The old savage looked once, twice, closely. His face underwent an astonishing change—was convulsed with surprise, grief, anger. He gave but one ejaculation and drew his blanket across his face.
“Says his people! Says his family—his squaws! He know them shoe!”
“Yellow Hand! Yellow Hand!” The officer shook the old chief roughly by the shoulder. “Listen to me! Chief of the Comanches, this is our council now! Me, I talk!” The soldier stripped back the blanket from the Comanche’s face.
“Yellow Hand, for years we have been trying to get you to stop killing our people on the Staked Plains. The Great Father has always fought you fair. The Great Father never killed your women. The Great Father will put his blanket over his face when he hears of this thing.
“Listen Yellow Hand! Chiefs do not break their word. If we follow the man who did that—that man who ran away—and bring him to you and give him to your people to try him in your village will you think that the Great Father is just in his heart?”
“Says yes, he would.” The interpreter had made it plain.
“Listen, Yellow Hand! I have been trying to make treaty with you. I have been trying to get a great piece of land here where the game is plenty for the Comanches and the Kiowas, a place where they could sit down. You have not answered me about that. I have followed you. I have fed you. I have not killed your women.
“Listen, Yellow Hand! The white men are going west into your hunting country. The white men are coming north here. You see them. My young men with long knives are coming out too. They will surround you, as many as leaves on the trees. You can never kill them all. They have guns that shoot seven days.
“Listen, Yellow Hand! When the buffalo are gone you will be hungry. I gave you a great piece of land. I asked you to sit down. I gave you a treaty. I make no war now on the Comanches or the Kiowas. I will give you a good place, many miles, down by the mountains of the Wichitas, where there is much game.
“Listen, Yellow Hand! Tell him to answer me, Danny! If I do all this for you, and if I bring that man back who killed your women, will the Comanches come in and sit down by the side of the Kiowas in this country where all around them are the men of the other tribes, who have taken treaty with the Great Father? Tell him to answer, damn him, Danny!”