“Let the chief speak,” she cried, in the Indian tongue; “does he join Mahaska or not? Must she expect aid or enmity from him?”
“Never enmity,” he exclaimed, “Mahaska knows that.”
“Gi-en-gwa-tah hesitates! This is no time for him to choose his words! If he opposes Mahaska further, he is her enemy; the chief knows how Mahaska can hate!”
He did not appear to heed the menacing tone in which the last words were spoken; she turned from him and paced up and down the room. Once she paused and looked down upon her sleeping child, but her face, instead of softening at its innocent slumber, gathered new ferocity.
“Let Mahaska weigh well her actions,” said the chief, after a pause, with a calmness which contrasted strangely with her agitation. “This is no light matter that she contemplates; let her not decide from her own passions—”
She turned upon him as if she could have smitten him to the ground.
“Gi-en-gwa-tah speaks folly,” she cried; “is he a coward, too? Does he fear the long rifles of the Frenchmen?”
He disdained even to answer her by the braggadocio so common among the Indians; and, though his whole frame shook with agitation at the insulting words, his voice was unmoved, as he said:
“Let Gi-en-gwa-tah’s past speak for itself! The chief fears to break his word; never did he do it, even when as a boy he first began to hunt the wild deer; he could not see his people go back from their pledges and prove themselves false as the lying Tuscaroras, whatever their gain might be.”
“The chief had better go among the pale-faces that he man learn the mummeries of their faith, and turn his brethren into black-coated owls, such as live in the stone lodges in Quebec,” retorted Mahaska, with bitter irony.