“I have good news for the soft one to-day.”
The soft one looked, but did not say, “Indeed, what is it?”
“Yes,” continued the youth, sheathing the sabre; “the man with the kind heart and the snowy pinion has come back to the mountains. He will be here before the shadows of the trees grow much longer.”
“Whitewing?” exclaimed Softswan, with a gleam of pleasure in her bright black eyes.
“Just so. The prairie chief has come back to us, and is now a preacher.”
“Has the pale-face preacher com’ vis him?” asked the bride, with a slightly troubled look, for she did not yet feel quite at home in her broken English, and feared that her husband might laugh at her mistakes, though nothing was further from the mind of the stout hunter than to laugh at his pretty bride. He did indeed sometimes indulge the propensity in that strange conventional region “his sleeve,” but no owl of the desert was more solemn in countenance than Big Tim when Softswan perpetrated her lingual blunders.
“I know not,” he replied, as he renewed the priming of one of the guns. “Hist! did you see something move under the willow bush yonder?”
The girl shook her head.
“A rabbit, no doubt,” said the hunter, lowering the rifle which he had raised, and resuming his easy unconcerned attitude, yet keeping his keen eye on the spot with a steadiness that showed his indifference was assumed.
“I know not whether the pale-face preacher is with him,” he continued. “Those who told me about him could only say that a white man dressed like the crows was travelling a short distance in advance of Whitewing, but whether he was one of his party or not, they could not tell. Indeed it is said that Whitewing has no party with him, that he travels alone. If he does, he is more reckless than ever, seeing that his enemies the Blackfeet are on the war-path just now; but you never know what a half-mad redskin will do, and Whitewing is a queer customer.”