“What you ask is entirely out of the question,” said Colonel Wilder, in reply to the last demand of the Arapaho chief. “If you have no better terms to offer, you may go, and take your warriors with you.”
“The Arapahoes come as they please, and go as they please. They have not learned to obey the commands of the white men.”
“If you will not have peace, you shall have war to your heart’s content.”
“Then let it be war!” exclaimed the chief, as he quickly raised his whistle to his lips.
But it did not sound. Before it reached his lips, Silverspur seized him, and, exerting all his strength, jerked him from among his warriors, into the ranks of the opposite side. Old Blaze, who had divined the intentions of his friend, caught the chief by the arms, and held him tightly; while Silverspur, grasping him by the scalp-lock, flashed his keen hunting-knife before his throat.
“Hold!” exclaimed the young man, as the Arapahoes were handling their weapons, uncertain whether to commence the attack. “If a shot is fired, or if a man moves from his place, your chief dies that instant!”
The position of the Arapahoes was by no means such as Black Horse had expected it to be. Their chief was in the power of their adversaries, liable to be killed at the first hostile movement they should make, and he had been seized before he was able to give them the signal for the onset. Before them was the line of dragoons, with carbines leveled and cocked, and all around them were clustered the Crow warriors, with rifles to the shoulder and arrows on the string. The Arapahoes saw that they had lost the advantage of surprise and the first attack, and were willing to make terms.
Colonel Wilder took the word where his son had left off.
“Leave the camp!” he said. “Draw off, every man of you, a mile from the camp, and take with you the warriors on the hill and in the timber yonder, and your chief will be safe. If you go peaceably, and do as I tell you, the chief will be released as soon as you reach your own camp. If you do not”—pointing at the leveled guns behind him—“you see that we have the advantage of you.”
The Arapahoes hesitated a few moments, consulted a little with each other, and then sullenly returned in a body to their own camp.