In Fact,
The Doltish Nez Perce, Who Had Seemed So Perfectly Insensible To
Rough Treatment Of Every Kind, By Which The Travellers Had
Endeavored To Elbow Him Out Of Their Society, Could Not Withstand
The Good-Humored Bantering, And Occasionally Sharp Wit Of
She-Wee-She.
He evidently quailed under his jokes, and sat
blinking like an owl in daylight, when pestered by the flouts and
peckings of mischievous birds.
At length his place was found
vacant at meal-time; no one knew when he went off, or whither he
had gone, but he was seen no more, and the vast surplus that
remained when the repast was over, showed what a mighty
gormandizer had departed.
Relieved from this incubus, the little party now went on
cheerily. She-wee-she kept them in fun as well as food. His
hunting was always successful; he was ever ready to render any
assistance in the camp or on the march; while his jokes, his
antics, and the very cut of his countenance, so full of whim and
comicality, kept every one in good-humor.
In this way they journeyed on until they arrived on the banks of
the Immahah, and encamped near to the Nez Perce lodges. Here
She-wee-she took a sudden notion to visit his people, and show
off the state of worldly prosperity to which he had so suddenly
attained. He accordingly departed in the morning, arrayed in
hunter's style, and well appointed with everything benefitting
his vocation. The buoyancy of his gait, the elasticity of his
step, and the hilarity of his countenance, showed that he
anticipated, with chuckling satisfaction, the surprise he was
about to give those who had ejected him from their society in
rags. But what a change was there in his whole appearance when he
rejoined the party in the evening! He came skulking into camp
like a beaten cur, with his tail between his legs. All his finery
was gone; he was naked as when he was born, with the exception of
a scanty flap that answered the purpose of a fig leaf. His
fellow-travellers at first did not know him, but supposed it to
be some vagrant Root Digger sneaking into the camp; but when they
recognized in this forlorn object their prime wag, She-wee-she,
whom they had seen depart in the morning in such high glee and
high feather, they could not contain their merriment, but hailed
him with loud and repeated peals of laughter.
She-wee-she was not of a spirit to be easily cast down; he soon
joined in the merriment as heartily as any one, and seemed to
consider his reverse of fortune an excellent joke. Captain
Bonneville, however, thought proper to check his good-humor, and
demanded, with some degree of sternness, the cause of his altered
condition. He replied in the most natural and self-complacent
style imaginable, "that he had been among his cousins, who were
very poor; they had been delighted to see him; still more
delighted with his good fortune; they had taken him to their
arms; admired his equipments; one had begged for this; another
for that" - in fine, what with the poor devil's inherent
heedlessness, and the real generosity of his disposition, his
needy cousins had succeeded in stripping him of all his clothes
and accoutrements, excepting the fig leaf with which he had
returned to camp.
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