When the maté had been drunk, and our three personages had lighted their maize straw cigarettes, Zeno Cabral at last spoke.
"I ought to apologise to you, Señor Captain," said he in Portuguese to Gueyma, "for the kind of surprise by means of which I have obtained an interview with you; the Cougar, of whom I have for a long time had the honour of being a friend, has induced me to act as I have done; if a fault has been committed, it is on him that the blame ought to rest."
"What the Cougar does is always right," answered the chief smiling; "he is my father, since it is to him that I owe what I am; I have not to blame him then, convinced that very important reasons, and which no doubt will afterwards be explained to me, prevented him from acting otherwise."
"Gueyma has well spoken as usual," said the Cougar; "wisdom dwells with him; the white chief will not be long in adducing motives for his conduct."
"That is what I am immediately going to do, if the captains will be so good as to lend me their attention," pursued Zeno Cabral.
"Let my father speak, our ears are opened."
The partisan collected himself for two or three minutes, and then commenced in these terms:
"My brothers, the Guaycurus warriors, deceived by the lying words of a white, have consented to form an alliance with him, and to follow him into this country, to aid him in fighting other whites, who have never done evil to my brothers, and even of whose existence they were ignorant. But while the warriors entered on the path of war, and abandoned their hunting territories, under the safeguard of the honour of their new allies, the latter, who had no other design than that of getting them away, in order to seize more easily their rich and fertile countries, invaded, to the contempt of sworn faith, these territories, and tried to establish themselves there. This iniquitous project, this infamous treason, would probably have succeeded, considering the absence of the brave warriors of the tribe, if a friend of the Guaycurus, disgusted with that infamous action, had not warned Tarou-Niom, the great captain of the Guaycurus, to put himself on his guard, and had not contracted an offensive and defensive alliance with Emavidi-Chaimé, the great chief of the Payagoas, to oppose the attacks of the common enemy."
Notwithstanding the command of countenance of which the Indians boast in the most important circumstances, Gueyma, on learning this news, so decisively and coldly uttered, could not contain himself. His eyebrows knitted, his nostrils dilated like those of a wild beast; he bounded on his feet, and violently clapping his hands:
"My brother, the pale chief, has proofs of what he states, has he not?" cried he, with a tone of sudden menace.