The commencement of this speech greatly surprised the Chief's hearers; the young mother especially, on hearing the words, felt her anxiety disappear, and joy well up in her heart again.
"The Snake Pawnees," the Sachem continued, "will restore to my father all the merchandize he extorted from him; he, for his part, will pledge himself to abandon the hunting-grounds of the Pawnees, and retire with the Palefaces who came with him; the Pawnees will give up the vengeance they wished to take for the murder of their brothers, and the war hatchet will be buried between the Redskins and the Palefaces of the West. I have spoken."
After these words there was a silence.
His hearers were struck with stupor: if the conditions were unacceptable, war became inevitable.
"What does my father answer?" the Chief asked presently.
"Unhappily, Chief," the Captain answered sadly, "I cannot consent to such conditions, that is impossible; all I can do is to double the price I paid previously."
The Chief shrugged his shoulders in contempt.
"Black-deer was mistaken," he said, with a crushing smile of sarcasm; "the Palefaces have really a forked tongue."
It was impossible to make the Sachem understand the real state of the case; with that blind obstinacy characteristic of his race, he would listen to nothing; the more they tried to prove to him that he was wrong, the more convinced he felt he was right.
At a late hour of the night the Canadian and Black-deer withdrew, accompanied, as far as the entrenchments, by the Captain.