She slowly raised her head on feeling the touch, and, fixing on her questioner a gloomy glance, in which it was easy to perceive a slight wildness, she replied in English, in a hollow voice, and with guttural accent—
"The Palefaces are mad; they ever think themselves in their towns; they forget that in the prairie the trees have ears and the leaves eyes to see and hear all that is done. The Blackfeet Indians raise their hair very skilfully."
The two men looked at each other on hearing these words, whose meaning they were afraid to guess, though they seemed somewhat obscure.
"Are you hungry? Will you eat?" John Black continued, "or is it thirst that troubles you? I can, if you like, give you a good draught of firewater to warm you."
The woman frowned.
"Fire-water is good for Indian squaws," she said, "what good would it do me to drink it? Others will come who will soon dispose of it. Do you know how many hours you still have to live?"
The emigrant shuddered, in spite of himself at this species of menace.
"Why speak to me thus?" he asked; "have you any cause of complaint against me?"
"I care little," she continued. "I am not among the living, since my heart is dead."
She turned her head in every direction with a slow and solemn movement, while carefully examining the country.