Red Plume — page 61: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

EBEN LIONIZED. 61 his fancied rights could not be invaded by any good-looking young man with black hair and eyes. He felt that he could only wait and watch his chances, hoping that the Fat Bear would not take it into his.head to die in earnest, as he seri- ously doubted his ability to resuscitate him a second time. During the day, several large parties of Blackfeet: came from different.directions and joined the band, until nearly three hundred lodges were congregated in the valley. They were concentrating their forces for the purpose of combined attacks upon trading or trapping parties and such Indians as were friendly to the whites, and the scene was a ANay and martial one, after the red-skin fashion. The new-comers were soon made acquainted with Eben and with the wonderful things he had performed by the aid of his big medicine arrow, which he always carried about with him, as ifit was a talisman. Their praise, wonder and curiosity were very flattering to the Yankee, but were also a source of considerable embarrassment, as he was prevented from: enjoy- ing the society of his cousin, and as he was continually fearful that some great man among them might die suddenly, and he might be called upon to rescue him from the graye. Every ~ arrival of a chief counted one chance against him, and ne began to wish that he was well out of the scrape. In the evening all the men gaye themselves up to a earad dance and carousal. After the dance, they made amends for their usual taciturnity, by talking as loud and long as any stump-orator when election day is near, with this exception, that the politician brags of his party, and abuses the opposite political nuisance, while the chivalrous Blackfeet boasted im- mensely of their own deeds, past and to come, and denounced all their antagonists as dogs, squaws and old women, whom it was always perfectly easy to whip, when they could find the cowardly wretches. When they had finished their boasting, they betook them- selyes to gambling, in which they were fully as enthusiastic as’ in their oratorical displays. Some seated themselves on the grass in groups, and played with dice and small stones, more | eagerly and excitedly than civilized gamesters, a warrior fre- quently losing all he possessed in the world, on the turn of a die. But the greater number engaged in the favorite game comicbooks.com