“Oui, I have said, and I say it agen, de dog is human, so him is. If not—fat am he?”
Without pausing to reply to this perplexing question, Dick stepped forward again, and in half an hour or so they were back in the camp.
“Now for your part of the work, Joe; yonder’s the squaw that owns the half-drowned baby. Everything depends on her.”
Dick pointed to the Indian woman as he spoke. She was sitting beside her tent, and playing at her knee was the identical youngster that had been saved by Crusoe.
“I’ll manage it,” said Joe, and walked towards her, while Dick and Henri returned to the chiefs tent.
“Does the Pawnee woman thank the Great Spirit that her child is saved?” began Joe as he came up.
“She does,” answered the woman, looking up at the hunter. “And her heart is warm to the Pale-faces.”
After a short silence Joe continued—
“The Pawnee chiefs do not love the Pale-faces. Some of them hate them.”
“The Dark Flower knows it,” answered the woman; “she is sorry. She would help the Pale-faces if she could.”