"Oh, I want somebody to talk to," replied George, throwing himself on the ground by his friend's side, "Somehow, I can't sleep, and that's a new thing for me."
"You are not afraid of the hostiles, are you?" asked a corporal from the other side of the fire.
"Oh no, because I know that we have nothing to fear from them on such a night as this. If there were any hostiles in the neighborhood, they might slip up and steal a few horses, if they thought they could get away with their booty, but they wouldn't attack a party of the size of ours and bring on an open fight. It is too dark."
"Why, that is just the reason they would attack us," exclaimed the corporal, who, although he had often been on a scout, had never participated in a battle. "They rely upon the darkness to cover their movements and to assist them in effecting a surprise. I have read it a hundred times."
"Ah, yes," replied George—"story-book Indians make attacks at all hours of the day and night, but live Plains Indians don't. The reason for it is this: They believe that they will go into the happy hunting-grounds with just the same surroundings that attend their departure from this world. If an Indian is crippled or blind or ill, he will be just the same Indian in the spirit-land. If he dies from the effects of disease, he will suffer from that disease for ever; but if he is killed in battle on a pleasant day, and while he is in the possession of all his strength and faculties, he will go straight to the Indian's heaven under the most favorable circumstances."
"Suppose he is killed on a rainy day?" said the corporal on the other side of the fire.
"Or a snowy one?" chimed in a sergeant.
"Then he is doomed to paddle through rain or snow through all eternity," replied George; "and that he doesn't like either is proved by the fact that he will not stir out of camp while it is raining or snowing if he can help it. If an Indian is hanged, like Captain Jack or those thirty-seven warriors who were executed at Mankato in 1863 for participation in the Sioux massacre, he loses all chance of ever seeing the happy hunting-grounds. So he does if he is scalped; and that's the reason Indians make such efforts to carry off the body of a fallen comrade. A Plains Indian never willingly goes into a fight during the night. If he did, he would make it much warmer for us here on the frontier than he does now. He may make use of a night like this to get into position for an attack, but if left to himself he will not raise the war-whoop before daylight, because he believes that if he is killed during the dark he will be condemned to pass all eternity in darkness."
"Well, that is something I never knew before," said the corporal, "and I have been on the Plains a good many years. Now that I think of it—"
"Corporal of the guard, No. 7!" came the call through the dense darkness, whereupon Bob Owens jumped to his feet.