The prayer was concluded, and they were about paying their farewell salutations to the chiefs, when the low wailing of a female voice from an adjoining lodge caught the missionary’s ear—an ear to which the accents of distress ever found immediate entrance. Having desired Besha to inquire into the cause of her complaint, he learnt that she was the wife of the man who had been struck down by Mahéga’s war–club, after it had grazed the cheek of Wingenund, and that her husband was now lying in a state of great misery and suffering. In spite of a gesture of impatience from the Delaware youth, whose feet burned to be upon the homeward path, the missionary approached the sufferer, and carefully examined his condition. He found that the bones of the broken arm had been joined with tolerable skill and success, and that it was well secured by bandages to a straight splinter of pine–wood; but, whether owing to the roughness of the treatment, or the pain he had undergone, he was now in a high and dangerous state of fever. The missionary had still concealed in his girdle a small bag, containing, among other medicines, a few powders exactly adapted to the emergency; of these he mixed one with a little water, and having given it to his patient, left another with Besha, desiring that it might be administered at noon, and that no meat should be given to him until the following day. “With these remedies, and with the blessing of the Great Spirit,” said he, as he retired, “the man will soon be well.”
“Did I understand rightly,” said Ethelston to Wingenund, “that White–bull comes over to–morrow with his braves to complete the treaty with us, and exchange presents?”
“It is so settled,” replied the youth.
“Would it not then be better to let him and his men bring with them the Osage prisoners? They are four desperate men, and only we two are armed; if they mutiny by the way, we shall be obliged to shoot them in self–defence.”
“My brother does not know the Washashee and the Upsaroka,” said Wingenund, smiling; “both of them love the Pale–faces and the Lenapé as the wolf loves the deer. No, my brother, let the prisoners go with us; our eyes must be open; if they try to run away or do us harm, the rifle must keep them quiet.”
The youth spoke these words in a low, determined tone; and Ethelston feeling that he could not gainsay their truth, listened while Wingenund repeated the warning to the Osages in their own tongue, informing them that if they made the slightest attempt to escape, or demonstration of violence by the way, they would be instantly shot; a sullen and silent inclination of the head, signifying that he was understood, was the only reply; and once more greeting their Crow allies, the little party moved off in the direction of the Delaware camp, Wingenund leading the way, with a loaded rifle in his hand, the Black–foot bow and quiver slung at his back, and a knife and pistol, taken from one of the Osages, being fastened in his girdle; next came the four prisoners, with their arms still pinioned, but their legs entirely at liberty; Paul Müller and Ethelston brought up the rear; the latter carrying two loaded rifles, one in his hand, and the other slung over his shoulder.
It was a beautiful summer morning, the grey mists had arisen from the valley and curled in spiral folds round the rugged and precipitous rocks that frowned above it. Short and scant as was the herbage, still as it glistened in the early dew, and hung forth its diamond drops in the sun, it imparted a touch of sweetness to scenery, the dreary barrenness of which might otherwise have oppressed the mind of the traveller with a feeling of desolation. Never, perhaps, over that, or over any other mountain track, passed a lighter foot or a more rejoicing heart than that of our young friend Wingenund. The dreams of boyhood, dreams that a few weeks ago he had himself deemed visionary, or at least remote, were already accomplished; he had won the gold spurs of Indian chivalry: in the dance, or the council, or the field, neither envy nor detraction could now forbid his mixing with the braves and warriors of his tribe; and his heart exulted within him as he thought of presenting to Netis and War–Eagle the scalp of their arch–enemy, the insolent captor of Prairie–bird, the great warrior of the Osages, slain by his own hand. These were feelings which the boy–hero could share with none, for with Ethelston he was as yet little acquainted, and Paul Müller he knew to be averse to all thoughts of strife and conflict; still the feelings arose unchecked and unrepressed within his bosom when he remembered the name by which he was called, the deeds of those who had borne it before him; and mingled with these memories of the past came the proud reflection, that wherever the Delaware tongue was yet spoken among the scattered bands of the Ancient People on the banks of Missouri and Ohio, of Susquehana and Miami, the song of Lenapé warrior and Lenapé maiden would tell how the scourge of their tribe, Mahéga, the Bloody–hand, had been slain by Wingenund, the brother of War–Eagle!
The events of the preceding days had been to the youth the realised romance of his life; and as he strode along the mountain side, he felt as if his expanded chest were a world too narrow for the high emotions that swelled within it.
Perhaps it may seem unnatural to the reader, that amidst all the excitement of awakened hope, ambition, and exultation, the youth forgot not for a moment the perils by which he was surrounded. It is our business to describe the Indian character, not as it might be, if designed “to point a moral or adorn a tale,” but as it is, with all those lights and shades which distinguish it from that of white men; and one of the most remarkable features—one which has also escaped the observation of those writers who are chiefly quoted as authority on this subject—is that power of reserved abstraction which the mind of the Indian acquires as a result of an early and constant habit of control over the will. Thus, during the wildest flight of his imagination, and the highest aspirations of his ambitious hopes, under an excitement which would have rendered an English youth of his years blind, and deaf, and careless for the moment of all that was passing around, the quick eye of Wingenund roved with incessant motion from hill to vale, embracing every hollow that might contain an ambush, and every crag near his path that might give shelter to a foe.
Ethelston conversed little with the missionary, for there was a thought which lay close to his heart, and made its pulses throb more quickly at every step that he made towards the Delaware camp. Already they were within a few miles of it, when, in passing a streamlet that flowed across their path, Wingenund suddenly turned and proposed to his companions to refresh themselves with a drink.