CHAPTER VII.
And was this, then, the end of those sweet dreams
Of home, and happiness, and quiet years?
Miss Landon.
Darkness was about to throw her veil over the earth, when a lofty tent might have been seen pitched on the extreme summit of a ridge beyond which lay the horizon in golden beauty. Buffalo skins formed a floor to the inclosure, and upon these reposed the forms of three human beings. One was an Indian, evidently of the rank of a chief. He lay on one of the skins at his lazy length, his feet reaching beyond the opening of the tent, and his head reposing on a rude pillow, formed of the furry hides of other wild animals. He smoked a pipe, while his roving eye often rested upon the farthest of his companions.
At a little distance from the savage we have described sat a female, whose hair, complexion, and whole looks bespoke her Indian birth. Her dress, likewise, was that of her tribe, and was of the quality and texture to mark her as the probable wife of the chief whose company she bore. A wooden bowl was at her side, and from this she was now in the act of feeding herself with a spoon of the same material, but with a slovenly negligence indicative of her origin.
The farthest extremity of the tent revealed another woman, whose appearance denoted her to be of European extraction. She was blue-eyed, and of surpassing fairness of skin. Her attitude indicated a mind too powerfully absorbed in grief to be heedful of appearances, for she sat with her limbs contracted, and rocking her body to and fro with a motion that seemed to have its origin in no efforts of her own. Her long, golden hair hung negligently over a neck of dazzling whiteness; and a blanket drawn over the top of her head like a veil, and extending partly around her person, disclosed here and there portions of an apparel which was strictly American, though much torn. A bowl similar to that of the Indian female, and filled with the same food, was at her side, but this was untasted.
“Why does the pale-face refuse to eat?” asked the warrior of her next to him, as he rolled a volume of smoke from his lips. “Make her eat, for I would speak to her afterward.”
“Why does she refuse to eat?” echoed the woman, dropping her spoon as she spoke, and turning to the object of remark, “It is good,” she continued, as she touched the arm of the heedless sufferer. “Daughter of the pale-faces, eat.”
A cry of distress burst from the lips of the unhappy girl, as apparently roused from her abstraction, she suffered the blanket to fall from her head, and stared wildly at her questioner.