The chieftain thus left alone was confounded for an instant; but,
recovering himself with true Indian shrewdness, burst into a loud laugh,
and affected to turn off the whole matter as a piece of pleasantry. Mr.
Stuart by no means relished such equivocal joking, but it was not his
policy to get into a quarrel; so he joined with the best grace he could
assume in the merriment of the jocular giant; and, to console the latter
for the refusal of the horse, made him a present of twenty charges of
powder. They parted, according to all outward professions, the best
friends in the world; it was evident, however, that nothing but the
smallness of his own force, and the martial array and alertness of the
white men, had prevented the Crow chief from proceeding to open outrage.
As it was, his worthy followers, in the course of their brief interview,
had contrived to purloin a bag containing almost all the culinary
utensils of the party.
The travellers kept on their way due east, over a chain of hills. The
recent rencontre showed them that they were now in a land of danger,
subject to the wide roamings of a predacious tribe; nor, in fact, had
they gone many miles before they beheld sights calculated to inspire
anxiety and alarm. From the summits of some of the loftiest mountains,
in different directions, columns of smoke be-an to rise.
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