AMERICAN HOSPITALITY.
Matters had reached this point at the moment when the story we have undertaken to tell, begins: now that we have supplied these indispensable explanations, we will take up our narrative again at the point where we broke it off.
John Black and his family, posted behind the barricade that surrounded the camp, regarded with joy, mingled with alarm, the cavalcade coming toward them like a tornado, raising clouds of dust in its passage.
"Attention, boys!" the American said to his son and servants, with his hand on his trigger. "You know the diabolical trickery of these apes of the prairie; we must not let them surprise us a second time; at the least suspicious sign, a bullet! We shall thus prove to them that we are on our guard."
The emigrant's wife and daughter, with their eyes fixed on the prairie, attentively followed the movements of the Indians.
"You are mistaken, my love," Mrs. Black said; "these men have no hostile designs. The Indians rarely attack by day; when they do so, they never come so openly as this."
"The more so," the young lady added, "as, if I am not mistaken, I can see Europeans galloping at the head of the party."
"Oh!" Black said, "that really has no significance, my child. The prairies swarm with scoundrels who join those demons of Redskins when honest travellers are to be plundered. Who knows, indeed, whether white men were not the instigators of last night's attack?"
"Oh, father, I never could believe such a thing as that," Diana remarked.
Miss Black, of whom we have hitherto said but little, was a girl of about seventeen, tall and slender; her large black eyes, bordered with velvety lashes; the thick bandeaux of brown hair; her little mouth, with its rosy lips and pearly teeth, made her a charming creature, who would have been an ornament anywhere; but in the desert must naturally attract attention. Religiously educated by her mother, a good and pious Presbyterian, Diana still retained all the candour and innocence of youth, combined with that experience of everyday life imparted by the rude life of the clearings, where people begin early to think and act for themselves. In the meanwhile the cavalcade rapidly approached, and was now no great distance off.