Deerfoot on the Prairies

by Edward Sylvester Ellis

“My brother tells me that his mother prays. Does my brother pray?”

Jack started and again stared at the dusky youth.

“This beats all creation. Yas, I used to pray, but it was a long time ago, when I was a younker and bowed my head at my mother’s knee. I’ve been a wild, wicked scamp that ain’t worth the prayer of such an angel as she is. Shawanoe, do you pray?”

“Once when Deerfoot was a child he was as wicked as Satan himself; but he was made a prisoner by the palefaces. There was a good woman among them who told him about the Great Spirit who is a loving Father to all His children, and she taught him to pray to Him. Deerfoot prays to his Father every morning and night, and often through the day, and his Father always listens and does that which is best for him. Let my brother do the same. He will give him strength to drink that poison no more, and when he dies he will see his mother again.”

Again Jack Halloway asked himself whether he was awake or dreaming. He had heard in a vague way of the missionaries and their labors among the Indians. He had been told that there were some converts among the red men, but never until now had he seen one. Like most of his calling, he looked upon all Indians as bad, and therefore the implacable enemies of the white men. He had had more than one desperate encounter with them, and when he groped his way into the mountains it was always a contest of wits between him and them, with the prospects more than once against him. He looked upon them as he looked upon so many rattlesnakes, that were likely to be found coiled at any moment in his path.

And yet here was a full-blooded Indian talking to him better than he had ever heard any missionary talk. The trapper knew from the build, the alertness, the assurance of movement of the youth, and a certain something impossible to describe that he would be a terrific antagonist in a fight, but nothing seemed further from the Shawanoe’s thoughts. He talked with the persuasive gentleness of a woman, and in all his experience never had the grizzled trapper felt such an arrow pierce right into the core of his heart.

In a few simple words Deerfoot had drawn a vivid picture of that sweet, patient, forgiving, praying parent, waiting in her far-away home the return of the rough, profane, wicked son, for whom she was ready to sacrifice her life at any time, and, indeed, was sacrificing it to his thoughtlessness and indifference. Most astounding of all, the Shawanoe had held out a hope to him that he had never known of or in fact dreamed had an existence.

With that fine-grained tact which was one of Deerfoot’s most marked traits, he refrained from breaking in upon the meditation of the other. He knew the leaven was working and did not wish to interfere with it.

Jack Halloway, the trapper, now did a singular and unexpected thing. Without a word, he rose to his feet and faced the stream flowing past the camp. The youth, who was watching his movements, saw him bring the flask from his breast pocket and swing his arm backward. Then he brought it quickly forward, striking and checking his hand smartly against his hip and making the throw known as “jerking.” The flask shot from his grasp and sped out in the gloom, falling with a splash that was plainly heard in the stillness.

“Thar, Shawanoe!” he exclaimed, facing about, “you’ve made me do what I never believed any man could, make Jack Halloway do. Now I’ve got to travel all the way to St. Louis without a swaller of the infarnal stuff. It’ll take two or three weeks, and I know it’ll be powerful tough, but I’m going to do it!”