The Next Morning, At Break Of
Day, He Borrowed A Gun, And Was Off Among The Hills, Nor Was
Anything
More seen of him until a few minutes after the party had
encamped for the evening, when he again made
His appearance, in
his usual frank, careless manner, and threw down the carcass of
another noble deer, which he had borne on his back for a
considerable distance.
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. 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.
Seeing his total want of care and forethought, Captain Bonneville
determined to let him suffer a little, in hopes it might prove a
salutary lesson; and, at any rate, to make him no more presents
while in the neighborhood of his needy cousins. He was left,
therefore, to shift for himself in his naked condition; which,
however, did not seem to give him any concern, or to abate one
jot of his good-humor. In the course of his lounging about the
camp, however, he got possession of a deer skin; whereupon,
cutting a slit in the middle, he thrust his head through it, so
that the two ends hung down before and behind, something like a
South American poncho, or the tabard of a herald. These ends he
tied together, under the armpits; and thus arrayed, presented
himself once more before the captain, with an air of perfect
self-satisfaction, as though he thought it impossible for any
fault to be found with his toilet.
A little further journeying brought the travellers to the petty
village of Nez Perces, governed by the worthy and affectionate
old patriarch who had made Captain Bonneville the costly present
of the very fine horse.
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