These capricious changes were perhaps owing in a great measure to the presence of the whisky-keg, which the old warrior ever and anon took from its perch among the packs behind him, and applied to his lips, sorely, as it appeared, against the will of his companion, who seemed to remonstrate with him against a practice so unbecoming a warrior, while in the heart of a foeman’s country, and not a little also against his own sense of propriety:  for his whole course in relation to the keg was like that of a fish that dallies around the angler’s worm, uncertain whether to bite, now looking and longing, now suspecting the hook and retreating, now returning to look and long again, until, finally, unable to resist the temptation, it resolves upon a little nibble, which ends, even against its own will, in a furious bite.

It was in this manner the Piankeshaw addressed himself to his treasure; the effect of which was to render each returning paroxysm of affection and sorrow more energetic than before, while it gradually robbed of their malignity those fits of anger with which he was still occasionally seized.  But it added double fluency to his tongue; and, not content with muttering his griefs in his own language, addressing them to his own people, he finally began to pronounce them in English, directing them at Roland; whereby the latter was made acquainted with the cause of his sorrow.  This, it appeared, was nothing less than the loss of a son killed in battle with the Kentuckians, and left to moulder, with two or three Shawnee corses, in the cave by the river-side; which loss he commemorated a dozen times over, and with a most piteous voice, in a lament that celebrated the young warrior’s virtues:  “Lost son,” he ejaculated; “good huntaw:  kill bear, kill buffalo, catch fish, feed old squaw, and young squaw, and little papoose—­good son! mighty good son!  Good fighting-man:  kill man Virginnee, kill man Kentucky, kill man Injun-man; take scalp, squaw scalp, papoose scalp, man scalp, all kind scalp—­debbil good fighting man!  No go home no more Piankeshaw nation; no more kill bear; no more kill buffalo; no more catch fish; no more feed old squaw, and young squaw, and little papoose; no more kill man, no more take scalp—­lose own scalp, take it Long-knife man Kentucky; no more see old Piankeshaw son,—­leave dead, big hole Kentucky; no more see no more Piankeshaw son, Piankeshaw nation!”

With such lamentations, running at times into rage against his prisoner, as the representative of those who had shed the young warrior’s blood, the old Piankeshaw whiled away the hours of travel; ceasing them only when seized with a fit of affection, or when some mis-step of the horse sent a louder gurgle, with a more delicious odour, from the cask at his back; which music and perfume together were a kind of magic not to be resisted by one who stood so greatly in need of consolation.