Page:The life and adventures of James P. Beckwourth, mountaineer, scout, pioneer, and chief of the Crow nation of Indians (IA lifeadventuresof00beckrich).pdf/241

Rh blankets and wearing apparel, but still not much injured for the Indian trade. I also recovered all his horses, with the exception of five, which had been taken to Bear's Tooth's camp. I had the goods well secured, and a strong guard of my relatives placed over them.

The reader may perhaps inquire what restrained the infuriated Crows from molesting the rescued party on their way to the village. Simply this: when an Indian has another one mounted behind him, the supposition is that he has taken him prisoner, and is conducting him to head-quarters. While thus placed, the Indian having him in charge is responsible with his life for his security; if he fails to protect him, himself and all his kindred are disgraced; an outrage upon the prisoner is construed into pusillanimity on the part of the custodian. Prisoners are also safe while in custody in the village; their inviolability is then transferred to the responsibility of the chief. This is Indian morals.

I was informed subsequently that the Englishman, as soon as he approached me, cocked his gun, intending to shoot me. It was well for him, as well as his party, that he altered his mind; for, if he had harmed me, there would have not been a piece of him left the size of a five-penny bit. I was doing all that lay in my power to save the lives of the party from a parcel of ferocious and exasperated savages; his life depended by the slightest thread over the yawning abyss of death; the slightest misadventure would have proved fatal. At that moment he insulted me in the grossest manner. The language that he addressed to me extorted a look of contempt from me, but I had not time for anger. I was suspected of complicity with the Indians, or, rather, of having instigated the fiendish plot. No man of common sense could entertain such a suspicion, when he sees the part I took in the affair. Had I conspired the tragedy, I had but to rest in my bed until the deed was consummated. Every man would have been killed, and no one but the conspirators have known their fate. To be sure, I was in the service of the American Fur Company, and Fitzpatrick was trading upon his own account; but that could afford no motive to conspire his death. I had not the faintest objection to his selling everything he had to the