“Has not Moonlight told you?”
“No, when I asked her about it yesterday she said she was not quite sure, it would be better not to speak till she knew.”
“Moonlight is very wise—almost as wise as a man.”
“Yes, wiser even than some men with swelled noses.”
It was now the youth’s turn to laugh, which he did quite heartily, for an Indian, though with a strong effort to restrain himself.
“We are going, I believe,” he said, after a few moments’ thought, “to visit your father, Bounding Bull. At least the speech of Rushing River led Eaglenose to think so, but our chief does not say all that is in his mind. He is not a squaw—at least, not a skipping one.”
Instead of retorting, the child looked with sudden anxiety into the countenance of her companion.
“Does Rushing River,” she asked, with earnest simplicity, “want to have his tongue slit, his eyes poked in, his liver pulled out, and his scalp cut off?”
“I think not,” replied Eaglenose, with equal simplicity, for although such a speech from such innocent lips may call forth surprise in a civilised reader, it referred, in those regions and times, to possibilities which were only too probable.
After a few minutes’ thought the child said, with an earnest look in her large and lustrous eyes, “Skipping Rabbit will be glad—very glad—to see her father, but she will be sorry—very sorry—to lose her friends.”