We have come from the Missouri. Our country is far away."
"Do Peigans hunt with _war-arrows?_" asked Cameron, pointing to their
weapons.
This question seemed to perplex them, for they saw that their
interrogator knew the difference between a war and a hunting
arrow--the former being barbed in order to render its extraction from
the wound difficult, while the head of the latter is round, and can be
drawn out of game that has been killed, and used again.
"And do Peigans," continued Cameron, "come from a far country to trade
with the white men _with nothing?_"
Again the Indians were silent, for they had not an article to trade
about them.
Cameron now felt convinced that this party of Peigans, into whose
hands Joe Blunt and Henri had fallen, were nothing else than a war
party, and that the men now before him were a scouting party sent out
from them, probably to spy out his own camp, on the trail of which
they had fallen, so he said to them:--
"The Peigans are not wise men; they tell lies to the traders.
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