"Father," the young brave finally answered in a voice of confidence
and kindness, "I have heard your words. They have gone in at my ears,
and are now within me. The white-headed Long-knife has no son; the
Hard-Heart of the Pawnees is young, but he is already the oldest of
his family. He found the bones of his father on the hunting ground of
the Osages, and he has sent them to the prairies of the Good Spirits.
No doubt the great chief, his father, has seen them, and knows what is
part of himself. But the Wahcondah will soon call to us both; you,
because you have seen all that is to be seen in this country; and
Hard-Heart, because he has need of a warrior, who is young. There is
no time for the Pawnee to show the Pale-face the duty, that a son owes
to his father."
"Old as I am, and miserable and helpless as I now stand, to what I
once was, I may live to see the sun go down in the prairie. Does my
son expect to do as much?"
"The Tetons are counting the scalps on my lodge!" returned the young
chief, with a smile whose melancholy was singularly illuminated by a
gleam of triumph.
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