“Hom’-sik,” he cried, “veech mean bein’ sik of hom’! hah! dat is fat I am always be, ven I goes hout on de expedition. Oui, vraiment.”
“I always packs up,” continued Joe, paying no attention to Henri’s remark,—“I always packs up an’ sots off for home when I gits home-sick; it’s the best cure, an’ when hunters are young like you, Dick, it’s the only cure. I’ve know’d fellers a’most die o’ homesickness, an’ I’m told they do go under altogether sometimes.”
“Go onder!” exclaimed Henri; “oui, I vas all but die myself ven I fust try to git away from hom’. If I have not git away, I not be here to-day.”
Henri’s idea of homesickness was so totally opposed to theirs, that his comrades only laughed, and refrained from attempting to set him right.
“The fust time I was took bad with it wos in a country somethin’ like that,” said Joe, pointing to the wide stretch of undulating prairie, dotted with clusters of trees and wandering streamlets, that lay before them; “I had bin out about two months, an wos makin’ a good thing of it, for game wos plenty, when I began to think somehow more than usual o’ home. My mother wos alive then.”
Joe’s voice sank to a deep, solemn tone as he said this, and for a few minutes he rode on in silence.
“Well, it grew worse and worse, I dreamed o’ home all night, an’ thought of it all day, till I began to shoot bad, an’ my comrades wos gittin’ tired o’ me; so says I to them one night, says I, ‘I give out, lads, I’ll make tracks for the settlement to-morrow.’ They tried to laugh me out of it at first, but it was no go, so I packed up, bid them good-day, an’ sot off alone on a trip o’ five hundred miles. The very first mile o’ the way back I began to mend, and before two days I wos all right again.”
Joe was interrupted at this point by the sudden appearance of a solitary horseman on the brow of an eminence not half a mile distant. The three friends instantly drove their pack-horses behind a clump of trees, but not in time to escape the vigilant eye of the Red-man, who uttered a loud shout, which brought up a band of his comrades at full gallop.
“Remember, Henri,” cried Joe Blunt, “our errand is one of peace.”
The caution was needed, for in the confusion of the moment Henri was making preparation to sell his life as dearly as possible. Before another word could be uttered, they were surrounded by a troop of about twenty yelling Blackfeet Indians. They were, fortunately, not a war-party, and, still more fortunately, they were peaceably disposed, and listened to the preliminary address of Joe Blunt with exemplary patience; after which the two parties encamped on the spot, the council-fire was lighted, and every preparation made for a long palaver.