“Don't know how to do dat, Blossom. Hear medicine-priest of pale-faces pray, sometime, but poor Injin don't know enough to speak to Great Spirit. You speak to Great Spirit for him. He know your voice, Blossom, and listen to what you say; but he won't hear Peter, who has so long hated his enemy. P'raps he angry if he hear Peter speak.”
“In that you are mistaken, Peter. The ears of the Lord are ever open to our prayers, when put up in sincerity, as I feel certain that yours will now be. But, after I have told you the meaning of what I am about to say, I will pray with you and for you. It is best that you should begin to do this, as soon as you can.”
Margery then slowly repeated to Peter the words of the Lord's prayer. She gave him its history, and explained the meaning of several of its words that might otherwise have been unintelligible to him, notwithstanding his tolerable proficiency in English—a proficiency that had greatly increased in the last few weeks, in consequence of his constant communications with those who spoke it habitually. The word “trespasses,” in particular, was somewhat difficult for the Indian to comprehend, but Margery persevered until she succeeded in giving her scholar tolerably accurate ideas of the meaning of each term. Then she told the Indian to kneel with her, and, for the first time in his life, that man of the Openings and prairies lifted his voice in prayer to the one God. It is true that Peter had often before mentally asked favors of his Manitou; but the requests were altogether of a worldly character, and the being addressed was invested with attributes very different from those which he now understood to belong to the Lord of heaven and earth. Nor was the spirit in asking at all the same. We do not wish to be understood as saying that this Indian was already a full convert to Christianity, which contains many doctrines of which he had not the most distant idea; but his heart had undergone the first step in the great change of conversion, and he was now as humble as he had once been proud; as meek, as he had formerly been fierce; and he felt that certain proof of an incipient love of the Creator, in a similar feeling toward all the works of his hands.
When Peter arose from his knees, after repeating the prayer to Margery's slow leading, it was with the dependence of a child on the teaching of its mother. Physically, he was the man he ever had been. He was as able to endure fatigue, as sinewy in his frame, and as capable of fasting and of sustaining fatigue, as in his most warlike days; but, morally, the change was great, indeed. Instead of the obstinate confidence in himself and his traditions, which had once so much distinguished this chief, there was substituted an humble distrust of his own judgment, that rendered him singularly indisposed to rely on his personal views, in any matter of conscience, and he was truly become a child in all that pertained to his religious belief. In good hands, and under more advantageous circumstances, the moral improvement of Peter would have been great; but, situated as he was, it could not be said to amount to much more than a very excellent commencement.
All this time both Peter and Margery had been too intent on their feelings and employment, to take much heed to the precautions necessary to their concealment. The sun was setting ere they arose, and then it was that Peter made the important discovery that they were observed by two of the young men of the Pottawattamies—scouts kept out by Bear's Meat to look for the fugitives.
The time was when Peter would not have hesitated to use his rifle on these unwelcome intruders; but the better spirit that had come over him, now led him to adopt a very different course. Motioning to the young men, he ordered them to retire, while he led Margery within the cover of the bushes. Formerly, Peter would not have scrupled to resort to deception, in order to throw these two young men on a wrong scent, and get rid of them in that mode; but now he had a reluctance to deceive; and, no sooner did they fall back at his beckoning, than he followed Margery to the camp. The latter was giving her husband a hurried account of what had just happened, as Peter joined them.
“Our camp is known!” exclaimed the bee-hunter the instant he beheld the Indian.
“Juss so. Pottawattamie see squaw, and go and tell his chief. Dat sartain,” answered Peter.
“What is there to be done?—Fight for our lives, or fly?”
“Get in canoe quick as can. It take dem young men half-hour to reach place where chief be. In dat half-hour we muss go as far as we can. No good to stay here. Injin come in about one hour.”