“Assuredly,” muttered I to myself, “her father was a gentleman!”
Leaving my gun on the bank on which I had been seated, I advanced to meet her. She showed a very slight symptom of surprise, and, I thought, of uneasiness, on seeing me, but made no remark until I had spoken. At first I was about to adopt the Indian style of address, and begin with “my red sister,” but the phrase, besides being false, appeared to me ridiculous; still, the ice had to be broken somehow, so I made a bungling plunge.
“Blue-eyes wanders far to-day from the wigwams of her—her—people?”
A gleam of surprise mingled with pleasure rippled over her pretty face when she found that I could speak to her in the native tongue.
“Yes,” she replied in the same language. “I have wandered far. I was the bearer of a message.”
As she volunteered no more I continued:
“If Waboose goes to her wigwam, will she object to the pale-face bearing her company?”
With something like a graceful inclination of the head, the Indian girl gave me to understand that she had no objection.
“An Indian!” thought I, “she’s a lady in disguise, as sure as I am a fur-trader!”
Of course I was careful not to give her, either by tone or look, the slightest hint of what was passing in my mind, and was about to continue my remarks, when a rustling in the bushes caused us both to look round quickly. The foliage parted next moment close to us, and before I had time to think a large brown bear bounded into the open space. It seemed to be taken as much by surprise as we were, and I have no doubt would have turned and fled if it had not been so near. It rose on its hind legs, however, to attack us, and then I perceived that it was not the small bear which Lumley and I had been tracking.