Chief Yellept’s eyes shone as he accepted the prized “long knife”; and shone again when to it were added powder and a hundred bullets for his gun. Now he was a big chief, indeed.
The Bird-woman had spread the word that the white chiefs were great workers in medicine: with their magic box and their wonderful knowledge they healed all sicknesses. Now to Captain Clark and Captain Lewis the Walla Wallas brought broken arms, stiff knees, and sore eyes, for treatment. The captains did their best.
Not until the second morning, following a grand dance by the Indians, at the camp, might the expedition start onward. Chief Yellept had informed them of a short cut, across country, from the mouth of the Walla Walla River to the Pierced Nose country at the Kooskooskee; a Skilloot, who had been guiding the expedition by land, said that he knew the trail, and a Pierced Nose who, with his family, was returning home from a visit below, volunteered to help also; Chief Yellept lent the captains two canoes, for crossing the Columbia to the south side at the mouth of the Walla Walla, where the new trail began.
“The most hospitable, honest and sincere Indians we have met since leaving the United States, Merne,” asserted Captain Clark, when they had been overtaken, a day’s journey out, by three Walla Walla young men who had hastened after to restore to them a beaver-trap that had been forgotten.
XVIII
THE PIERCED NOSES AGAIN
“The white men are coming back! The white men are coming!” sped the glad word among the Cho-pun-nish or Pierced Noses, in their villages 100 miles up, on the Kooskooskee. “They will make us well.”
And the white men were indeed coming, by the trail from the Walla Walla, with the Snake Indian prisoner and Sa-ca-ja-we-a as interpreters; with the Skilloot and the three Walla Walla young men as guides (for the Pierced Nose and family had taken another trail); with some twenty horses, for the baggage, and for William Bratton, and for the men who had sore feet; and with the healing medicine box containing, especially, the celebrated eye-water.
“Let us wance get the horses we left with Twisted-hair an’ we’ll all ride, b’gorry,” quoth Sergeant Pat, limping along.