Some had stopped and were looking earnestly at the distant party of whites who had been pointed out to them by the women, and others were advancing warily toward the wigwam of the old chief, for vigilant eyes from the brakes and bushes in the wood had watched the negro’s arrival in the village.
His entrance into the several lodges, and the fact that he had not departed from that one, were both well known to them.
CHAPTER XXXII.
IMPRESSING SAVAGES.
The negro stationed himself a little behind the old chief, where, with the greatest trepidation, but with many smiles and genuflexions, he greeted the band of astonished savages who came crowding into the little hut.
They were as wild and uncouth-looking as well could be. All were more or less painted; and only Running Water, their seeming leader, was fully clad in a hunting suit of undressed deerskin; the soiled and frayed condition of which fully entitled him to the sobriquet which the negro had so innocently bestowed upon him.
He might have been called an old man but for the contrast between him and the decrepit chief; certainly, he was not less than sixty, though he was seemingly in the full vigor of manhood.
There was a heavy scowl on his forehead when he entered the hut, and his tomahawk was upraised in his hand. But, after a brief glance at the propitiatory motions of the negro, and at the unharmed veteran, the scowl subsided and he returned his hatchet to its place in his belt.
Not so others—for several of his followers had already presented their guns at Joe; and one, who was doubtless emulous of the glory of being the first to bring the strange enemy down, rushed furiously upon him, and aimed a blow at him, which the negro avoided only by leaping backward and crouching to the ground.