Chapter 27 - Page 2

The trapper laughed in his silent fashion, and muttered a few words to
himself before he addressed the chief--

"Let the Dahcotah open his ears very wide," he said 'that big words
may have room to enter. His friend the Big-knife comes with an empty
hand, and he says that the Teton must fill it."

"Wagh! Mahtoree is a rich chief. He is master of the prairies."

"He must give the dark-hair."

The brow of the chief contracted in an ominous frown, that threatened
instant destruction to the audacious squatter; but as suddenly
recollecting his policy, he craftily replied--

"A girl is too light for the hand of such a brave. I will fill it with
buffaloes."

"He says he has need of the light-hair, too; who has his blood in her
veins."

"She shall be the wife of Mahtoree; then the Long-knife will be the
father of a chief."

"And me," continued the trapper, making one of those expressive signs,
by which the natives communicate, with nearly the same facility as
with their tongues, and turning to the squatter at the same time, in
order that the latter might see he dealt fairly by him; "he asks for a
miserable and worn-out trapper."

The Dahcotah threw his arm over the shoulder of the old man, with an
air of great affection, before he replied to this third and last
demand.

"My friend is old," he said, "and cannot travel far. He will stay with
the Tetons, that they may learn wisdom from his words. What Sioux has
a tongue like my father? No; let his words be very soft, but let them
be very clear. Mahtoree will give skins and buffaloes. He will give
the young men of the Pale-faces wives, but he cannot give away any who
live in his own lodge."

Perfectly satisfied, himself, with this laconic reply, the chief was
moving towards his expecting counsellors, when suddenly returning, he
interrupted the translation of the trapper by adding--

"Tell the Great Buffaloe" (a name by which the Tetons had already
christened Ishmael), "that Mahtoree has a hand which is always open.
See," he added, pointing to the hard and wrinkled visage of the
attentive Esther, "his wife is too old, for so great a chief. Let him
put her out of his lodge. Mahtoree loves him as a brother. He is his
brother. He shall have the youngest wife of the Teton. Tachechana, the
pride of the Sioux girls, shall cook his venison, and many braves will
look at him with longing minds. Go, a Dahcotah is generous."

The singular coolness, with which the Teton concluded this audacious
proposal, confounded even the practised trapper. He stared after the
retiring form of the