It was a party of Shawnees, and evidently the same whose tracks they had come across a short time before. The braves were in their full panoply of war; they carried bows and scalping knives, quivers of arrows were on their backs, tomahawks were in their belts; a few ancient looking rifles were the only fire-arms to be seen among them, however, and the powder-horns and bullet-pouches were fewer still.
A powerful looking savage, evidently a chief, and the leader of the band, now spoke.
“The white faces hunt in the hunting-grounds of the Shawnee,” said he, in very bad English.
But Boone looked at him with cool, humorous eye.
“The great chief is mistaken,” said he. “The white man would not so wrong his red brother.”
The Shawnee chief said something to his followers, no doubt interpreting the saying of the backwoodsman; there came a series of grunts and ejaculations from them; their copper-colored faces grew grimmer still, their eyes even more threatening than before.
“Yesterday we heard the rifle of the white face,” spoke the Shawnee leader, turning again to Boone; “to-day we have heard it. We have seen the remains of deer and buffalo which he has killed; we have seen his beaver traps in the streams.” There was a moment’s pause, then the savage added: “What has the white face to say?”
“You might have heard our rifles speak for many days, if you had been here,” replied Boone. “And that you have seen the carcasses of deer and other animals which we have killed is quite likely. But what of that? The country is open to hunters, is it not? Do not the Chickasaws and the Cherokees hunt their meat and fur in these woods and mountains? Why, then, do the Shawnees claim it as their own?”
“The Chickasaws and the Cherokees are thieves!” pronounced the Shawnee chief. “We have taken the war-path against them; we will make a wailing in their lodges, an emptiness in their villages.”
“You treat your white brother with injustice when you ambush him and take away his arms. You have suffered no wrong at his hands,” maintained Boone.