“A most convenient practice,” replied Charley, “I’ll adopt it at once.”
Charley turned to his next neighbour with the intent to beg of him to eat his remnant of the feast.
“Bless my heart, Jacques, I’ve no chance with the fellow on my left hand; he’s stuffed quite full already, and is not quite done with his own share.”
“Never fear,” replied his friend, looking at the individual in question, who was languidly lifting a marrowbone to his lips; “he’ll do it easy. I knows the gauge o’ them chaps, and for all his sleepy looks just now he’s game for a lot more.”
“Impossible,” replied Charley, looking in despair at his unfinished viands and then at the Indian. A glance round the circle seemed further to convince him that if he did not eat it himself there were none of the party likely to do so.
“You’ll have to give him a good lump o’ tobacco to do it, though; he won’t undertake so much for a trifle, I can tell you.” Jacques chuckled as he said this, and handed his own portion over to another Indian, who readily undertook to finish it for him.
“He’ll burst; I feel certain of that,” said Charley, with a deep sigh, as he surveyed his friend on the left.
At last he took courage to propose the thing to him, and just as the man finished the last morsel of his own repast, Charley placed his own plate before him, with a look that seemed to say, “Eat it, my friend, _if you can._”
The Indian, much to his surprise, immediately commenced to it, and in less than half-an-hour the whole was disposed of.
During this scene of gluttony, one of the chiefs entertained the assembly with a wild and most unmusical chant, to which he beat time on a sort of tambourine, while the women outside the enclosure beat a similar accompaniment.
“I say, master,” whispered Jacques, “it seems to my observation that the fellow you call Redfeather eats less than any Injin I ever saw. He has got a comrade to eat more than half his share; now that’s strange.”
“It won’t appear strange, Jacques, when I tell you that Redfeather has lived much more among white men than Indians during the last ten years; and although voyageurs eat an enormous quantity of food, they don’t make it a point of honour, as these fellows seem to do, to eat much more than enough. Besides, Redfeather is a very different man from those around him; he has been partially educated by the missionaries on Playgreen Lake, and I think has a strong leaning towards them.”