The Prairie-Bird

by Sir Charles Augustus Murray

For a few moments the chief was silent; then he said, “Let my brother use the glass again, and say how many lodges he can count.”

“There seem to be very many,” said Reginald, after a careful survey, “more than fifty, but I cannot count them, for the tent is on a small hill, and some may be hid behind it.”

“Mahéga smokes the pipe with a powerful tribe,” said the Delaware, musing; and the two friends descended the hill, each contemplating, according to the bent of their respective characters, the difficulties yet to be encountered, and the means by which those difficulties might be overcome.

Meanwhile it must not be supposed that Mahéga remained in idle security a resident in the Crow encampment; he appreciated too justly the skill and perseverance of War–Eagle to suppose that the latter would not strike and follow his trail, he therefore turned his attention to the strengthening of his alliance with his new friends by every means in his power. In this endeavour his own sagacity was admirably, though perhaps unconsciously, seconded by the winning manners and character of Prairie–bird; for the Crows, who had been prepared to look upon her with a feeling akin to dread, were agreeably surprised by her extreme beauty, and the gentleness of her demeanour.

The cunning Osage, knowing that she could only be drawn from the strict seclusion in which she lived by her never–failing willingness to alleviate suffering, had caused several children, and others afflicted with illness, to be brought to her, and she never declined giving them such remedies from her remaining stock of medicine as she thought most likely to afford relief. The general success of her simple pharmacy fully answered the expectations of Mahéga, in the increasing anxiety daily evinced by the Crows to guard and protect the “Great Medicine” of the tent; and thus, while obeying the dictates of her own gentle and humane feeling, the maiden little knew that she was strengthening the cords of her captivity.

Neither did Mahéga neglect to take every precaution against an attack or surprise on the part of War–Eagle and his party. Although ignorant of their precise force, he knew that they would in all probability be well armed, and was far from satisfied with the position of the present encampment occupied by the Crows.

After conversing once or twice with Besha, and the judicious admixture of a few presents to that disinterested personage, he learnt that there was at a distance of half a day’s march to the northward a favourite stronghold of the Crows, to which they frequently resorted when attacked by an enemy too numerous to be resisted in the open plain, and it was represented to be in a neighbourhood affording abundance of game, and a plentiful supply of pasture for the horses.

Mahéga found it not a very difficult task to persuade the Crow chief to withdraw to this post, representing to him the formidable equipment of the Delawares aided by their white allies, and he urged him also to send a few of his best runners to hang about the trail by which he had himself arrived, so that timely notice of the enemy’s approach might be received.

The Crow acquiesced in both suggestions, and the united band moved off accordingly to the post above referred to, which they reached in the afternoon of the same day; it was a conical hill, covered on one side with low juniper bushes, and rising suddenly out of the prairie at a distance of several miles from the higher range of mountains to the west; a few hundred yards further to the east was another height of similar elevation, but of less circumference, and between these two lay a valley of extreme fertility, watered by a stream so cool and clear, that it bespoke at once the mountain source whence it flowed; the eastern side of this second hill was almost perpendicular, so as to be secure against any attack from that quarter; while an enemy approaching from the valley would be exposed to missiles shot from either height.

Mahéga saw at a glance the strength of the position, and proposed to the chief that he, with his Osages, should garrison the smaller height, leaving the larger hill and the intermediate valley to be occupied by the Crows.