“The Omahaws are welcome.”
“And the Yanktons, and the burnt-wood Tetons, who live in the elbow of the river, ‘with muddy water,’ do they not come into the lodges of the Loups and smoke?”
“The Tetons are liars!” exclaimed the other. “They dare not shut their eyes in the night. No; they sleep in the sun. See,” he added, pointing with fierce triumph to the frightful ornaments of his leggings, “their scalps are so plenty, that the Pawnees tread on them! Go; let a Sioux live in banks of snow; the plains and buffaloes are for men!”
“Ah! the secret is out,” said the trapper to Middleton, who was an attentive, because a deeply interested, observer of what was passing. “This good-looking young Indian is scouting on the track of the Siouxes—you may see it by his arrow-heads, and his paint; ay, and by his eye, too; for a Red-skin lets his natur’ follow the business he is on, be it for peace, or be it for war,—quiet, Hector, quiet. Have you never scented a Pawnee afore, pup?—keep down, dog—keep down—my brother is right. The Siouxes are thieves. Men of all colours and nations say it of them, and say it truly. But the people from the rising sun are not Siouxes, and they wish to visit the lodges of the Loups.”
“The head of my brother is white,” returned the Pawnee, throwing one of those glances at the trapper, which were so remarkably expressive of distrust, intelligence, and pride, and then pointing, as he continued, towards the eastern horizon, “and his eyes have looked on many things—can he tell me the name of what he sees yonder—is it a buffaloe?”
“It looks more like a cloud, peeping above the skirt of the plain with the sunshine lighting its edges. It is the smoke of the heavens.”
“It is a hill of the earth, and on its top are the lodges of Pale-faces! Let the women of my brother wash their feet among the people of their own colour.”
“The eyes of a Pawnee are good, if he can see a white-skin so far.”
The Indian turned slowly towards the speaker, and after a pause of a moment he sternly demanded—
“Can my brother hunt?”