A strange but strong desire now seized the young Indian to be married after the Christian manner to Laughing-eye, so he returned to his home in the Rocky Mountains, resolving to take his wife to the mission-station without delay.
Quito had a bosom friend, named Bunker, a white man and a hunter. Bunker might well have been ashamed of his name, as far as sound went, but he was not. He was proud of it. He was wont to say, sometimes, that “the Bunkers was comed of a good stock, an’ had bin straight-for’ard hunters in the Rocky Mountains, off an’ on, for nigh a century, an’ he hoped he would never disgrace his forefathers.” There was no fear of that, for Bunker was as sturdy, and honest, and simple-minded a man as ever shot a grizly bear, or trapped a beaver. He, too, was fond of meditation, and had great delight in the society of Quito.
On his way home the young Indian met with Bunker, who said he was going to visit some traps, but that he would follow his friend’s trail the next day, and might perhaps overtake him before he reached his village.
It was a beautiful autumn evening when Quito approached his mountain home. Not the finest park of the greatest noble in our land could compare with the magnificent scenery through which the Indian walked, with his gun on his shoulder, and his yellow leathern garments—fashioned and richly wrought by the fingers of Laughing-eye—fluttering with innumerable fringes and other ornaments in the gentle breeze. His dark eye glanced from side to side with that sharp restless motion which is peculiar to red Indians and hunters of the far west, whose lives are passed in the midst of danger from lurking enemies and wild beasts, but the restless glance was the result of caution, not of anxiety. Quito’s breast was as calm and unruffled as the surface of the lakelet along whose margin he walked, and, although he kept a sharp look-out, from the mere force of habit, he thought no more of enemies at that time than did the little birds which twittered in the bushes, unconscious and unmindful of the hawk and eagle that soared high over head.
There were woods and valleys, through which flowed streams of limpid water. Here and there were swamps, in which thousands of water-fowl and frogs filled the air with melody, for the frogs of America are a musical race, and a certain class of them actually whistle in their felicity at certain periods of the year; their whistle, however, is only one intermittent note. Elsewhere undulating plains, or prairies, gave variety to the scene, and the whole was backed by the lofty, rugged, and snow-clad peaks of the vast mountain range which runs through the whole continent from north to south.
On reaching the summit of a hill, on which Quito had often halted when returning from his frequent hunting expeditions, to gaze in satisfaction at his village in the far distance, and think of Laughing-eye, a shade of deep and unmistakeable anxiety crossed his grave features, and instead of halting, as he was wont to do, he hastened onwards at redoubled speed, for his eye missed the wreaths of smoke that at other times had curled up above the trees, and one or two of the wigwams which used to be visible from that point of view were gone.
The terrible anxiety that filled Quito’s breast was in a short time changed into fierce despair, when he suddenly turned round the base of a cliff, behind which his village lay, and beheld his late home a mass of blackened ruins. Little circles of grey ashes indicated where the tents had been, and all over the ground were scattered charred bones and masses of putrefying flesh, which told of ruthless murder.
Savage nature is not like civilized. No sound or word escaped the desolate Indian, who now knew that he was the last of his race, but the heaving bosom, the clenched teeth, and compressed lips, the fierce glittering eye, and the darkly frowning brows, told of a deadly struggle of anguish and wrath within.
While Quito was still gazing at the dreadful scene, he observed something move among the bushes near him and darted towards it. It proved to be an old woman, who was blind and scarcely able to make herself understood. She was evidently famishing from hunger, so Quito’s first care was to give her a little of the dried meat which formed his store of provisions. After she had devoured some of it, and drunk greedily of the water which he fetched from a neighbouring stream in a cup of birch bark, she told him that the camp had been suddenly attacked, some days before, by a war-party of enemies, who had slain all the men and old women, and carried the young women away into captivity—among them Laughing-eye.