The Big Otter, R. M. Ballantyne [best free e book reader TXT] 📗

on his return journey, these had to be given to him. Poor fellow! he was much cast down on hearing of my decision in regard to him.

“But, sar,” he said, with a sorrowful countenance, “w’at for I no go vith you?”

“Because you are still a servant of the Fur Company, and not entitled to break your engagement. Besides, it is desirable that Big Otter’s people should know why he and Waboose have left them, and where they have gone; and if you explain matters correctly they will be quite satisfied, for they all respect the memory of Weeum the Good. Moreover, it is important that Mr Lumley should know what has prevented my return, both to relieve his mind, and prevent his sending out to search for me.”

“But sar,” objected Salamander, “w’at if me meets vid de vite scoundrils?”

“You must fight them, or run away from them.”

“Vell, me kin fight but me kin more joyfulerly run avay. But,” he continued, still objecting, “me got no grub.”

“Here is enough for one day,” I said, giving him all I possessed, “if you spin it out. To-morrow you can roast and eat your moccasins, and the third day you can starve. Surely that’s not hard on a strong young fellow like you; and if you push on fast enough you’ll reach the camp of the redskins early on the third day.”

Salamander sighed, but made no further objection, and half an hour later he left us.

As we now possessed only two horses, it naturally fell to my lot, being a light weight compared with Big Otter, to take Eve up behind me.

“We must get a horse for Waboose,” said the Indian, as we galloped over the prairie that day. “There is a tribe of Blackfoot Indians not far from here who have good horses, and understand the value of gold, for some of them have been to the settlements of the pale-faces. You tell me that you have gold?”

“Yes, I found a bag of five hundred gold pieces with the diamonds in Weeum’s packet.”

Big Otter looked at me inquiringly, but did not speak, yet I guessed his thoughts; for, though I had shown him Liston’s letter and the miniature, I had not shown him the gold or the jewels, and he must have wondered where I carried them; for he knew, of course, that they were necessarily somewhat bulky and were not in my wallet, which I had emptied more than once in his presence. I therefore explained to him:—

“You know, perhaps, that gold is heavy, and five hundred pieces are bulky and troublesome to carry; so I have had a piece of cloth made with a hole in the middle of it for my head to go through; one end of it hangs over my breast under my shirt, like a breastplate, and one end hangs over my back, and on each of these plates there are rows of little pockets, each pocket the size of a gold piece. Thus, you see, the gold does not feel heavy, being equally distributed, and it does not show, as it would if carried in a heap—besides, it forms a sort of armour—though I fear it would not resist a rifle-bullet!”

“Waugh!” exclaimed Big Otter, with an intelligent look.

“As to the diamonds, they are not bulky. I have concealed them in an under-belt round my waist.”

As Big Otter had predicted, we came to a large village of Blackfoot Indians two days afterwards, and were received with cordial friendship by the inhabitants, who knew my Indian well. He had visited them during his wanderings many a time, and once, at a very critical period in their history, had rendered important service to the tribe, besides saving the life of their chief.

A new tent was set aside for our use, and a small one pitched close to it for Waboose, whose dignified yet modest bearing made a profound impression on those children of the wilderness. They recognised, no doubt that Indian blood flowed in her veins, but that rather increased their respect for her, as it gave them, so to speak, a right to claim kinship with a girl who was obviously one of Nature’s aristocracy, besides possessing much of that refinement which the red-men had come to recognise as a characteristic of some of the best of the pale-faces.

Indeed, I myself found, now that I had frequent opportunities of conversing with Eve Liston, that the man who had been affectionately styled Weeum the Good by the Indians, had stored his child’s mind with much varied secular knowledge, such as Indians never possess, besides instilling into her the elevating and refining precepts of Christianity. Being of a poetical turn of mind, he had also repeated to Eve many long and beautiful pieces from our best poets, so that on more than one occasion the girl had aptly quoted several well-known passages—to my inexpressible amazement.

“I wonder,” said I, when we three were seated in our tent that night, refreshing ourselves with a choice morsel of baked buffalo-hump, with which the hospitable Blackfeet had supplied us, “how it comes to pass that Indians, who are usually rather fond of gifts, absolutely refuse to accept anything for the fine horse they have given to Waboose?”

“Perhaps,” said Eve, with a little smile, in which the extreme corners of her pretty mouth had the peculiar tendency to turn down instead of up—“perhaps it is because they are grateful. Indians are not altogether destitute of that feeling.”

“True, Eve, true; it must be that. Will you tell us, Big Otter, how you managed to make these fellows so grateful?”

“I saved the chief’s life,” returned the Indian, curtly.

“Yes; but how, and when?”

“Four summers have passed since then. I was returning from a trip to the Rocky Mountains when it happened. Many bad pale-faces were in the mountains at that time. They were idle bad men from many lands, who hated work and loved to fight. One of them had been killed by a Sioux Indian. They all banded together and swore that they would shoot every Indian they came across. They killed many—some even who were friendly to the white men. They did not ask to what tribe they belonged. They were ‘redskin varmints,’ that was enough!

“The Strong Elk, whose hospitality we enjoy to-night, was chief of the Blackfeet. I was on my way to visit him, when, one evening, I came upon the camp of the pale-faces. I knew that sometimes they were not friendly to the red-man, so I waited till dark, and then crept forward and listened. Their chief was loud-voiced and boastful. He boasted of how many Indians he had killed. I could have shot him where I lay and then escaped easily, but I spared him, for I wished to listen. They talked much of the Strong Elk. I understood very little. The language of the pale-face is difficult to understand, but I came to know that in two hours, when the moon should sink, they would attack him.

“I waited to hear no more. I ran like the hunted buffalo. I came to Strong Elk and told him. It was too late to move the camp, but we put it in a state of defence. When the pale-faces came, we were ready. Arrows, thick as the snowflakes in winter, met them when they came on, and many of them bit the dust. Some ran away. Some, who were brave, still came on and leaped our barricades. They fought like fiends. Their boastful chief saw Strong Elk and rushed at him. They grappled and fell. The pale-face had a keen knife. It was raised to strike. One moment more, and the Blackfoot chief had been in the happy hunting-grounds with his fathers, when the gun of Big Otter came down on the skull of the boastful one. It was enough. Strong Elk was saved—and he is grateful; waugh!”

“Well, he has reason to be!” said I, much impressed by the modest way in which the story was told. “And now,” I added, “since we have got a capital horse, and the journey before us is long, don’t you think we should start to-morrow!”

“Yes, to-morrow—and it is time for Waboose to rest. She is strong, but she has had much to weary her, and her grief is deep.”

With a kindly acknowledgment of the Indian’s thoughtful care of her, Eve rose and went to her tent. Big Otter lighted his pipe, and I lay down to meditate; but almost before I had time to think, my head drooped and I was in the land of forgetfulness.

It is not my purpose, good reader, to carry you step by step over the long, varied, and somewhat painful journey that intervened between us and Colorado at that time. It was interesting—deeply so—for we passed through some of the most beautiful as well as wildest scenery of the North American wilderness. We kept far to the westward, near the base of the Rocky Mountains, so as to avoid the haunts of civilised men. But space will not permit of more than a brief reference to this long journey.

I can only say that on arriving at a village belonging to a remote tribe of Indians, who were well-known to my guide, it was arranged that Big Otter and Waboose should stay with them, while I should go to the cities of the pale-faces and endeavour to convert my diamonds into cash. Happening to have a friend in Chicago I went there, and through his agency effected the sale of the diamonds, which produced a little over the sum mentioned by William Liston in his paper. This I took with me in the convenient form of bills on well-known mercantile firms in the region to which I was bound, and, having wrapped them in a piece of oiled silk and sewed them inside of the breastplate that contained my gold, I set off with a light heart, though somewhat weighted shoulders, to return to my friends in the Far West.