"Tell him so."
The girl turned her head and spoke to the Saguenay in his own gutturals. I also watched to see what effect such praise might have.
For a few minutes he sat motionless and without any expression upon his narrow visage, yet I knew he must be bursting with pride.
"Tahioni!" I called out. "Here, also, is a real man who has taken scalps in battle. Shall not our brother, Yellow Leaf, of the Montagnais, sing his first scalp-song at an Oneida fire?"
There was a pause, then every Oneida hatchet flashed high in the firelight.
"Koué!" they shouted. "We give fire right to our brother of the Montagnais, who is a real man and no wolf!"
At that the Saguenay hunter, who, in a single day, had became a warrior, leaped lightly to his feet, and began to trot like a timber wolf around the fire, running hither and thither as an eager, wild thing runs when searching.
Then he shouted something I did not understand; but Thiohero interpreted, watching him: "He looks in vain for the tracks of a poor Saguenay hunter, which once he was, but he can find only the footprints of a proud Saguenay warrior, which now he has become!"
Now, in dumb show, this fierce and homeless rover enacted all that had passed,—how he had encountered the Canienga, how they had mocked and stoned him, how we had captured him, proved kind to him, released him; how he had returned to warn us of ambuscade.
He drew his war-axe and shouted his snarling battle-cry; and all the Oneidas became excited and answered like panthers on a dark mountain.