The chief stood near the entrance of the tipi, enjoying the cool morning air, and watching the interview with amusement. He offered me a book, which chanced to be one of the Willson’s readers, stolen from our wagons, and bade me show it to the stranger.
I approached the girl, who instantly held out her hand, and said: “What book is that?”
The sound of my own language, spoken by one of my own people, was too much for me, and I sank to the ground by the side of the stranger, and, endeavoring to clasp her in my arms, became insensible.
A kindly squaw, who was in sight, must have been touched by our helpless sorrow; for, when recovering, she was sprinkling my face with water from the bucket, and regarding me with looks of interest.
Of course, we realized that this chance interview would be short, and, perhaps, the last that we would be able to enjoy, and, while my companion covered her face and wept, I told my name and the main incidents of my capture; and I dreaded to recall the possible fate of my Mary, lest I should rouse the terrible feelings I was trying to keep in subjection as my only hope of preserving reason.
The young girl responded to my confidence by giving her own story, which she related to me as follows:
“My name is Mary Boyeau; these people call me Madee. I have been among them since the massacre in Minnesota, and am now in my sixteenth year. My parents were of French descent, but we lived in the State of New York, until my father, in pursuance of his peculiar passion for the life of a naturalist and a man of science, sold our eastern home, and came to live on the shores of Spirit Lake, Minnesota.
“The Indians had watched about our place, and regarded what they had seen of my father’s chemical apparatus with awe and fear. Perhaps they suspected him of working evil charms in his laboratory, or held his magnets, microscopes, and curiously-shaped tubes in superstitious aversion.
“I can not tell; I only know that we were among the first victims of the massacre, and that all my family were murdered except myself, and, I fear, one younger sister.”
“You fear!” said I. “Do you not hope that she escaped?”