"It may not be our men," said I, with sickening forebodings tugging at throat and heart.
"I mistrusted them! I mistrusted the villains!" repeated the priest. "If only you had enough Mandanes to ride down on them, but you're too weak. There are at least two thousand Sioux."
Hamilton and Little Fellow, talking loudly and gesticulating, rode crashing through the furze.
"I knew it! I knew it!" shouted Hamilton fiercely, "One of us should have gone."
"What's wrong?" came from Father Holland in a voice so low and unnaturally calm, I knew he feared the worst.
"Wrong!" yelled Hamilton, "They hold La Robe Noire as hostage and demand five hundred pounds of ammunition, twenty guns and ten horses. Of course, I should have gone——"
"And would it have mended matters if you'd been held hostage too?" I demanded, utterly out of patience and at that stage when a little strain makes a man strike his best friends. "You know very well, the men were only sent to make an offer. You'd no right to expect everything on one trip without any bargaining——"
"Shut up, boy!" exclaimed Father Holland. "Just when ye both need all y'r wits, y'r scattering them to the four winds. Now, mind yourselves! I don't like these terms! 'Tis the devil's own doing! Let's talk this over!"
With a vast deal of the wordy eloquence that characterizes Indian diplomacy, the tenor of Le Grand Diable's message was "His shot pouch was light and his pipe cold; he hung down his head and the pipe of peace had not been in the council; the Sioux were strangers and the whites were their enemies; the pale-faces had been in their power and they had always conveyed them on their journey with glad hearts and something to eat." Finally, the Master of Life, likewise Earth, Air, Water, and Fire were called on to witness that if the white men delivered five hundred rounds of ammunition, twenty guns and ten horses, the white woman and her child, likewise the two messengers, would be sent safely back to the Mandane lodge; none but these two messengers would be permitted in the Sioux camp; also, the Sioux would not answer for the lives of the white men if they left the Mandane lodges. Let the white men, therefore, send back the full ransom by the hands of the same messenger.