“The owl was abroad in the night and at daybreak my squaw’s mother, the ill-favored one yonder, did see one with a weasel in its claws. What think you is the meaning of that sign, my white brother?”
Old Joe shrugged his shoulders expressively.
“No man can read the owl, my friend,” he replied. “Tell me, how do you interpret the sign?”
“That ere long a white man—the weasel that my squaw’s ill-favored mother did see—shall be caught by the bearded white man and the two unbearded boys that do travel with him.”
This was a typically Indian way of stating a conclusion, and old Joe appeared to feel highly flattered at the comparison of himself to an owl. He smiled and said:
“It is even so. The owl that is Joe Picquet does pursue the weasel that is a thieving white man, a robber of trappers, a despoiler of cabins in the woods.”
“Then ere long you will catch him,” the Indian assured him gravely, “for so do the signs read and no man may gainsay them.”
The moment in these roundabout negotiations had now arrived when old Joe deemed he could diplomatically ask a direct question.
CHAPTER XIV—SWAPPING STORIES.
“It is as you have said,” rejoined old Joe, “the signs are seldom in the wrong. But I have been thinking, my friend, that perhaps on your way you have seen this weasel of a white man whom the owl and the two young hares pursue?”