These questions made me suspicious, and I tried to evade the young squaw, but in vain.
“Just see how green that wood is,” I said, affecting not to hear her.
“But you do not say you are content,” repeated she. “Will you stay here always, willingly?”
“Come and listen to the birds,” said I, drawing my companion toward the grove.
I did not trust her, and feared to utter a single word, lest it might be used against me with the chief.
Neither was I mistaken in the design of Egosegalonicha, for when we returned to the lodge, I overheard her relating to the chief the amusement she had enjoyed, in lying to the white woman, repeating what she had said about the fort, and inventing entreaties which I had used, urging her to allow me to fly to my white friends, and leave the Indians forever.
Instantly I resolved to take advantage of the affair as a joke, and, approaching the chief with respectful pleasantry, begged to reverse the story.
“It was the squaw who had implored me to go with her to the white man’s fort,” I said, “and find her a white warrior for a husband; but, true to my faith with the Indians, I refused.”
The wily Egosegalonicha, thus finding her weapons turned against herself, appeared confused, and suddenly left the tent, at which the old chief smiled grimly.
Slander, like a vile serpent, coils itself among these Indian women; and, as with our fair sisters in civilized society, when reality fails, invention is called in to supply the defect. They delight in scandal, and prove by it their claim to some of the refined conventionalities of civilized life.