“I know that I was one, to trust an Indian with money,” was the reply.
“There was no trust. You gave the Dacotah gold, and he carried off the daughter of the pale-face from her father’s tent. He brought her, under a guard of warriors, to the mountain. Black Eagle had snared the bird; why did you not take her while she was fluttering in the net?”
“A pretty question, on my soul! Take her, when your men fought like so many devils.”
“Will the pale-face pay the Dacotah his gold?”
“What gold, you cormorant?”
“Did not he promise him plenty of yellow-dirt, when the white squaw should be given up?”
“Yes; but you lied. You concealed her.”
“Whose tongue is it that speaks of treachery? The pale-face was false alike to his own tribe and that of Black Eagle. Go up on the mountain and look. The warriors speak angrily, their wounds are fresh. Had the tongue but traveled the trail of truth, there would have been no mourning and blackened faces in the wigwams of the Dacotahs.”
“That is nothing to the purpose. Will you either give me back my gold, or produce the girl?”
“The gold that the white man asks for is hidden where no eye but that of the Black Eagle can ever find it. If the false medicine of the tribe at Salt Lake wants the maiden of the snowy skin, let him find her.”