“Well, I'll tell you, Boss, what I mean, more plain-like. You know that patch of wood borderin' on the prairie, where you set me to cut, t'other day?”
“Well, then, this mornin' I was cuttin' down as big an oak as ever grew in Michigan, when, as it went thunderin' through the branches, with noise enough to scare every buffalo within a day's hunt, up started, not twenty yards from it's tip, ten or a dozen or so of Injins, all gruntin' like pigs, and looking as fierce as so many red devils. They didn't look quite pleasant, I calcilate.”
“Indeed,” remarked Mr. Heywood, musingly; “a party of Pottawattamies I presume, from the Fort. We all know there is a large encampment of them in the neighborhood, but they are our friends.”
“May-be so,” continued Ephraim Giles, “but these varmint didn't look over friendly, and then I guess the Pottawattamies don't dress in war paint, 'cept when they dance for liquor.”
“And are you quite sure these Indians were in their war paint?” asked his master, with an ill-concealed look of anxiety.
“No mistake about it,” replied Giles, still whittling, “and I could almost swear, short as the squint was I got of 'em, that they were part of those who fought us on the Wabash, two years ago.”
“How so, den, you are here, Gile. If dey wicked Injin, how you keep your funny little cap, an' your scalp under de cap?”
This question was asked by the Canadian, who had hitherto, while puffing his pipe, listened indifferently to the conversation, but whose attention had now become arrested, from the moment that his fellow-laborer had spoken of the savages, so strangely disturbed by him.
“Well, I don't exactly know about that, myself,” returned the soldier, slightly raising his cap and scratching his crown, as if in recollection of some narrowly escaped danger. “I reckon, tho', when I see them slope up like a covey of red-legged pattridges, my heart was in my mouth, for I looked for nothin' else but that same operation: but I wur just as well pleased, when, after talkin' their gibberish, and makin' all sorts of signs among themselves, they made tracks towards the open prairie.”
“And why did you not name this, the instant you got home?” somewhat sternly questioned Mr. Heywood.