“It was time to strike hard, because I did not wish to strike twice. As I had requested you not to shoot, I felt that I had made myself answerable for your safety, and if that second fellow had succeeded in freeing his hands, we might have had some troublesome work of it. But tell me, Wingenund, how did you, while walking in front, discover what was passing behind you?”
“The Osage told me himself,” replied the youth, again smiling.
“I do not understand you, for assuredly he never spoke.”
“Not with his tongue, but plainly enough with his face. I looked round once or twice, and my eye met his; I saw there was mischief, for he looked too good. When I passed to ask you for the cup, I looked again, quickly, but closer, and saw that his hands were free, though he kept them together as before.”
Ethelston could not forbear laughing at the youth’s notion of the ill–favoured Osage, “looking too good;” but feeling both amused and interested by his replies, he again said, “I must own my admiration of your quick–sightedness, for doubtless the Osage tried to make the expression of his face deceive you.
“He has not the face of an Indian warrior,” said the youth, scornfully. “When a deed is to be done or concealed let my brother try and read it in the face of War–Eagle, or any great chief of the Lenapé! As well might he strive to count the stones in the deepest channel of the great Muddy River,[87] or the stars of heaven in a cloudy night!”
The party had now struck a broad trail, leading across the valley, and up the opposite height, in the direction of the Delaware camp; the Osage prisoners were therefore sent to the front, and ordered to march forward on the trail by which means Wingenund enjoyed the advantage of watching their movements, while he continued to converse with his friends.
“I own,” said Ethelston, “that I had not before considered a command over the muscles of the countenance as being a matter of so much importance in the character of an Indian warrior.”
“Nevertheless the youth is right in what he says,” replied Paul Müller. “Where cunning and artifice are so often resorted to, a natural and unconcerned air of candour is an admirable shield of defence: the quickness of sight which you lately observed in Wingenund, is an hereditary quality in his race. The grandfather of Tamenund was so celebrated for it, that he was called by a name signifying ‘The man who has eyes in his back:’ he was killed only twenty years ago, during the fierce irruption made by a band of the five nations into the valley of Wyoming, to which the old man had retired in the hope of closing his eyes in peace.”
“I have heard of that tragedy,” said Ethelston; “indeed, it occurred while I was at school on the banks of the Muskingum; and often as the boys went or returned, they used to frighten each other with cries of ‘The Indians!’ but I have since been much absent from my own country, and never rightly understood who were the actors in that scene of terror, and what were the tribes usually known by the name of the Six Nations, for so I have always heard them called.”