The Lost Hunter | Page 8

him, but pursue the departing Indians.
For five minutes, perhaps, they paddled on in silence, each apparently unwilling to betray any curiosity about a circumstance that engrossed the thoughts of both. At last the woman spoke.
"The Great Spirit has taught the words of the wigwam to the man with the Long Beard."
A shrug of the shoulders and another hugh! were the only notice taken by her companion of the observation. Again a silence followed, which was broken this time by the man. As if to express his dissent from the conjecture of the squaw, he said,
"The Long Beard has drunk of the streams that run towards the setting sun, and there he learned the speech of warriors. Did he charm the ears of Pe��na with their sounds when he taught her to run his errands?"
The blood crimsoned deeper into the cheeks of the woman, but with an effort she subdued the rising feeling of resentment, while she answered,
"Let Ohquamehud listen, and the darkness shall depart from his path. The sun has eaten the snows of fifteen winters, and fifteen times the song of the summer birds have been silent since the Long Beard came to the river of the Pequots. And the pale faces desired his companionship, but he turned away his steps from theirs, and built his wigwam on the Salmon Isle, for the heart of the Long Beard was lonely. There he speaks to the Great Spirit in the morning clouds. The young cub that sprung from the loins of Huttamoiden had already put on his moccasins for the Spirit land, and the tears of Pe��na were falling fast when the Long Beard came to her wigwam. And he stretched his arms over the boy and asked of the Great Spirit that he might stay to lead his mother by the hand when she should be old and blind, and to pluck the thorns from her feet. And the Great Spirit listened, for he loves the Long Beard, and unloosed the moccasins from the feet of the boy, and the fire in his breath went out, and he slept, and was well. Therefore is Pe��na a bird to fly with the messages of the Long Beard. But this is the first time she has heard from white lips the language of the red man."
The Indian could now comprehend the conduct of the woman. It was natural she should be grateful to the savior of her child's life, and ready to show the feeling by the little means in her power. Could he have looked into her heart, he would have seen that there was more than mere gratitude there. Holden's conduct, so different from that of other white men; the disinterested nature of his character showing itself in acts of kindness to all; his seclusion; his gravity, which seldom admitted of a smile; his imposing appearance, and his mysterious communings with some unseen power--for she had often seen him as he stood to watch for the rising sun, and heard his wild bursts of devotion--had made a deep impression on the squaw, and invested him with the attributes of a superior being; a feeling which was participated in by many of the Indians.
But if Ohquamehud could have seen all this, it would have served only to aggravate the suspicions he begun to entertain about the Long Beard, as he and the woman called Holden. As an Indian, he was suspicious of even the kindness of the white man, lest some evil design might lurk beneath. What wonder, when we consider the relation of one to the other? How much of our history is that of the wolf, who charged the lamb, who drank below him, with muddying the stream?
Ohquamehud, a Pequot by birth, was a stranger who, but a few days before, had come from a Western tribe, into which he had been adopted, either to visit the graves of his fathers, or for some of those thousand causes of relationship, or friendship, or policy, which will induce the North American Indian to journey hundreds of miles, and saw the Recluse, for the first time, that morning. If the gratitude of the squaw was explained, which, he doubted not, was undeserved, the Long Beard's knowledge of the Indian tongue was not. How it was that he should be thus familiar with and speak it with a grace and fluency beyond the power of the few scattered members of the tribe in the neighborhood, the most of whom had almost lost all remembrance of it, was to him an interesting mystery. He mused in silence over his thoughts, occasionally stopping the paddle and passing his hand over his brow, as if to recall some circumstance or idea that constantly eluded his grasp. In this manner they proceeded until, on turning