"You dog, you did this! And why? Ah, ha, ha! I know! I know all things! Because of the white girl! So! Ha, ha! Must you alone love the white girl so that no man can speak her name? Oh, you can't deny you love her! You, who ride and hunt with her for fifteen years. Cannot another man open his mouth but that you must fly at him? Ha, ha! I know!"
"I'll wring your neck, you old——!" said McCullen at his horse's head.
"You will stop my tongue, will you! I'll show you! You are up here to watch that girl—but where's your eyes? What are you doing? This is my son-in-law, and you'd like to wipe him from the face of the earth! You beat him in the face—him with one hand! See! How did he get it? Why are some of my other son-in-laws limping about with bullets in their legs? Why is a man lying dead up in the mountains? Why all this at once? Ask that white girl who teaches little children to be good! Ask that devil's child who can put a bullet straight as her eye! Ask her! She would destroy my people. Curse her soul, I say!"
Suddenly the witch-like spirit in her seemed to shrivel into the blanket which she wrapped about her, then with placid, expressionless face she made her way to where the yearling had been butchered and hurriedly stuffed the refuse into a gunny sack which she dragged to where the other squaws were waiting, then they all made off.
Long Bill sat up and looked about him. "Curse who?" he asked. "Curse me, I reckon fer not knowin' enough to keep my mouth shut!"
McCullen, with face and lips pallid, had mounted his horse. Long Bill pulled himself together and walked over toward him.
"I'll take that back," he said. "I didn't mean it, nohow."
"I reckon I was over-hasty," McCullen replied. "But that was our little girl you were talkin' about—little Hope; an' no man on earth, let alone a common squaw-man, ain't goin' to even breathe her name disrespectfully. She's like my own child. I've almost brought her up. Learned her little baby fingers to shoot, an' had her on a horse before she could talk plain. Don't let her find this out, for I'm plumb sorry I had to hurt you; but the man who says more than you did dies!" He rode away and soon was lost in the deep falling shadows. The men in the cow-camp unrolled their bedding, and all was soon one with the stillness of the night.