"Watch them close, boys," whispered Auberry. "They've got plenty of irons around them somewhere, and plenty of scalps, too, maybe."
"Talk to them, Auberry," said Belknap; and as the former was the only one of us who understood the Sioux tongue, he acted as interpreter.
"What are the Sioux doing so far east?" he asked of their spokesman, sternly.
"Hunting," answered the Sioux, as Auberry informed us. "The white soldiers drive away our buffalo. The white men kill too many. Let them go. This is our country." It seemed to me I could see the black eyes of the Sioux boring straight through every one of us, glittering, not in the least afraid.
"Go back to the north and west, where you belong," said Auberry. "You have no business here on the wagon trails."
"The Sioux hunt where they please," was the grim answer. "But you see we have our women and children with us, the same as you have—and he pointed toward our camp, doubtless knowing the personnel of our party as well as we did ourselves.
"Where are you going?" asked our interpreter.
The Sioux waved his arm vaguely. "Heap hunt," he said, in broken English now. "Where you go?" he asked, in return.
Auberry was also a diplomat, and answered that we were going a half sleep to the west, to meet a big war party coming down the Platte, the white men from Laramie.
The Indian looked grave at this. "Is that so?" he asked, calmly. "I had not any word from my young men about a war party coming down the river. Many white tepees on wheels going up the river; no soldiers coming down this way."