Oak Openings Part 34

Still no explanation pa.s.sed between them. Margery remained near Peter for some time, administering to his wants, and otherwise demeaning herself much as a daughter might have done. At length le Bourdon joined them. The salutations were friendly, and the manner in which the mysterious chief regarded the equally mysterious bee-hunter, was not altogether without a certain degree of awe. Boden perceived this, and was not slow to comprehend that he owed this accession of influence to the scene which had occurred on the prairie.

"Is the great council ended, Peter?" asked the bee-hunter, when the little interval of silence had been observed.

"Yes, it over. No more council, now, on Prairie Round."

"And the chiefs--have they all gone on their proper paths? What has become of my old acquaintance, Crowsfeather? and all the rest of them--Bear's Meat, in particular?"

"All gone. No more council now. Agree what to do and so go away."

"But are red men always as good as their words? do they PERFORM always what they PROMISE?"

"Sartain. Ebbery man ought do what he say. Dat Injin law--no pale-face law, eh?"

"It may be the LAW, Peter, and a very good law it is; but we white men do not always MIND our own laws."

"Dat bad--Great Spirit don't like dat," returned Peter, looking grave, and slowly shaking his head. "Dat very bad. When Injin say he do it, den he do it, if he can. If can't, no help for it. Send squaw away now, Bourdon--bess not to let squaw hear what men say, or will always want to hear."

Le Bourdon laughed, as he turned to Margery and repeated these words.

The young wife colored, but she took it in good part, and ran up toward the palisaded lodge, like one who was glad to be rid of her companions.

Peter waited a few moments, then turning his head slowly in all directions, to make sure of not being overheard, he began to lay open his mind.

"You been on Prairie Round, Bourdon--you see Injin dere--chief, warrior, young men, hunter, all dere."

"I saw them all, Peter, and a goodly sight it was--what between paint, and medals, and bows and arrows and tomahawks, and all your bravery!"

"You like to see him, eh? Yes; he fine t'ing to look at. Well, dat council call togedder by ME--you know dat, too, Bourdon?"

"I have heard you say that such was your intention, and I suppose you did it, chief. They tell me you have great power among your own people, and that they do very much as you tell them to do."

Peter looked graver than ever at this remark; and one of his startling gleams of ferocity pa.s.sed over his dark countenance. Then he answered with his customary self-command.

"Sometime so," he said; "sometime not so. Yesterday, not so. Dere is chief dat want to put Peter under his foot! He try, but he no do it! I know Peter well, and know dat chief, too."

"This is news to me, Peter, and I am surprised to hear it. I did think that even the great Tec.u.mthe was scarcely as big a chief as you are yourself."

"Yes, pretty big chief; dat true. But, among Injin, ebbery man can speak, and nebber know which way council go. Sometime he go one way; sometime he go tudder. You hear Bough of Oak speak, eh? Tell me dat?"

"You will remember that I heard none of your speakers on Prairie Round, Peter. I do not remember any such orator as this Bough of Oak."

"He great rascal," said Peter, who had picked up some of the garrison expressions among those from whom he acquired the knowledge of English he possessed, such as it was. "Listen, Bourdon. Nebber bess stand too much in Peter's way."

The bee-hunter laughed freely at this remark; for his own success the previous day, and the impression he had evidently made on that occasion, emboldened him to take greater liberties with the mysterious chief than had been his wont.

"I should think that, Peter," cried the young man, gayly--"I should think all that. For one, I should choose to get out of it. The path you travel is your own, and all wise men will leave you to journey along it in your own fashion."

"Yes; dat bess way," answered the great chief, with admirable simplicity. "Don't like, when he says yes, to hear anudder chief say no.

Dat an't good way to do business."

These were expressions caught from the trading whites, and were often used by those who got their English from them. "I tell you one t'ing, Bourdon--dat Bough of Oak very foolish Injin if he put foot on my path."

"This is plain enough, Peter," rejoined le Bourdon, who was unconcernedly repairing some of the tools of his ordinary craft. "By the way, I am greatly in your debt, I learn, for one thing. They tell me I've got my squaw in my wigwam a good deal sooner, by your advice, than I might have otherwise done. Margery is now my wife, I suppose you know; and I thank you heartily, for helping me to get married so much sooner than I expected to be."

Here Peter grasped Bourdon by the hand, and poured out his whole soul, secret hopes, fears, and wishes. On this occasion he spoke in the Indian dialect--one of those that he knew the bee-hunter understood. And we translate what he said freely into English, preserving as much of the original idiom as the change of language will permit.

"Listen, hunter of the bee, the great medicine of the pale-faces, and hear what a chief that knows the red men is about to tell you. Let my words go into your ears; let them stay in your mind. They are words that will do you good. It is not wise to let such words come out again by the hole through which they have just entered.

"My young friend knows our traditions. They do not tell us that the Injins were Jews; they tell us that the Manitou created them red men.

They tell us that our fathers used these hunting-grounds ever since the earth was placed on the back of the big tortoise which upholds it. The pale-faces say the earth moves. If this be true, it moves as slowly as the tortoise walks. It cannot have gone far since the Great Spirit lifted his hand off it. If it move, the hunting-grounds move with it, and the tribes move with their own hunting-grounds. It may be that some of the pale-faces are lost, but no Injin is lost--the medicine-priest is mistaken. He has looked so often in his book, that he sees nothing but what is there. He does not see what is before his eyes, at his side, behind his back, all around him. I have known such Injins. They see but one thing; even the deer jump across their paths, and are not seen.

"Such are our traditions. They tell us that this land was given to the red men, and not to pale-faces. That none but red men have any right to hunt here. The Great Spirit has laws. He has told us these laws. They teach us to love our friends, and to hate our enemies. You don't believe this, Bourdon?" observing the bee-hunter to wince a little, as if he found the doctrine bad.

"This is not what our priests tell US," answered le Bourdon. "They tell us that the white man's G.o.d commands us to love all alike--to do GOOD to our enemies, to LOVE them that wish us HARM, and to treat all men as we would wish men to treat us." Peter was a good deal surprised at this doctrine, and it was nearly a minute before he resumed the discourse. He had recently heard it several times, and it was slowly working its way into his mind.

"Such are our traditions, and such are our laws. Look at me. Fifty winters have tried to turn my hair white. Time can do that. The hair is the only part of an Injin that ever turns white; all the rest of him is red. That is his color. The game knows an Injin by his color. The tribes know him. Everything knows him by his color. He knows the things which the Great Spirit has given him, in the same way. He gets used to them, and they are his acquaintances. He does not like strange things. He does not like strangers. White men are strangers, and he does not like to see them on his hunting-ground. If they come singly, to kill a few buffaloes, or to look for honey, or to catch beaver, the Injins would not complain. They love to give of their abundance. The pale-faces do not come in this fashion. They do not come as guests; they come as masters. They come and they stay. Each year of my fifty have I heard of new tribes that have been driven by them toward the setting sun.

"Bourdon, for many seasons I have thought of this. I have tried to find a way to stop them. There is but one. That way must the Injins try, or give up their hunting-grounds to the strangers. No nation likes to give up its hunting-grounds. They come from the Manitou, and one day he may ask to have them back again. What could the red men say, if they let the pale-faces take them away? No; this we cannot do. We will first try the one thing that is to be done."

"I believe I understand you, Peter," observed le Bourdon, finding that his companion paused. "You mean war. War, in the Injin mode of redressing all wrongs; war against man, woman, and child!"

Peter nodded in acquiescence, fixing his glowing eyes on the bee-hunter's face, as if to read his soul.

"Am I to understand, then, that you and your friends, the chiefs and their followers, that I saw on Prairie Round, mean to begin with US, half-a-dozen whites, of whom two are women, who happen to be here in your power--that OUR scalps are to be the first taken?"

"First!--no, Bourdon. Peter's hand has taken a great many, years since.

He has got a name for his deeds, and no longer dare go to the white men's forts. He does not look for Yankees, he looks for pale-faces. When he meets a pale-face on the prairies, or in the woods, he tries to get his scalp. This has he done for years, and many has he taken."

"This is a b.l.o.o.d.y account you are giving of yourself, Peter, and I would rather you should not have told it. Some such account I have heard before; but living with you, and eating, and drinking, and sleeping, and travelling in your company, I had not only hoped, but begun to think, it was not true."

"It is true. My wish is to cut off the pale-faces. This must be done, or the pale-faces will cut off the Injins. There is no choice. One nation or the other must be destroyed. I am a red man; my heart tells me that the pale-faces should die. They are on strange hunting-grounds, not the red men. They are wrong, we are right. But, Bourdon, I have friends among the pale-faces, and it is not natural to scalp our friends. I do not understand a religion that tells us to love our enemies, and to do good to them that do harm to us--it is a strange religion. I am a poor Injin, and do not know what to think! I shall not believe that any do this, till I see it. I understand that we ought to love our friends.

Your squaw is my daughter. I have called her daughter--she knows it, and my tongue is not forked, like a snake's. What it says, I mean. Once I meant to scalp your young squaw, because she was a pale-face squaw, and might be the mother of more. Now I do not mean to scalp her; my hand shall never harm her. My wisdom shall tell her to escape from the hands of red men who seek her scalp. You, too; now you are her husband, and are a great medicine-man of the bees, my hand shall not hurt you, either. Open your ears wide, for big truths must go into them."

Peter then related in full his attempt to procure a safe pa.s.sage for le Bourdon and Margery into the settlements, and its total failure. He owned that by his previous combinations he had awakened a spirit among the Indians that his present efforts could not quell. In a word, he told the whole story as it must have been made apparent to the reader, and he now came with his plans to defeat the very schemes that he had himself previously projected. One thing, however, that he did not conceal, filled the mind of his listener with horror, and created so strong an aversion to acting in concert with one who could even allude to it so coolly, that there was danger of breaking off all communications between the parties, and placing the result purely on force; a course that must have proved totally destructive to all the whites. The difficulty arose from a naive confession of Peter's, that he did not even wish to save any but le Bourdon and Margery, and that he still desired the deaths of all the others, himself!

CHAPTER XXIV.

For thou wert born of woman! Thou didst come, O Holiest! to this world of sin and gloom, Not in thy dread omnipotent array; And not by thunders strewed Was thy tempestuous road, Nor indignation burnt before thee on thy way.

But thee, a soft and naked child, Thy mother undefiled, In the rude manger laid to rest From off her virgin breast.

The blood of the bee-hunter curdled in his veins as he listened to Peter's business-like and direct manner of treating this terrible subject. Putting the most favorable view on his situation, it was frightful to look on. Admitting that this fanatical savage were sincere in all his professions of a wish to save him and Margery, and le Bourdon did not, nay, COULD not doubt this, after his calm but ferocious revelations; but, admitting all this to be true, how was he to escape with his charming bride, environed as they were by so large a band of hostile Indians? Then the thought of abandoning his other companions, and attempting, in cold selfishness, to escape with Margery alone, was more than he could bear. Never before, in his adventurous and bold life, had le Bourdon been so profoundly impressed with a sense of his danger, or so much overcome.

Still, our hero was not unmanned. He saw all the hazards, as it were, at a glance, and felt how terrible might be the result should they really fall into the hands of the warriors, excited to exercise their ingenuity in devising the means of torture; and he gazed into the frightful perspective with a manly steadiness that did him credit, even while he sickened at the prospect.

Peter had told his story in a way to add to its horrible character.

There was a manner of truth, of directness, of WORK, if one may use such an expression on such a subject, that gave a graphic reality to all he said. As if his task was done, the mysterious chief now coolly arose, and moved away to a little grove, in which the missionary and the corporal had thrown themselves on the gra.s.s, where they lay speculating on the probable course that the bands in their neighborhood would next pursue. So thoroughly possessed was the clergyman with his one idea, however, that he was expressing regret at his failure in the attempt to convince the savages that they were Jews, when Peter joined them.