So far, all was right; it was nothing more than
what the Comanches would have clone themselves in the land of the
Pawnees; but what had angered the Comanche warriors was, that the
hundred horses thus borrowed in necessity, had never been returned,
although the party had arrived at the village two moons ago.
When the Pawnees heard that we had no other causes for complaint, they
showed, by their expressions of friendship, that the ties of long
brotherhood were not to be so easily broken; and indeed the Pawnees had,
some time before, sent ten of their men with one hundred of their finest
horses, to compensate for those which they had taken and rather
ill-treated, in their hurried escape from the Kiowas. But they had taken
a different road from that by which we had come, and consequently we had
missed them. Of course, the council broke up, and the Indians, who had
remained on the other side of the river, were invited in the village to
partake of the Pawnee hospitality.
Gabriel and I soon accosted the strangely-dressed foreigners. In fact,
we were seeking each other, and I learned that they had been a long time
among the Pawnees, and would have passed over to the Comanches, in order
to confer with me on certain political matters, had it not been that
they were aware of the great antipathy the chiefs of that tribe
entertained against the inhabitants of the United States.
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