By an arrangement of Rivenoak's, some of the women around
her had been employing the time in endeavoring to persuade the
bereaved widow that there was still a hope Deerslayer might be
prevailed on to enter her wigwam, in preference to entering the world
of spirits, and this, too, with a success that previous symptoms
scarcely justified. All this was the result of a resolution on
the part of the chief to leave no proper means unemployed, in order
to get transferred to his own nation the greatest hunter that was
then thought to exist in all that region, as well as a husband for
a woman who he felt would be likely to be troublesome, were any of
her claims to the attention and care of the tribe overlooked.
In conformity with this scheme, the Sumach had been secretly
advised to advance into the circle, and to make her appeal to the
prisoner's sense of justice, before the band had recourse to the
last experiment. The woman, nothing loth, consented, for there
was some such attraction in becoming the wife of a noted hunter,
among the females of the tribes, as is experienced by the sex, in
more refined life, when they bestow their hands on the affluent. As
the duties of a mother were thought to be paramount to all other
considerations, the widow felt none of that embarrassment, in
preferring her claims, to which even a female fortune hunter among
ourselves might be liable.
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