He even shook his finger threateningly at them; and somehow the action angered Donald, who was quicker to flare up than Adrian. Billie was sitting up by now, and listening, with widely distended eyes, and open mouth.
“Oh!” said Donald, “I reckon, now, you’re doing all that talking about my chum advising the old chief that his medicine man was right in saying they would risk the ill will of the Manitou of the Zunis, if they took their sacred dance away from the spot where it has been done year after year for centuries, and made it the laughing stock of a rude crowd of white people at a circus. Well, the chief asked his opinion, and he had a right to give it, as any other person might.”
“Yes,” added Adrian just then, “of course it doesn’t matter a red cent to any of us whether the chief takes up your offer or not; but I’ve got my opinion about whether he’d be a fool to try it, and so I told him. I don’t know you, Mr. Braddon, and I’m not saying that you wouldn’t deal honestly with these simple people; but I do know that they would never be the same again after they came back. That was what I asked him; and I’d do just the same again if any of the other Indians wanted to know my opinion.”
The big man looked at the speaker in surprise. He had doubtless counted on being easily able to cow these young fellows, who were only boys at best, while he had a fierce look, and in his own mind at least a resistless way of domineering.
“I give you fair warning right here and now,” he went on to say, furiously, “that unless you keep your hands off my personal business you’re going
to think you’ve run up against a buzz-saw. I ain’t in the habit of knuckling down to a set of kids, when I plan a big thing for my show; and I won’t stand for it, hear that? Why, I’ve got a good notion to give you a lesson right here and now.”
He had assumed an attitude that looked dangerous, as though his passions had run away with his judgment; and Adrian was sorry that neither he nor Donald chanced to have anything along just at that critical moment in the way of firearms, with which to make things seem more even.
“Oh! I wouldn’t do that, mister, if I was you,” drawled a voice just then.
Of course it was Billie, and as all of them glanced toward the spot where he was squatted, they saw him handling his pet Marlin repeater.
Somehow the sight of that gun seemed to make the fierce showman change his mind. He shrugged his broad shoulders, and allowed a cynical smile to cross his face.