"No," replied Otto, walking faster than was his custom.
"He is a Sauk, and one of the five who went off with you when we parted from each other."
"Den I dinks I seen him," was the natural remark of the grinning German.
"Of course you have seen him very often, as he has seen you, but you never heard his name Hay-uta, and won't recognize him from any description I give you."
"Why not?" queried his companion.
"It seems to me," replied Jack with a laugh, "that all negro babies and all Indian warriors look so much alike that no one can describe the difference. I have seen a great many Sauks, but it was hard work to tell them apart when they were a little ways off. Some of them were so hideous that they could be identified by their appearance, as others could by the scars on their features or the particular style they had of painting their faces."
Otto naturally wanted to know how it was that a Sauk had come to be the ally of a Shawanoe, and why, when Hay-uta was any thing but a friend of Otto, he should travel so far and run into so much danger for the sake of rescuing him.
You and I know the explanation, and so it is not required that I should repeat the story of Hay-uta's encounter with Deerfoot in the depths of the wilderness, when the Shawanoe vanquished the warrior, overcoming not only his physical prowess but his hatred, and how the words fitly spoken at that time had proven to be seed sowed on good ground which was already springing up and bearing fruit.
The boys became so interested in the subject that they involuntarily slackened their gait, while they discussed the incident and recalled the gentle reproofs which Deerfoot had given them more than once. It is at such times that we feel the prickings of conscience, and both Otto and Jack asked themselves the question: If this American Indian, born and nursed as a heathen, was so quick to grasp the Word, what excuse shall we offer in the last day when God shall demand of us why, with a hundred fold more light, we persisted in rejecting him?