The Indian drew himself in, and walked up to the speaker close enough to touch him.
"And if I refuse?" he said, as he gave him a glance of defiance and fury.
"If you refuse, scoundrel! I forbid you ever appearing again before me; and if you disobey me, I will chastise you with my dog-whip!"
The Captain had hardly uttered these insulting words ere he repented of them. He was alone, and unarmed, with a man whom he had mortally insulted; hence he tried to arrange matters.
"But Monkey-face," he went on, "is a chief; he is wise; he will answer me—for he knows that I love him."
"You lie, dog of the Palefaces!" the Indian yelled, as he ground his teeth in fury; "you hate me almost as much as I hate you!"
The Captain, in his exasperation, raised the switch he carried in his hand; but, at the same moment, the Indian, with a panther-leap, bounded on to his horse's croup, dragged the Captain out of his stirrups, and rudely hurled him to the ground.
"The Palefaces are cowardly old women," he said; "the Pawnee warriors despise them, and will send them petticoats."
After uttering these words with a sarcastic accent impossible to describe, the Indian bent over the horse's neck, let loose the rein, uttered a fierce yell, and started at full speed, not troubling himself further about the Captain, whom he left severely bruised by his fall.
James Watt was not the man to endure such treatment without trying to revenge himself; he got up as quickly as he could, and shouted, in order to get together the hunters and wood-cutters scattered over the plain.