The Indians looked round, nodded, finished the snuff-taking business, and then came deliberately toward the boys.
“They’re Antis,” said Cyril, as Perry watched the two sleepy-looking Indians curiously, and noted that they were both about his own height.
The men came close up, and stood there smiling, waiting to be spoken to; and as Perry had hoped, their presence took Cyril out of himself for the time.
“Been to see my father?” said Cyril in a mongrel kind of Spanish.
One of the Indians nodded.
“And his father too?”
The man replied that he was going now. So Cyril interpreted the few words.
“That’s the worst of them; and it’s so hard to make them understand exactly what you mean. He didn’t know what I meant, and had not been—What say?” For the Indian had muttered something which he repeated.
“Wants to know if I’m going too,” said Cyril bitterly; and he shook his head at the Indian, when both smiled and looked pleased.
Cyril gave his teeth a grind. “You beggars,” he cried in English, “looking glad because I’m disappointed.—And I’ve given that first chap many a good tuck out, and lots of tobacco dust for snuff, and paid him no end of times for birds he has shot with his blowpipe, besides buying butterflies and eggs he has brought down out of the mountains. All right, though; I’ll serve them out.—I say,” cried the boy, and a complete change came over him, “can you speak Spanish?”