American fiction -- 19th century; Historical fiction; Indians of North America -- Fiction
No attempt was made to bury the remains of Elksfoot, inasmuch as
our adventurers had no tools fit for such a purpose, and any merely
superficial interment would have been a sort of invitation to the wolves
to dig the body up again.
“Let him lean ag'in' the tree,” said Waring, as they moved on toward the
spot where the carcass of the deer was left, “and I'll engage nothin'
touches him. There's that about the face of man, Bourdon, that skears
the beasts; and if a body can only muster courage to stare them full in
the eye, one single human can drive before him a whull pack of wolves.”
“I've heard as much,” returned the bee-hunter, “but should not like
to be the 'human' to try the experiment That the face of man may have
terrors for a beast, I think likely; but hunger would prove more than
a match for such fear. Yonder is our venison, Waring; safe where I left
it.”
The carcass of the deer was divided, and each man shouldering his
burden, the two returned to the river, taking care to avoid the path
that led by the body of the dead Indian. As both labored with much
earnestness, everything was soon ready, and the canoe speedily left the
shore. The Kalamazoo is not in general a swift and turbulent stream,
though it has a sufficient current to carry away its waters without any
appearance of sluggishness. Of course, this character is not uniform,
reaches occurring in which the placid water is barely seen to move;
and others, again, are found, in which something like rapids, and even
falls, appear. But on the whole, and more especially in the part of the
stream where it was, the canoe had little to disturb it, as it glided
easily down, impelled by a light stroke of the paddle.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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