Raymond
Grinned And Giggled, And Made Several Futile Attempts At Repartee.
Knowing the impolicy and even danger of suffering myself to be placed
in a ludicrous light among the Indians, I maintained a rigid
inflexible countenance, and wholly escaped their sallies.
In the morning I found, to my great disgust, that the camp was to
retain its position for another day. I dreaded its languor and
monotony, and to escape it, I set out to explore the surrounding
mountains. I was accompanied by a faithful friend, my rifle, the
only friend indeed on whose prompt assistance in time of trouble I
could implicitly rely. Most of the Indians in the village, it is
true, professed good-will toward the whites, but the experience of
others and my own observation had taught me the extreme folly of
confidence, and the utter impossibility of foreseeing to what sudden
acts the strange unbridled impulses of an Indian may urge him. When
among this people danger is never so near as when you are unprepared
for it, never so remote as when you are armed and on the alert to
meet it any moment. Nothing offers so strong a temptation to their
ferocious instincts as the appearance of timidity, weakness, or
security.
Many deep and gloomy gorges, choked with trees and bushes, opened
from the sides of the hills, which were shaggy with forests wherever
the rocks permitted vegetation to spring. A great number of Indians
were stalking along the edges of the woods, and boys were whooping
and laughing on the mountain-sides, practicing eye and hand, and
indulging their destructive propensities by following birds and small
animals and killing them with their little bows and arrows.
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