“Why not, no? Bot' squaw-bot know how. Dere business to work for warrior.”
“Did you keep out of the way, then, lest old Peter should get you at a job that is onsuitable to your manhood?”
“Keep out of way of Pottawattamie,” returned the Chippewa; “no want to lose scalp-radder take his'n.”
“But Peter says the Pottawattamies are all gone, and that we have no longer any reason to fear them; and this medicine-priest tells us, that what Peter says we can depend on for truth.”
“Dat good medicine-man, eh? T'ink he know a great deal, eh?”
“That is more than I can tell you, Pigeonswing; for though I've been a medicine-man myself, so lately, it is in a different line altogether from that of Parson Amen's.”
As the bee-hunter uttered this answer, he was putting the last of his honey-kegs into the cache, and as he rose from completing the operation, he laughed heartily, like one who saw images in the occurrences of the past night, that tended to divert himself, if they had not the same effect on the other spectators.
“If you medicine-man, can tell who Peter be? Winnebagoe, Sioux, Fox, Ojebway, Six Nations all say don't know him. Medicine-man ought to know—who he be, eh?”
“I am not enough of a medicine-man to answer your question, Pigeonswing. Set me at finding a whiskey-spring, or any little job of that sort, and I'll turn my back to no other whiskey-spring finder on the whole frontier; but, as for Peter, he goes beyond my calculations, quite. Why is he called Scalping Peter in the garrisons, if he be so good an Injin, Chippewa?”
“You ask question—you answer. Don't know, 'less he take a good many scalps. Hear he do take all he can find—den hear he don't.”