"
"Pshaw!" muttered Abiram; "the boy has killed a buck; or perhaps a
buffaloe; and he is sleeping by the carcass to keep off the wolves,
till day; we shall soon see him, or hear him bawling for help to bring
in his load."
"'Tis little help that a son of mine will call for, to shoulder a buck
or to quarter your wild-beef," returned the mother. "And you, Abiram,
to say so uncertain a thing! you, who said yourself that the red-skins
had been prowling around this place, no later than the yesterday--"
"I!" exclaimed her brother, hastily, as if anxious to retract an
error; "I said it then, and I say it now and so you will find it to
be. The Tetons are in our neighbourhood, and happy will it prove for
the boy if he is well shut of them."
"It seems to me," said Dr. Battius, speaking with the sort of
deliberation and dignity one is apt to use after having thoroughly
ripened his opinions by sufficient reflection,--"it seems to me, a man
but little skilled in the signs and tokens of Indian warfare,
especially as practised in these remote plains, but one, who I may say
without vanity has some insight into the mysteries of nature,--it
seems, then, to me, thus humbly qualified, that when doubts exist in a
matter of moment, it would always be the wisest course to appease
them.
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