and months spent by Deerfoot and Mul-tal-la together, they talked often and long about the journey to the Northwest. At night in the depth of the forest, by the crackling camp-fire, or when lolling in the cavern home of the young Shawanoe, it was the one theme in which both, and especially the younger, was absorbingly interested.
You need hardly be reminded that a hundred years ago the immense territory west of the Mississippi was an unknown region. Teeming to-day with a bustling, progressive people numbering millions, covered with large cities and towns, grid-ironed by railways, honeycombed with mines, humming with industry, and the seat of future empire, it was at the opening of the nineteenth century a vast solitude, the home of the wild Indian and wild animal.
A few daring hunters and trappers had penetrated for a little way into the “Louisiana Purchase,” and they carried on a disjointed barter with the red men, but the fragmentary knowledge brought back by them scarcely pierced the shell of general ignorance. Captains Lewis and Clark had not yet made their famous journey across the continent, but they were getting ready to do so, for President Jefferson’s heart was wrapped up in developing the largest real estate transaction ever made.
It may be said that Deerfoot pumped the Blackfoot dry. Had that enterprising traveler kept a diary of his journeyings and experiences from the time he and his companion started eastward, it would not have told the Shawanoe more than he gained from his friend by his continuous questioning. Deerfoot traced with a pencil on a sheet of paper a rude map of the western country, based wholly on the information gained from his guest. He made many changes and corrections before he completed and filed it away, as may be said, for future use.
Several important facts were thus established, and these you must bear in mind in order to understand the incidents I have set out to relate.
In the first place, the home of the Blackfeet Indians a century ago was not to the westward but on the east of the Rocky Mountains, as it is to-day. In order to reach the Pacific Coast one had to climb over that great range and enter the country of the Flatheads and numerous other tribes. Mul-tal-la had proved his enterprise as an explorer by doing this several years previous to making his longer journey to the eastward.
When Mul-tal-la left home he and his companion rode southward until well into the present State of Colorado. Then they turned east, passing through what is now Kansas and Missouri, crossing the Mississippi and entering the fringe of civilization, for they were fairly within the Northwest Territory organized a number of years before.