This struck Seger as a bit risky, but, realizing that his life was in the red man’s hands anyway, he decided to accept. “Very well,” said he. “If you don’t need a gun, I don’t.”
Driving a span of horses and carrying a meager camping outfit Seger set forth hopefully. It was in the days of the Star Routers, and this was a bogus line, but neither he nor Robe knew it. They were indeed very much in earnest.
The weather was beautiful, and the prairies glorious. Larks were whistling, plovers crying. “I never enjoyed a ride more in my life,” said Seger, and, as for Little Robe, he proved a capital companion. His talk was most instructive. He never once became coarse or commonplace, and after the second day Seger trusted him perfectly—though he went to his blanket the first night with some apprehension.
He soon saw why Robe had been recommended to him. His knowledge of the whole country was minute. Every stream suggested a story, every hill discovered a memory. As he came to like his white companion, he talked more and more freely of his life as a warrior, telling tales quite as Seger would have done had he been able to speak of his part in the Vicksburg campaign. To the chief, every enterprise of his career was honorable. It’s all in the point of view.
He knew the heavens, too, and could lay his course almost as well by night as by day, and Seger soon came to have a genuine admiration as well as a feeling of affection for him. He was handy as a woman around the camp kettle, and never betrayed weariness or anger or doubt.
One night as they rode down to camp in the valley of a small stream Robe looked about him with more than usual care, and a perceptible shadow fell over his face. “I know this place,” he said, and Seger could see that he was saddened by some recollection connected with it.
He said no more till after they had eaten their supper, and were sitting beside the smouldering fire; then he began slowly to utter his mind.
“Aye, friend, I know this place. It is filled with sad thoughts. I camped here many years ago. I was a young warrior then and reckless, but my wife was with me, and my little daughter.” His lips took on a sweetness almost feminine as he paused. “She was very lovely, my child. She had lived five years and she could swim like an otter. She used to paddle about in this little pool. Several days I camped here debating whether to go on into the south country or not. You see, friend, I was in need of horses and in those days it was the custom for the young warriors of my tribe to make raids among the peaked hats, whom you call Mexicans, in order to drive off their horses. This was considered brave and honorable, and I was eager to go and enrich myself.
“My wife did not wish me to take this journey. She wept when I told her my plan. ‘Do not go,’ she said, ‘stay with me!’ Then I began to consider taking her and my little daughter with me—for I did not like to be separated from them even for a day. My child was so pretty, her cheeks were so round and her eyes so bright. She had little dimpled hands, and when she put her arms about my neck my heart was like wax.”
The old warrior’s voice trembled as he reached this point in his story, and for a long time he could not go on. At last he regained composure. “It was foolish to make the raid—it was very wrong to take my little girl, but I could not leave her behind. Therefore one day with my wife and daughter and my three brothers, I set out into the southwest, resolute to win some ponies.