“He is right about that!” Joseph agreed heartily. “Why, no one will be safe any more unless something is done. All the other tribes may be lured in, too, if they see the success Black Hawk is having.”
“Very true,” said Mason. “I believe that already some of the Winnebagos and Pottowattomies have joined him.”
“Is that so?” exclaimed Robert. “I wonder if Deerfoot knows that some of his people are with Black Hawk now?”
“Of course he knows,” said Joseph. “He seems to know everything almost before it happens. He is uncanny at times.”
“Do you suppose it will make any difference to him?”
“Not a bit. Why, he’d choose you and me in preference to his own family, I think. He likes us better than anyone else in the world.”
“He certainly is a good friend of yours, isn’t he?” remarked Mason. “At any rate I believe only a small band of his people are with Black Hawk. Some of the young bloods who like fighting, that’s all.”
“Indians love to fight, don’t they?” said Robert. “I wonder why it is.”
“Simply because it is born in them, I guess,” laughed Mason. “All their lives they fight. If not with the whites, then with some other tribe.”
“I feel sorry for them,” Joseph remarked. “They certainly have had a hard time ever since the white people came into this country. Every year they are pushed farther and farther west. They see their homes being taken from them and I don’t blame them if they don’t like it.”