This error being corrected, he was permitted to depart, and he set out with perfect confidence and with no small sense of the dignity of his mission.
The huts were about a mile distant, and he walked rapidly at first, but with more deliberation when he got within ordinary rifle shot of the settlement.
From this point he proceeded warily and with great vigilance, soliloquizing some; but, fearing that he might be overheard, he was very chary of his language.
“If de red debbils—gemmen, I mean—is gwine to fire I wish to gracious dey’d do it now,” he said, “before I git any closer and w’ile dare’s time to run. I can’t see nuffin’ movin’ ober dare.”
At a quarter of a mile from the village he stopped and bowed very low, cap in hand, and he repeated his performance every few rods as he proceeded, varying it at times by smiting his heart and pointing upward.
Still he saw nobody, and, although he believed the Indians were in hiding, near to or in their lodges, he went forward, though with much trepidation, repeating in the intervals between his obeisances the only prayer he could recall to memory—beginning, “Now I lay me down to sleep.”
At the edge of the wood and not a dozen yards from the nearest wigwam, he stopped. After peering carefully around in all directions he called out:
“Is any of the gemmen or ladies to hum?”
Receiving no answer to this polite inquiry, he advanced near enough to one of the huts to look through an opening which served for a window and to obtain a view of the interior.
A glance showed him that no one was within, and he ventured to push aside the door or curtain of skin which hung before the entrance and walk in.