d's play; to
have retired from the council with threats of war, as easy.

And yet they craved pardon.

One chief after another rose with dignity in the ring and came to the
table to plead. An argument deserving mention was that the North
Wind had desired to test the friendship of the French for the Big
Knives,--set forth without a smile. To all pleaders Colonel Clark shook
his head. He, being a warrior, cared little whether such people were
friends or foes. He held them in the hollow of his hand. And at length
they came no more.

The very clouds seemed to hang motionless when he rose to speak, and you
who will may read in his memoir what he said. The Hungry Wolf caught the
spirit of it, and was eloquent in his own tongue, and no word of it was
lost. First he told them of the causes of war, of the thirteen council
fires with the English, and in terms that the Indian mind might grasp,
and how their old father, the French King, had joined the Big Knives in
this righteous fight.

"Warriors," said he, "here is a bloody belt and a white one; take which
you choose. But behave like men. Should it be the bloody path, you may
leave this town in safety to join the English, and we shall then see
which of us can stain our shirts with the most blood. But, should it be
the path of peace as brothers of the Big Knives and of their friends the
French, and then you go to your homes and listen to the bad birds,
you will then no longer deserve to be called men and warriors,--but
creatures of two tongues, which ought to be destroyed. Let us then part
this evening in the hope that the Great Spirit will bring us together
again with the sun as brothers."

So the council broke up. White man and red went trooping into town,
staring curiously at the guard which was leading the North Wind and his
friends to another night of meditation. What their fate would be no man
knew. Many thought the tomahawk.

That night the citizens of the little village of Pain Court, as St.
Louis was called, might have seen the sky reddened in the eastward. It
was the loom of many fires at Cahokia, and around them the chiefs of
the forty tribes--all save the three in durance vile--were gathered in
solemn talk. Would they take the bloody belt or the white one? No man
cared so little as the Pale Face Chief. When their eyes were turned from
the fitful blaze of the logs, the gala light of many candles greeted
them. And above the sound of their own speeches rose the mer