“Let the young warrior speak freely; Tamenund knows that he is the mouth of the Osage council,” was the grave reply.
“The Washashe say that the Lenapé have walked in a crooked path. The council have assembled; and the words delivered to Flying–arrow are these: The Washashe allowed the Lenapé to kill meat on their hunting–ground, they smoked the pipe together, and gave each other the wampum–belt of peace; but the Lenapé hearts are white, though their skin is red; their tongues are smooth with telling many lies: they have brought the pale–faces here to aid them in driving the Washashe from the hunting–fields of their fathers! Is it not true?” continued the fearless envoy, in a louder strain; “they have done all they can to throw dirt upon the lodges of those whom they call brothers. When Mahéga offered to take the daughter of Tamenund as his wife, what was said to him? Does not the pale–face who crept upon him and defiled his medicine, still sit and smoke at the Lenapé fire? Mahéga says, let Tamenund give him Olitipa for a wife, and the pale–face, called Netis, as a prisoner, and let him send back the other white men to the Great River; then Mahéga will believe that the hearts of the Lenapé are true to the friendship pledged on this belt.”
Thus saying, he shook the wampum before the assembled Delawares with an air of proud defiance. A brief pause followed this daring speech; the heart of War–Eagle boiled within him, but a scornful smile sat upon his haughty countenance, as he waited composedly for the reply of his father, who seemed engaged in deep and serious meditation.
Reginald had, of course, been unable to follow the envoy’s discourse, but his quick ear had detected his own name; and a fierce look, which accompanied its pronunciation, told him that he was personally interested in the object of the Osage’s message. Having gathered from Baptiste, in a whisper, the nature of Mahéga’s charge and demand, a flush of indignation coloured his brow, but the examples of self–command that he had so lately seen, and that he still witnessed in the iron features by which he was surrounded, taught him to place a like restraint upon his own feelings, and to await the reply of the aged chief.
The latter, fixing his eye sternly upon the envoy, thus addressed him: “Mahéga has filled the young brave’s mouth with lies. The hearts of the Lenapé are true as the guiding–star.[41] They are faithful to their friends, they fear no enemies. Tamenund will not give Olitipa to Mahéga, nor his adopted son to be the Washashe’s prisoner. Tamenund is old, but he is not blind, Mahéga wishes to become a friend of the Dahcotahs. It is well; he will find among them hearts as bad and tongues as forked as his own! I have spoken.”
A deep murmur of approbation followed the aged chief’s brief but energetic harangue, and as soon as it was concluded, the fearless messenger drew a sharp knife from his girdle, and severing the wampum–belt, he cast the two halves on the ground, saying, “It is well! thus is the league between the Washashe and the Lenapé divided.”
Baptiste, to whom Reginald had again addressed a few words in a whisper, now rose, and having requested permission of Tamenund, said to the Osage messenger, “Netis desires you to tell Mahéga that he is a liar,—brave enough to frighten women, but nothing more. If he is a warrior, let him come to–morrow at sunrise to the open prairie, north of the camp; the friends of both shall stand back three arrow–flights apart; Netis will meet him with a rifle and a hunting–knife; Olitipa will not be there to save his life again!”
Another murmur of approbation went round the assembly, many of whom had already heard of the rough treatment that the gigantic Osage had received at Reginald’s hands, but hearing it now confirmed by the lips of a tried warrior, like Grande–Hâche, they looked with increased respect and esteem on the adopted brother of War–Eagle.
“Flying–arrow will tell Mahéga,” was the brief reply; and the messenger glancing his eye haughtily around the circle, left the lodge and returned to the encampment of his tribe. After his departure the council continued their deliberations for some time, and had not yet concluded them when a distant and repeated shouting attracted their attention, and a Delaware youth, of about fifteen years of age, rushed into the lodge, breathless, and bleeding from a wound inflicted by an arrow, which had pierced his shoulder. A few hurried sentences explained to the chiefs the news of which he was the bearer. It appeared that he had been tending, in a bottom not far distant, a herd of horses, chiefly belonging to Tamenund, War–Eagle, and the party of white men, when a band of mounted Sioux came sweeping down the valley at full speed; two or three young Delawares, who formed the out–picquet on that side, had been taken completely by surprise, and paid with their lives the penalty of their carelessness.
The wounded youth who brought the intelligence had only escaped by his extreme swiftness of foot, and by the unwillingness of the enemy to approach too near the camp. Thus had the Dahcotahs succeeded in carrying off, by a bold stroke, upwards of one hundred of the best horses from the Delaware village; and Reginald soon learnt, to his inexpressible annoyance and regret, that Nekimi was among the number of the captives. A hurried consultation followed, in which War–Eagle, throwing off the modest reserve that he had practised during the council, assumed his place as leader of the Lenapé braves, of whom he selected forty of the most active and daring, to accompany him on the difficult and dangerous expedition that was to be instantly undertaken for the recovery of the stolen horses.