A Throng Of Fair And Well-Remembered Faces Rose,
Vividly As Life, Before Me.
"There are good things," thought I, "in
the savage life, but what can it offer to replace those powerful and
ennobling influences that can reach unimpaired over more than three
thousand miles of mountains, forests and deserts?"
Before sunrise on the next morning our tent was down; we harnessed
our best horses to the cart and left the camp. But first we shook
hands with our friends the emigrants, who sincerely wished us a safe
journey, though some others of the party might easily have been
consoled had we encountered an Indian war party on the way. The
captain and his brother were standing on the top of a hill, wrapped
in their plaids, like spirits of the mist, keeping an anxious eye on
the band of horses below. We waved adieu to them as we rode off the
ground. The captain replied with a salutation of the utmost dignity,
which Jack tried to imitate; but being little practiced in the
gestures of polite society, his effort was not a very successful one.
In five minutes we had gained the foot of the hills, but here we came
to a stop. Old Hendrick was in the shafts, and being the very
incarnation of perverse and brutish obstinacy, he utterly refused to
move. Delorier lashed and swore till he was tired, but Hendrick
stood like a rock, grumbling to himself and looking askance at his
enemy, until he saw a favorable opportunity to take his revenge, when
he struck out under the shaft with such cool malignity of intention
that Delorier only escaped the blow by a sudden skip into the air,
such as no one but a Frenchman could achieve.
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