While speaking thus, Brighteye and his companion had entered the thicket. Domingo, thrown down, and tightly garotted by means of Ruperto's reata, was vainly struggling to break the bonds that cut into, his flesh. Ruperto, with his hands resting on the muzzle of his rifle, was listening with a grin, but no other reply, to the flood of insults and recriminations which rage drew from the half-breed.
"¡Dios me ampare!" the latter shouted, writhing like a viper. "¡Verdugo del Demonio! Is this the way to behave between gente de razón? Am I a Redskin, to be tied like a plug of tobacco, and have my limbs fettered like a calf that is being taken to the shambles? If ever you fall into my hands, accursed dog! you shall pay for the trick you have played me."
"Instead of threatening, my good man," Brighteye interposed, "it seems to me you would do better by frankly allowing that you are in our power, and acting in accordance."
The bandit sharply turned his head, the only part of his person at liberty, toward the hunter.
"What right have you to call me good man, and give me advice, old trapper of muskrats?" he said to him, irritably. "Are you white men or Indians, to treat a hunter thus?"
"If, instead of hearing what did not concern you, Señor Domingo, for I believe that is your name," Don Stefano said, with a cunning look, "you had remained quietly asleep in your camp, the little annoyance of which you complain would not have occurred."
"I am bound to recognize the justice of your reasoning," the bandit replied ironically; "but, hang it! what would you have? I have ever suffered from a mania of trying to find out what people sought to hide from me."
The stranger looked at him suspiciously.
"And have you had the mania long, my good friend?" he asked him.
"Since my earliest youth," he answered, with effrontery.