exploring.

When Will opened his eyes they fell upon the most interesting object
that the world just then could offer him--an Indian!

The "noble red man," as he has been poetically termed by people who have
but known him from afar, was in the act of mounting Will's horse, while
near by stood his own, a miserable, scrawny beast.

Will's boyish dreams were now a reality; he looked upon his first
Indian. Here, too, was a "buck"--not a graceful, vanishing deer, but
a dirty redskin, who seemingly was in some hurry to be gone. Without a
trace of "buck fever," Will jumped up, rifle in hand, and demanded:

"Here, what are you doing with my horse?"

The Indian regarded the lad with contemptuous composure.

"Me swap horses with paleface boy," said he.

The red man was fully armed, and Will did not know whether his father
and the guide were within call or not; but to suffer the Indian to
ride away with Uncle Elijah's fine horse was to forfeit his father's
confidence and shake his mother's and sisters' belief in the family
hero; so he put a bold face upon the matter, and remarked carelessly, as
if discussing a genuine transaction:

"No; I won't swap."

"Paleface boy fool!" returned the Indian, serenely.