ng practised restraint
could with difficulty subdue, for the moment to arrive when he might
proceed to execute the wishes of the great chief, without whose
approbation and powerful protection he would not have dared to undertake
a step, that had so many opposers in the nation. But events had been
hastening to an issue, between the hostile parties; and the time had now
arrived, greatly to his secret and malignant joy, when he was free to
act his will.

The trapper found him distributing knives to the ferocious hags, who
received the presents chanting a low monotonous song, that recalled the
losses of their people, in various conflicts with the whites, and which
extolled the pleasures and glory of revenge. The appearance of such a
group was enough of itself to have deterred one, less accustomed to
such sights than the old man, from trusting himself within the circle of
their wild and repulsive rites.

Each of the crones, as she received the weapon, commenced a slow and
measured, but ungainly, step, around the savage, until the whole were
circling him in a sort of magic dance. The movements were timed, in
some degree, by the words of their songs, as were their gestures by
the ideas. When they spoke of their own losses, they tossed their
long straight locks of grey into the air, or suffered them to fall in
confusion upon their withered necks; but as the sweetness of returning
blow for blow was touched upon, by any among them, it was answered by a
common howl, as well as by gestures, that were sufficiently expressive
of the manner in which they were exciting themselves to the necessary
state of fury.

Into the very centre of this ring of seeming demons, the trapper now
stalked, with the same calmness and observation as he would have walked
into a village church. No other change was made by his appearance, than
a renewal of the threatening gestures, with, if possible, a still less
equivocal display of their remorseless intentions. Making a sign for
them to cease, the old man demanded--

"Why do the mothers of the Tetons sing with bitter tongues? The Pawnee
prisoners are not yet in their village; their young men have not come
back loaded with scalps!"

He was answered by a general howl, and a few of the boldest of the
furies even ventured to approach him, flourishing their knives within a
dangerous proximity of his own steady eye-balls.

"It is a warrior you see, and no runner of the Long-knives, whose face
grows paler