“Tubuko—no, I have no more of that than you saw in the fire-bag. The white men sometimes call it bukey, and I have no fire-water or tee. Sometimes we put a nice sweet stuff into the tee which the white men call shoogir. The Indian girls are very fond of shoogir. They like it best without being mixed with water and tee. But we have that in our own land. We make it from the juice of a tree.”
The interest with which Cheenbuk gazed into the girl’s face while she spoke, was doubtless due very much to the prettiness thereof, but it is only just to add that the number and nature of the absolutely new subjects which were thus opened up to him had something to do with it. His imperfect knowledge of her language, however, had a bamboozling effect.
“Here is a thing which I think you will be glad to see,” continued the girl, as she extracted a small hatchet from the bundle.
“Yes indeed; that is a very good thing,” said the youth, handling the implement with almost affectionate tenderness. “I had one once—and that, too, is a fine thing,” he added, as she drew a scalping-knife from her bundle.
“You may have them both,” she said; “I knew you would need them on the journey.”
Cheenbuk was too much lost in admiration of the gifts—which to him were so splendid—that he failed to find words to express his gratitude, but, seizing a piece of firewood and resting it on another piece, he set to work with the hatchet, and sent the chips flying in all directions for some time, to the amusement, and no small surprise, of his companion. Then he laid down the axe, and, taking up the scalping-knife, began to whittle sticks with renewed energy. Suddenly he paused and looked at Adolay with ineffable delight.
“They are good?” she remarked with a cheerful nod.
“Good, good, very good! We have nothing nearly so good. All our things are made of bone or stone.”
“Now,” returned the girl, with a blink of her lustrous eyes, and a yawn of her pretty mouth, which Nature had not yet taught her to conceal with her little hand, “now, I am sleepy. I will lie down.”
Cheenbuk replied with a smile, and pointed to the canoe with his nose.