“Tell him what the matter is, and that this is the white man’s way of punishing disobedience,” directed Captain Clark, to Drouillard.
Drouillard did; and reported.
“He say mebbe so, but ’mong Injuns to whip men make women of dem. If dees is white man way, all right. Men ought to obey deir chiefs.”
“Now aren’t ye ’shamed o’ yourself, when even an Injun cries over ye?” reproved Patrick Gass, of John Newman, who was painfully donning his shirt and coat.
“Well, I am,” admitted John. “I guess I deserved what I got. I don’t harbor any grudge, and I’ll do my duty.”
VII
SNUG IN WINTER QUARTERS
The weather had grown much colder, with squalls of snow and sleet and high winds; the wild geese were flying high, headed into the south; and the river, falling rapidly, was split with bars and narrow channels, when, two weeks after the punishment of John Newman, the barge and the two pirogues anchored off the first of the Mandan villages, in the centre of present North Dakota.
“Five long months we’ve been travelin’, an’ for sixteen hundred crooked miles,” quoth Patrick Gass. “Sure we desarve a bit o’ rist. Now what will the Mandans say, I wonder?”