“Is not Moonlight sorry to quit the Blackfoot camp?”
The girl was taken by surprise, for she had never before heard an Indian—much less a chief—address a squaw in such a tone, or condescend to such a question. A feeling of self-reproach induced her to reply with some warmth—
“Yes, Rushing River, Moonlight is sorry to quit the lodges of her Blackfoot friends. The snow on the mountain-tops is warmed by the sunshine until it melts and flows down to the flowering plains. The heart of Moonlight was cold and hard when it entered the Blackfoot camp, but the sunshine of kindness has melted it, and now that it flows towards the grassy plains of home, Moonlight thinks with tenderness of the past, and will never forget.”
Rushing River said no more. Perhaps he thought the reply, coupled with the look and tone, was sufficiently satisfactory. At all events, he continued thereafter to ride in profound silence, and, checking his steed almost imperceptibly, allowed his mother to range up on the other side of him.
Meanwhile Eaglenose and Skipping Rabbit, being influenced by no considerations of delicacy or anything else, kept up a lively conversation in rear. For Eaglenose, like his chief, had freed himself from some of the trammels of savage etiquette.
It would take up too much valuable space to record all the nonsense that these two talked to each other, but a few passages are worthy of notice.
“Skipping one,” said the youth, after a brief pause, “what are your thoughts doing?”
“Swelled-nosed one,” replied the child, with a laugh at her own inventive genius, “I was thinking what a big hole you must have made in the ground when you got that fall.”
“It was not shallow,” returned the youth, with assumed gravity. “It was big enough to have buried a rabbit in, even a skipping one.”
“Would there have been room for a jumping-jack too?” asked the child, with equal gravity; then, without waiting for an answer, she burst into a merry laugh, and asked where they were travelling to.