At the moment when we place these three persons on the scene, the Guaycurus chief was speaking, smoking all the while a kind of calumet, made of the leaves of the palm tree, rolled together, and was listened to deferentially by the other chief, who was standing up before him, carelessly supported by his long lance.
"The man that my brother Emavidi-Chaime told me of does not come," said he. "The sun descends rapidly, several hours have flown since I waited. What thinks the chief of the Payagoas?"
"He must wait still; the man will come; he has promised; although degenerate, he is not a paleface. He has in his veins some of the blood of the Tapis."
"What is the name of this man?" asked the other.
"Does Tarou Niom know him? He is a mameluco; his name is Malco Diaz."
"I have seen him," laconically said the chief, letting his head fall with a pensive air on his breast.
There was a silence of some instants; it was the Guaycurus who broke it.
"Has my brother ever seen," he said, "the jaguars make war upon each other?"
"Never," replied the Payagoas chief.
"Then why does the chief believe in the faith of this man? The Indian blood, if he has some drops of it, is so mingled in his veins with that of the whites and blacks, that it has lost all its vigour."