[Monsieur Violet by Frederick Marryat]@TWC D-Link bookMonsieur Violet CHAPTER VIII 16/17
He and Roche, when I parted with them, had directed their steps back to the Shoshones; they delighted too much in a life of wild and perilous adventure to leave it so soon, and the Irishman vowed that if he ever returned within the pale of civilization, it would be to Monterey, the only place where, in his long wanderings, he had found a people congenial to his own ideas. When, in the meeting of a great council, I apprised the tribe of the attack made upon the boat-house by the Umbiquas, and of its results, there was a loud burst of satisfaction.
I was made a War-Chief on the spot; and it was determined that a party should immediately proceed to chastise the Umbiquas.
My father did not allow me to join it, as there was much to be done in settling the affairs of the Prince, and paying the debts he had contracted at Fort Hall; consequently, I led a clerk's life for two months, writing accounts, &c .-- rather a dull occupation, for which I had not the smallest relish.
During this time, the expedition against the Umbiquas had been still more successful than that against the Crows, and, in fact, that year was a glorious one for the Shoshones, who will remember it a long while, as a period in which leggings and moccasins were literally sewn with human hair, and in which the blanched and unburied bones of their enemies, scattered on the prairie, scared even the wolves from crossing the Buena Ventura.
Indeed, that year was so full of events, that my narration would be too much swelled if I were to enumerate them all. I had not forgotten the cachette at our landing-place.
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