“What do you mean?” asked Glenn.
“Are you going to be ill?” asked Boone.
“No, goodness, no! Only listen to me a minute. An idea struck me, which I thought it was my duty to tell. I thought this Indian might be deceiving us. Suppose he leads us right into an ambush when we’re talking and laughing, and thinking there’s no danger.
“Dod—you’re a cowardly fool!” said Sneak.
“I have likewise a remedy for interruptions—I advise rot to stop again,” said Boone, when Joe once more started forward.
Just as night was setting in, the party came in sight of the grove where Mary was concealed. They slackened their pace and drew near the dark woods quite cautiously. When they entered the edge of the grove, they heard the war-party utter the yell which had awakened Mary. It was fully understood by Boone, and the friendly Indian assured them from the sound, that the Osages had just returned, and were at that moment leaving the encampment on his trail. But he stated that they could not find the pale-faced maiden. And he suggested to the whites a plan of attack, which was to station themselves near the place where he had emerged from the grove, after hiding Mary; so that when they followed on his trail they could thus be surprised without difficulty. This advice was adopted by Boone. The Indian then asked permission to depart, saying he had paid the white men for sparing his life.
“Oh no!” cried Joe, when Roughgrove interpreted the Indian’s request, “keep him as a hostage—he may be cheating us.”
“I do not see the impropriety of Joe’s remark this time,” said Glenn.
“Ask him where he will go, if we suffer him to depart,” said Boone. To Roughgrove’s interrogation, the Indian made a passionate reply. He said the white men were liars. They were now quits. Still the white men were not satisfied. He had risked his life (and would probably be tortured) to pay back the white men’s kindness. But they would not believe his words. He was willing to die now. The white men might shoot him.. He would as willingly die as live. If suffered to depart, it was his intention to steal his squaw away from the tribe, and join the Pawnees. He would never be an Osage again.
“Go!” said Boone, perceiving by a ray of moonlight that reached the Indian’s face through the clustering branches of the trees above, that he was in tears. The savage, without speaking another word, leaped out into the prairie, and from the circuitous direction he pursued, it was manifest that nothing could be further from his desire than to fall in with the war-party.