“Where is the village?”

“There,” said Mahto-Tatonka, pointing southward; “it will come in two days.”

“Will they go to the war?”

“Yes.”

No man is a philanthropist on the prairie.  We welcomed this news most cordially, and congratulated ourselves that Bordeaux’s interested efforts to divert The Whirlwind from his congenial vocation of bloodshed had failed of success, and that no additional obstacles would interpose between us and our plan of repairing to the rendezvous at La Bonte’s Camp.

For that and several succeeding days, Mahto-Tatonka and his friends remained our guests.  They devoured the relics of our meals; they filled the pipe for us and also helped us to smoke it.  Sometimes they stretched themselves side by side in the shade, indulging in raillery and practical jokes ill becoming the dignity of brave and aspiring warriors, such as two of them in reality were.

Two days dragged away, and on the morning of the third we hoped confidently to see the Indian village.  It did not come; so we rode out to look for it.  In place of the eight hundred Indians we expected, we met one solitary savage riding toward us over the prairie, who told us that the Indians had changed their plans, and would not come within three days; still he persisted that they were going to the war.  Taking along with us this messenger of evil tidings, we retraced our footsteps to the camp, amusing ourselves by the way with execrating Indian inconstancy.  When we came in sight of our little white tent under the big tree, we saw that it no longer stood alone.  A huge old lodge was erected close by its side, discolored by rain and storms, rotted with age, with the uncouth figures of horses and men, and outstretched hands that were painted upon it, well-nigh obliterated.  The long poles which supported this squalid habitation thrust themselves rakishly out from its pointed top, and over its entrance were suspended a “medicine-pipe” and various other implements of the magic art.  While we were yet at a distance, we observed a greatly increased population of various colors and dimensions, swarming around our quiet encampment.  Moran, the trapper, having been absent for a day or two, had returned, it seemed, bringing all his family with him.  He had taken to himself a wife for whom he had paid the established price of one horse.  This looks cheap at first sight, but in truth the purchase of a squaw is a transaction which no man should enter into without mature deliberation, since it involves not only the payment of the first price, but the formidable burden of feeding and supporting a rapacious horde of the bride’s relatives, who hold themselves entitled to feed upon the indiscreet white man.  They gather round like leeches, and drain him of all he has.