Jack Among the Indians; Or, A Boy's Summer on the Buffalo Plains

by George Bird Grinnell

"Yes," said Jack with a sigh, "I suppose so."

"You see, son," said the old man, "a good many people would have thought it was a mighty big risk for a boy of your age to go travelling across the country the way we done, to an Indian camp to stop here for two or three months. Of course, there's danger in it; but then there's danger everywhere, and if people have good sense, and keep their wits about them, there ain't no more danger travelling on the prairie, than there is travelling on a railroad train, or going about back in the states. Anyway that's how I look at it, but as I have often told you before, I don't want you to go hunting for danger. I want you to keep as far from it as you can. Now, I told your uncle when he let us come off up here, that I would take as good care of you as I knew how. I have done it and I am going to keep on doing it. You might go off on a war party and never have any trouble at all, and then again you might get killed. I don't want to see you get any nearer to danger than you have to, and I wouldn't let you go to war if I could help it. Now, there's one more thing. I understand just as well as if you'd told me how much you want to go with this party, and what fun you think you'd sure have. 'Course, you could have slipped away out of the camp without saying anything to me, and as likely as not I never would have seen you until you got back again, and of course, while you were gone I should have felt mighty bad, not knowing but what you might get killed. Your speaking to me this way just makes me think more than ever what I have always thought since I first got to know you; that you are square; that when you say you will do a thing you will do it. Now, it ain't every boy of your years that would have had the pluck to say no when a chance of this kind came to him, just because he knew that to say yes, would make a friend feel bad. I understand pretty well how you felt about it and just what has been going on in your mind, and I won't never forget it. It makes us closer friends than we have ever been yet;" and reaching out his hand, he grasped Jack's in a firm, close grip, that brought the tears to the boy's eyes.

"Never you mind, son," Hugh went on, "we'll have plenty of good times yet while we are in this camp, and we'll keep our words to the people down south and back east that we made promises to. We may have trouble of one sort or another, but we won't give anybody a chance to call us liars."

That night after supper as they were sitting around the fire, Hugh and John Monroe talking, and Jack listening, partly to what they said, and partly to the distant sounds of the camp—the singing, the drumming, the hum of conversation, the laughter and the galloping hoofs—he noticed that some of the singing sounded constantly more distinct, and presently it was directly in front of the lodge. Here two or three songs were sung, and Hugh taking a piece of tobacco from his pocket handed it to the woman who passed it out through the door of the lodge. A moment later Joe's smiling countenance appeared in the doorway, and he said to Jack:

"Come on out, and go round the camp with us."

"Go on," said Hugh to Jack. "They're a lot of young men going round singing in front of the different lodges; maybe it's your war party getting ready to start out."

Jack seized his hat and dived through the doorway, and when he was outside and his eyes had grown accustomed to the darkness he saw that a group of eight young men stood before the lodge. Joe took him by the arm and said to him:

"We're going round singing in front of the lodges, and sometimes they give us presents. These are the men that are going off to war. You know Bull Calf, and likely before you leave the camp you will know all the rest of them."

In a moment or two, the little group started on, and after passing several of the lodges, stopped before one, where they sang two or three songs. These were plaintive and melancholy to Jack's ear, and yet full of spirit. Of course, he did not know the airs and could not sing, but he listened. He looked about over his strange surroundings and half wondered whether it could be possible that he were standing here with these Indian boys under the brilliant moon and in this circle of white lodges. The music as it was sung thrilled and moved him strangely and it seemed to him as if it must all be a dream.

A little bundle was passed out from this lodge door, and they set out again. Jack whispered to Joe, as they walked along: