Page:Barbour--Metipoms Hostage.djvu/104

90 “How you know water there, Sequanawah?”

“Me smell um,” was the grave reply.

As David couldn’t see the Indian’s face, he was unable to say whether the latter was  in earnest or not, and the matter ever remained a mystery to him. Sitting again, Sequanawah emptied a tiny bit of powder onto a flat stone, laid a few wisps of birch bark  above it, and set fire with the flint of his  musket. Then a half-dozen twigs were placed on the little blaze and the Indians  carefully filled their pipes with tobacco and  lighted them. After that there was no word uttered until the weed was smoked.

Then Sequanawah grunted: “Hub!” and the others arose.

“How much more walk?” asked David.

Sequanawah looked around at the clustering trees and up at the sky that now showed gray above them. “Pausochu,” he answered. (“A little way.”)

What was to happen to him when the journey was ended, David did not know, but he was weary through and through and almost  any fate seemed preferable to further toiling  up and down hills. He no longer doubted that his destination was the village of the