This Evening He Was The Life Of The Party, And His Open
Communicative Disposition, Free From All Disguise, Soon Put Them
In Possession Of His History.
He had been a kind of prodigal son
in his native village; living a loose, heedless life, and
disregarding
The precepts and imperative commands of the chiefs.
He had, in consequence, been expelled from the village, but, in
nowise disheartened at this banishment, had betaken himself to
the society of the border Indians, and had led a careless,
haphazard, vagabond life, perfectly consonant to his humors;
heedless of the future, so long as he had wherewithal for the
present; and fearing no lack of food, so long as he had the
implements of the chase, and a fair hunting ground.
Finding him very expert as a hunter, and being pleased with his
eccentricities, and his strange and merry humor, Captain
Bonneville fitted him out handsomely as the Nimrod of the party,
who all soon became quite attached to him. One of the earliest
and most signal services he performed, was to exorcise the
insatiate kill-crop that hitherto oppressed the party. 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.
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