II
THE HERO OF THE MULE FORT
Cut Nose signalled his band to council again. Four warriors had fallen, and two ponies. Now at a safe distance from that venomous, spit-fire little fort, they all dismounted, except for a few scouts, and squatted for a long confab.
“Kill! Kill!” implored the two squaws.
“Shut up!” rebuked Cut Nose; and they only wailed about the dead.
On the outskirts of the council, and annoyed by the wailing of the squaws, Dave could not hear all the discussion. Cut Nose asked the sub-chiefs for their opinion what to do; and one after another spoke.
“There is no use in charging white men behind a fort,” said Bear-Who-Walks. “We lose too many warriors, any one of whom is worth more than all the white men on the plains. It is not a good way to fight. I like to fight, man to man, in the open. If we wait long enough, we can kill those three whites when their hearts are weak with thirst and hunger.”
“They have medicine guns,” declared Yellow Hand. “They have guns that are never empty. No matter how much they shoot, they can always shoot more. The great spirit of the white people is helping them. It is some kind of magic.”
At this, Dave wanted to laugh. The two white men and the white boy were shooting with revolvers that held six loads each, and the Cheyennes could not understand. The only guns that the Indians had were two old muskets which had to be reloaded after every shot.
“We will wait,” said Cut Nose. “We have plenty of time. The whoa-haws in front will travel on, leaving these three whites. We will wait, and watch, and when they have eaten their fort and their tongues are hanging out for water, we will ride to them and scalp them before they die. That is the easiest way.”
Some of the warriors did not favor waiting; the two squaws wept and moaned and claimed that the spirits of the slain braves were unhappy because those three whites still lived. But nobody made a decisive move; they all preferred to squat and talk and rest their ponies and themselves.