An expression of sadness passed over Charley’s face as his friend said this.
“You are right in the last particular,” he said, with a sigh. “Mr. Whyte is so rough and overbearing that the Indians are beginning to dislike him. Some of the more clear-sighted among them see that a good deal of this lies in mere manner, and have penetration enough to observe that in all his dealings with them he is straightforward and liberal; but there are a set of them who either don’t see this, or are so indignant at the rough speeches he often makes, and the rough treatment he sometimes threatens, that they won’t forgive him, but seem to be nursing their wrath. I sometimes wish he was sent to a district where the Indians and traders are, from habitual intercourse, more accustomed to each other’s ways, and so less likely to quarrel.”
“Have the Indians, then, used any open threats?” asked Harry.
“No, not exactly; but through an old man of the tribe, who is well affected towards us, I have learned that there is a party among them who seem bent on mischief.”
“Then we may expect a row some day or other. That’s pleasant!—What think you, Hammy?” said Harry, turning to his friend.
“I think that it would be anything but pleasant,” he replied; “and I sincerely hope that we shall not have occasion for a row.”
“You’re not afraid of a fight, are you, Hamilton?” asked Charley.
The peculiarly bland smile with which Hamilton usually received any remark that savoured of banter overspread his features as Charley spoke, but he merely replied—
“Do you know any of the Indians who are so anxious to vent their spleen on our worthy bourgeois?” asked Harry, as he seated himself on a rocky eminence commanding a view of the richly-wooded slopes, dotted with huge masses of rock that had fallen from the beetling cliffs behind the creek.
“Yes, I do,” replied Charley; “and, by the way, one of them—the ringleader—is a man with whom you are acquainted, at least by name. You’ve heard of an Indian called Misconna?”
“What!” exclaimed Harry, with a look of surprise; “you don’t mean the blackguard mentioned by Redfeather, long ago, when he told us his story on the shores of Lake Winnipeg—the man who killed poor Jacques’s young wife?”