A single rider had come forward from the serried front of mounted warriors; Kit Carson strode right on, to meet him, and hold parley. The whites in the grove might breathe easier.
“Tonnerre!” was reciting Louis Ménard. “As I sat my horse, out there, I happened to glance at the bluff and saw an Injun stick his head up over. That was the good fortune; n’est-ce-pas?”
The sergeant, and his cannoneers, and the lieutenant, remained in the open beside the piece, awaiting the result of the parley. The sergeant occasionally blew upon his slow-match; and once he and Jacob hitched the gun around a few inches, for still better aim.
Presently Kit Carson turned back, and with him came two chiefs. The other Indians followed, slowly, riding at ease; and many, dismounting here and there, squatted or strolled about, gradually forming a semi-circle of seated forms.
“It’s all right,” announced Ike Chamberlain, standing at ease. “Kit’s made the peace sign. Wall, they jest saved their scalps, I can tell ’em.”
“We’d ’a bo’hd a thousand holes right through ’em; we shuahly would,” declaimed Jacob Dodson.
“These air a war party o’ Cheyennes an’ ’Rapahoes,” explained Kit Carson to the lieutenant. “They say they tuk us for Crow or Ute enemies—but being as they’re on their way home after a licking up north an’ consequently air feeling ugly, I reckon they tuk us for what they could get; an’ that warn’t much.”
“It would have been more if they hadn’t stopped when they did,” answered the lieutenant. “I suppose now they want presents. We’ll have to give them a little. Can’t spare much—and they don’t deserve even that.”
The chiefs grunted and shook hands with the lieutenant; they cast curious glances at the brass cannon, and exchanged a guttural comment.
“They think that’s heap gun,” interpreted William New. “White man’s medicine strong, they say.”