“Ay, that’s just it, Whitewing,” said the trapper. “We can’t make it out nohow, an’ so I just leaves all that sort o’ thing to the parsons, and give my mind to the things that I understand.”
“When Little Tim was a very small boy,” said the Indian, after a few minutes’ meditation, “did he understand how to trap the beaver and the martin, and how to point the rifle so as to carry death to the grizzly bear?”
“Of course not,” returned the trapper; “seems to me that that’s a foolish question.”
“But,” continued the Indian, “you came to know it at last?”
“I should just think I did,” returned the trapper, a look of self-satisfied pride crossing his scarred visage as he thought of the celebrity as a hunter to which he had attained. “It took me a goodish while, of course, to circumvent it all, but in time I got to be—well, you know what, an’ I’m not fond o’ blowin’ my own trumpet.”
“Yes; you came to it at last,” repeated Whitewing, “by giving your mind to things that at first you did not understand.”
“Come, come, my friend,” said Little Tim, with a laugh; “I’m no match for you in argiment, but, as I said before, I don’t understand Manitou, an’ I don’t see, or feel, or hear him, so it’s of no use tryin’.”
“What my friend knows not, another may tell him,” said Whitewing. “The white man says he knows Manitou, and brings a message from him. Three times I have listened to his words. They seem the words of truth. I go again to-day to hear his message.”
The Indian stood up as he spoke, and the trapper also rose.
“Well, well,” he said, knocking the ashes out of his pipe, “I’ll go too, though I’m afeared it won’t be o’ much use.”