tain him, in those moments he believed to be his
last, awaited the pleasure of his young friend, with a meekness and
patience that he had acquired by his association with that remarkable
race. At length the gaze of the Pawnee began to waver; and then quick,
flashing glances were turned from the countenance of the old man to the
air, and from the air to his deeply marked lineaments again, as if the
spirit, which governed their movements, was beginning to be troubled.

"Father," the young brave finally answered in a voice of confidence and
kindness, "I have heard your words. They have gone in at my ears,
and are now within me. The white-headed Long-knife has no son; the
Hard-Heart of the Pawnees is young, but he is already the oldest of his
family. He found the bones of his father on the hunting ground of the
Osages, and he has sent them to the prairies of the Good Spirits. No
doubt the great chief, his father, has seen them, and knows what is part
of himself. But the Wahcondah will soon call to us both; you, because
you have seen all that is to be seen in this country; and Hard-Heart,
because he has need of a warrior, who is young. There is no time for the
Pawnee to show the Pale-face the duty, that a son owes to his father."

"Old as I am, and miserable and helpless as I now stand, to what I
once was, I may live to see the sun go down in the prairie. Does my son
expect to do as much?"

"The Tetons are counting the scalps on my lodge!" returned the young
chief, with a smile whose melancholy was singularly illuminated by a
gleam of triumph.

"And they find them many. Too many for the safety of its owner, while he
is in their revengeful hands. My son is not a woman, and he looks on the
path he is about to travel with a steady eye. Has he nothing to whisper
in the ears of his people, before he starts? These legs are old, but
they may yet carry me to the forks of the Loup river."

"Tell them that Hard-Heart has tied a knot in his wampum for every
Teton," burst from the lips of the captive, with that vehemence
with which sudden passion is known to break through the barriers of
artificial restraint "if he meets one of them all, in the prairies of
the Master of Life, his heart will become Sioux!"

"Ah that feeling would be a dangerous companion for a man with white
gifts to start with on so solemn a journey," muttered the old man in
English. "This is not what the good Moravians said to the councils of
the Delawares, nor w