During the preceding conversation Baptiste had been seated at a little distance, his whole attention apparently engaged in mending a rent in his mocassins, but scarcely a word had escaped his watchful ear; and while he heard with secret delight that there was every chance of a fight with the Sioux, towards whom he cherished, as we have before observed, an unextinguished hatred, he could not view without much uneasiness the dangerous position in which Reginald’s party might be placed by a rupture between the Delawares and Osages, in a wild region where either party might so soon obtain the ready aid of the Pawnees, or some other warlike and marauding tribe; he resolved, however, for the present to content himself with putting his young leader on his guard, reserving a fuller explanation until he should have been able to ascertain the intentions of his Delaware friends: in this last endeavour he did not anticipate much difficulty, for the experienced woodsman had proved his steadiness to them in many a fray, and his courage and skill were no less proverbial among them than was his mortal enmity to the Dahcotahs. Nothing occurred during the ensuing night to disturb the quiet of the encampment, if that may be denominated quiet which was constantly interrupted by the chattering of wakeful squaws, the barking of dogs, the occasional chaunt of a warrior, and the distant howling of hungry wolves. Our hero’s dreams were, like his waking thoughts, full only of Prairie–bird; and when he rose at daybreak he expressed no wish to roam or hunt, but lingered within view of that small circular lodge, which contained the treasure that he valued most on earth. To the cautious warning of Baptiste he answered, smiling, “You confess yourself that you only suspect; you know our friends and their language, their wiles, and their stratagems. I trust the safety of my party to your sagacity; if your suspicions are turned into certainty, tell me, and I am ready to act.” As the young man left the lodge without even taking his cutlass or his rifle, Baptiste, looking after him, shrugged his shoulders, adding in an under tone, just loud enough to be heard by Monsieur Perrot, who sat at his side,— “‘Suspicion,’ ‘certainty,’ ‘sagacity,’—why surely he is mad! He talks as if plots and plans were measured out by rule amongst the red–skins, as they may be ‘mongst lords and princes in Europe! This comes of his towering, as they call it, amongst the Dutch, and other outlandish tribes. Surely, he’s lived enough in the territory to know that with these Ingians, and special near a Sioux trail, the first suspicion a man is like to get is an arrow in his ribs or a tomahawk in his brain. Capote–bleu, Maître Perrot, what do you think of your master, is he mad?”