“Tell them that Hard-Heart has tied a knot in his wampum for every Teton,” burst from the lips of the captive, with that vehemence with which sudden passion is known to break through the barriers of artificial restraint “if he meets one of them all, in the prairies of the Master of Life, his heart will become Sioux!”
“Ah that feeling would be a dangerous companion for a man with white gifts to start with on so solemn a journey,” muttered the old man in English. “This is not what the good Moravians said to the councils of the Delawares, nor what is so often preached, to the White-skins in the settlements, though, to the shame of the colour be it said, it is so little heeded. Pawnee, I love you; but being a Christian man, I cannot be the runner to bear such a message.”
“If my father is afraid the Tetons will hear him, let him whisper it softly to our old men.”
“As for fear, young warrior, it is no more the shame of a Pale-face than of a Red-skin. The Wahcondah teaches us to love the life he gives; but it is as men love their hunts, and their dogs, and their carabines, and not with the doting that a mother looks upon her infant. The Master of Life will not have to speak aloud twice when he calls my name. I am as ready to answer to it now, as I shall be to-morrow, or at any time it may please his mighty will. But what is a warrior without his traditions? Mine forbid me to carry your words.”
The chief made a dignified motion of assent, and here there was great danger that those feelings of confidence, which had been so singularly awakened, would as suddenly subside. But the heart of the old man had been too sensibly touched, through long dormant but still living recollections, to break off the communication so rudely. He pondered for a minute, and then bending his look wistfully on his young associate, again continued—
“Each warrior must be judged by his gifts. I have told my son what I cannot, but let him open his ears to what I can do. An elk shall not measure the prairie much swifter than these old legs, if the Pawnee will give me a message that a white man may bear.”
“Let the Pale-face listen,” returned the other, after hesitating a single instant longer, under a lingering sensation of his former disappointment. “He will stay here till the Siouxes have done counting the scalps of their dead warriors. He will wait until they have tried to cover the heads of eighteen Tetons with the skin of one Pawnee; he will open his eyes wide, that he may see the place where they bury the bones of a warrior.”
“All this will I, and may I, do, noble boy.”
“He will mark the spot, that he may know it.”
“No fear, no fear that I shall forget the place,” interrupted the other, whose fortitude began to give way under so trying an exhibition of calmness and resignation.