"What can they do that for?" asked Roger, who was hardly able to repress a shudder at the grim sight.
"I asked Fields, and he told me that, after the platforms break down, the skulls of the dead persons are preserved, and placed here. Although in life, perhaps, the brave has beaten his squaw many times, after he is gone she can be found here every day, talking to this poor old reminder of his presence on earth. Yes, he said she would caress it, even if, when the brave was alive, he had nothing but blows for her."
"Well, they are a queer lot," Roger confessed, "and I suppose whites never could understand them. Ugh! let's get away from here, Dick. We ought to find something more cheerful to look at than this graveyard of mummies." (Note 8.)
"I'm wondering why they have so many yellow dogs around," Dick remarked; "but then, all Indians like baked dog; and Fields says they serve them up on any special occasion when they give a great feast. You know they have no regular time for eating, like white people, but wait till they're real hungry, and then just fill up till they look as if they would burst."
"Why, yes," Roger went on to say, "Pat O'Mara used to tell about Indians who would go hungry for three days, just to get their appetite good and gnawing, and then start in and eat for two hours. I don't think that would suit me."
Tiring at length of peering around among the painted lodges, and seeing the queer sights with which the Indian village seemed to be filled--queer to their eyes, although perfectly natural to the dusky natives who knew no other way of living--the boys finally rejoined the rest of the party.
Captain Lewis was only making a temporary camp as yet, and sticking by his boats. He believed that the Mandans meant to be the best of friends to his little force; still, many of the frontiersmen had but a poor opinion of all redmen, and made him not trust any one with Indian blood in his veins. When he came to know the old chief better, and they could feel perfectly safe, then it would be time to locate a permanent camp for the winter. And, yet, they would never cease to keep themselves in constant readiness, so that a surprise and a massacre might not come about.
Of course, having made up their minds to go forth on the following morning, when a messenger was to start for the distant salt-lick, Dick and his cousin could think of little else. Again and again that evening they would turn away from the conversation that was general around one of the fires to talk it over, and agree as to what they should carry with them.