Beadle's Dime Novels, No. 91: The Lost Cache — page 45: what you’re looking at

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

A COMMITTEE. 47 % make a visit to their old camping-ground, they indignantly rejected the proposition.» Had the Crows became old wo- men, that they could do nothing but move from one camp to another? they asked. .Was the Big Knife getting to be a cow- ard, that he could lead them nowhere but. into hiding-places, where they could see neither friend nor; foe?) , The Big Knife was no coward; and railed at them violent- ly for their refusal’ to listen to his proposition. Being in a very bad humor, he troubled himself about, them no more, but took unto himself a confidant, a scoundrelly cut-throat of a Crow, whose unmusical name signified No Smoke. To No Smoke he told as much as he chose about the hidden'treasure, — and so filled his,imagination with accounts of what might be done with so much gold, that the Indian became as avaricious and enthusiastic as his preeeptor, and agreed to aid him in any effort he might make to gain possession. of the property, . Adams agreeing to make, an equitable division of it when they should get it. Thus the season was wearing away in comparative idle ness, until the Indians determined that they would not. stand such nonsense any longer, and appointed a’ deputation of their oldest and stoutest warriors, to wait .on the Big Knife and compel him to do something, Adams received them. under, the shade of a “spreading oak, and asked them what they wanted. “Weare poor,” said the spokesman.» ‘* We ave few srerses, we have scarcely any blankets, we have little powder and lead, we have nothing but meat and roots to eat, neither have we cloth and ornaments for our women. . While Mus-to-qua was sick we were idle for a long time, and when he went to the spirit-land, and left us in the care of the Big Knife, we . ‘promised to obey him, and: believed’ that we should then do something that would repay us for our lost time. But the days pass by, and we are still idle, our limbs are growing old and stiff for want of exercise, and we are getting poorer than the little men of the mountains. We shall ‘be compelled to confess that we are old women, and to catch fish and dry them at the rivers on the plains. But the Crows were not made for that; they are birds of prey; and we know that there are white men on the plains who have all those things comiclooks.comn