“We can get more horses, can’t we, Pat?” queried Peter. “We see lots of horses.”
“Yes, an’ how’ll we buy ’em, when each man of us is down to a couple o’ needles, a bit of thread an’ a yard or so of ribbon, with a pinch o’ paint for an extry?” retorted Pat. “We’ll have to cut the buttons off our clothes, I guess. Cross the mountains on foot ag’in we won’t an’ can’t. They’re waist-deep in snow.”
For the mountains were looming ahead, white and wintry, although this was May.
“The Twisted-hair,” announced Chief Sky, pointing before. And Chief Twisted-hair, with six men, met the procession.
Twisted-hair was not at all in a good humor. He refused to shake hands, he scarcely noticed the captains, and suddenly he and Cut-nose (a very ugly man whose nose had been laid open by a Snake lance, in battle) were quarreling in a loud voice.
“What’s this all about, Chaboneau?” demanded Captain Lewis. “Ask Sa-ca-ja-we-a to have the Sho-sho-ne interpret.”
“Ze Sho-sho-ne will not,” reported Chaboneau. “He say dees is quarrel between two chiefs an’ he haf no right to interfere.”
“We’ll go on a bit and camp and hold a council, Will,” directed Captain Lewis to Captain Clark. “Then we’ll get at the bottom of this business. There’s evidently something wrong with the horses and saddles we left.”
At camp the captains first smoked and talked with Twisted-hair. He said it was true that the horses were scattered, but Cut-nose and another chief, the Broken-arm, were to blame. They had been jealous of him because he had the white men’s horses; and being an old man, he had given up the horses. Some were near, and some were at the village of the Broken-arm, a half-day’s march east. As for the saddles, the cache had fallen in and they might have been stolen, but he had hidden them again.
Then the Cut-nose talked. He said that the Twisted-hair was a bad old man, of two faces; that he had not taken care of the horses but had let his young men ride them, to hunt, until the Broken-arm, who was a higher chief, and he, Cut-nose, had forbidden.