Chapter 18 - Page 2

the skin,
which in itself is so well designed to aid the effect of a martial
expression, had received an additional aspect of wild ferocity from
the colours of the war-paint. But, as if he disdained the usual
artifices of his people, he bore none of those strange and horrid
devices, with which the children of the forest are accustomed, like
the more civilised heroes of the moustache, to back their reputation
for courage, contenting himself with a broad and deep shadowing of
black, that served as a sufficient and an admirable foil to the
brighter gleamings of his native swarthiness. His head was as usual
shaved to the crown, where a large and gallant scalp-lock seemed to
challenge the grasp of his enemies. The ornaments that were ordinarily
pendant from the cartilages of his ears had been removed, on account
of his present pursuit. His body, notwithstanding the lateness of the
season, was nearly naked, and the portion which was clad bore a
vestment no warmer than a light robe of the finest dressed deer-skin,
beautifully stained with the rude design of some daring exploit, and
which was carelessly worn, as if more in pride than from any unmanly
regard to comfort. His leggings were of bright scarlet cloth, the only
evidence about his person that he had held communion with the traders
of the Pale-faces. But as if to furnish some offset to this solitary
submission to a womanish vanity, they were fearfully fringed, from the
gartered knee to the bottom of the moccasin, with the hair of human
scalps. He leaned lightly with one hand on a short hickory bow, while
the other rather touched than sought support, from the long, delicate
handle of an ashen lance. A quiver made of the cougar skin, from which
the tail of the animal depended, as a characteristic ornament, was
slung at his back, and a shield of hides, quaintly emblazoned with
another of his warlike deeds, was suspended from his neck by a thong
of sinews.

As the trapper approached, this warrior maintained his calm upright
attitude, discovering neither an eagerness to ascertain the character
of those who advanced upon him, nor the smallest wish to avoid a
scrutiny in his own person. An eye, that was darker and more shining
than that of the stag, was incessantly glancing, however, from one to
another of the stranger party, seemingly never knowing rest for an
instant.

"Is my brother far from his village?" demanded the old man, in the
Pawnee language, after examining the paint, and those other little
signs by which a practised eye knows the tribe of the warrior he
encounters in the American deserts, with the same readiness, and by
the same sort of mysterious observation, as that by which the seaman
knows the distant sail.