Little Rifle; or, The Young Fur Hunters

by Edward Sylvester Ellis

A single Blackfoot Indian, that looked like the twin brother of the one who had met his doom a few hours before, walked out of the lodge from which the smoke was issuing, stretched and yawned, and walking to the edge of the stream, looked up and down for a moment, as though expecting some one or something, and then deliberately walked back again, and disappeared from view.

“That looks as if he had come out to wash his face, and had become disgusted,” laughed Little Rifle. “I think a good scrubbing would be sure to kill him. I suppose, now, he will go to sleep for the rest of the day.”

One of the essentials of a good scout, both in civilized and savage warfare, is a patience that can bear the test of hours. The Esquimaux, who sits by the air-hole in the ice without stirring a muscle, even if the seal does not thrust out his nose, is the beau ideal of a patient scout, although he is too much of a porpoise himself to get impatient.

Young as was Little Rifle, he was the possessor of this quality, and had displayed it to a remarkable degree on more than one occasion; but it will be remembered that the circumstances were exceptional to-day, and he was in that feverish, uneasy condition of mind which at times made him, as it were, another person.

At any other time he would have centered his attention on the three lodges across the stream, and kept it there until the sun went down, despite hunger, cold and discomfort; but he could not do so now. It required such an effort upon his part to withdraw his mind from that tempting reverie, or day-dreaming, which had so nearly proved his death, that he was dissatisfied, and felt that he must be moving, and that he must do something or the burden would become unbearable.

What precise form this relief would have taken, it is hard to conjecture, but most probably the lad would have ventured to cross the stream at a point further up, so as to get still nearer the lodges; but this perilous proceeding was happily prevented by a most unlooked-for diversion.

While keeping his attention, as a general thing, fixed upon the most suspicious part of his view, he remembered that some of the owners of these lodges were away, and there was no telling by what route they might return. So he bestowed an occasional glance up and down stream, not forgetting that he might be lying in their very path.

It was something like fifteen minutes after the disappearance of the Blackfoot, when Little Rifle chanced to look up-stream, and saw a small Indian canoe suddenly shoot to view.

There was nothing particularly striking in this, but there was something extraordinary in what he discovered the next moment. A single person was holding the guiding-paddle, and instead of being a Blackfoot Indian, as he had expected, it proved to be a white boy, apparently his own age, or but slightly older.

He gave but little motion to the oar, as the current was rapid enough to make it unnecessary, and his principal occupation was in guiding the frail bark.