He was saved. More than that, he was re-created. For, by signs and
intimations he was quickly made aware that since the death of their
late chief, their medicine-men had prophesied that his perfect successor
should appear miraculously before them, borne noiselessly on the river
FROM THE SEA, in the plumes and insignia of his predecessor. This mere
coincidence of appearance and costume might not have been convincing to
the braves had not Elijah Martin's actual deficiencies contributed to
their unquestioned faith in him. Not only his inert possession of the
sweat-house and his apathetic attitude in their presence, but his utter
and complete unlikeness to the white frontiersmen of their knowledge and
tradition--creatures of fire and sword and malevolent activity--as well
as his manifest dissimilarity to themselves, settled their conviction
of his supernatural origin. His gentle, submissive voice, his yielding
will, his lazy helplessness, the absence of strange weapons and fierce
explosives in his possession, his unwonted sobriety--all proved him an
exception to his apparent race that was in itself miraculous. For it
must be confessed that, in spite of the cherished theories of most
romances and all statesmen and commanders, that FEAR is the great
civilizer of the savage barbarian, and that he is supposed to regard
the prowess of the white man and his mysterious death-dealing weapons
as evidence of his supernatural origin and superior creation, the facts
have generally pointed to the reverse. Elijah Martin was not long in
discovering that when the Minyo hunter, with his obsolete bow, dropped
dead by a bullet from a viewless and apparently noiseless space, it
was NOT considered the lightnings of an avenging Deity, but was traced
directly to the ambushed rifle of Kansas Joe, swayed by a viciousness
quite as human as their own; the spectacle of Blizzard Dick, verging
on delirium tremens, and riding "amuck" into an Indian village with a
revolver in each hand, did NOT impress them as a supernatural act, nor