"Certainly: the Chiefs of the tribe received me with too much courtesy for me not to eagerly take the first opportunity that offers to testify to them the lively sympathy I feel for them."
"Well, as it is so, go to your comrades, get ready to mount, and wait for me; I shall join them directly at their calli."
"All right," Tranquil answered.
The two men left the house; No Eusebio had deserted his hammock, and was probably attending to household duties. The Canadian went straight to the calli lent his comrades by the Indians.
Day had by this time entirely broken; the curtains of the callis were raised one after the other, and the Indian squaws were beginning to emerge to go in quest of the necessary wood and water for the preparation of breakfast. Small parties of warriors were going off in different directions, some to indulge in the pleasures of the chase, others to beat the forest and be certain that there was no enemy's trail in the vicinity of the village.
At the moment when the Canadian passed in front of the Medicine lodge, the sorcerer of the tribe came out of it. He held in his hand a calabash filled with water, in which a bunch of wormwood was dipped. The sorcerer ascended to the roof of the Medicine lodge, and turned to the rising sun. At the same instant the hachesto shouted three different times in a powerful voice, "The sun! The sun! The sun!"
A warrior then came out of each calli, holding in his hand, like the sorcerer, a calabash of water with a bunch of wormwood. The sorcerer began an incantation by murmuring mysterious words which he alone comprehended, and sprinkling the four cardinal points with the wormwood, an operation imitated exactly by the warriors. Then, at a signal given by the sorcerer, all the men threw the contents of the calabash towards the sun, shouting at the same time, "Oh, sun! Thou visible representative of the Invisible Master of Life! protect us on this commencing day! Give us water, air, and fire, for the earth belongs to us, and we can defend it!"
After this haughty prayer the warriors re-entered their callis, and the sorcerer descended from his elevated post. Tranquil, who was perfectly conversant with Indian customs, had stopped and waited, in a respectful attitude, the end of the ceremony. When the sorcerer had disappeared in the Medicine lodge, the hunter resumed his walk. The inhabitants of the village, already affected to regard him as one of themselves; they saluted him with a smile and a pleasant word as he passed, and the children ran up laughing to bid him good-day. When Tranquil entered the calli his comrades were still asleep, but he soon roused them.
"Hilloh!" John Davis said, good-humouredly, "You are very early, old hunter. Are we going to make any expedition?"
"Not that I know of, for the present, at any rate," the Canadian answered; "we are merely going to accompany Loyal Heart, while he accomplishes a ceremony."