"Hilloh!" the Count shouted loudly, "come here, Ivon."
"Here I am, my lord," a voice answered from the forest; and a second horseman, leaping into the clearing, coolly ranged himself by the side of the first.
There was something strange in the group formed by these three stoical men in the midst of the hundreds of Indians yelling around them. The Count, with his glass in his eye, his haughty glance, and disdainful lip, was setting the hammer of his rifle. Bright-eye, with a pistol in each hand, was preparing to sell his life dearly, while the servant calmly awaited the order to charge the savages. The Indians, furious at the audacity of the white men, were preparing, with multitudinous yells and gestures, to take a prompt vengeance on the men who had so imprudently placed themselves in their power.
"These Indians are very ugly," the Count said; "now that you are free, my friend, we have nothing more to do here, so let us be off."
And he made a sign, as if to force a passage. The Blackfeet moved forward.
"Take care," Bright-eye shouted.
"Nonsense," the Count said, shrugging his shoulders, "can these scamps intend to bar the way?"
The hunter looked at him with the air of a man who does not know exactly if he has to do with a madman or a being endowed with reason, so extraordinary did this remark seem to him. The Count dug his spurs into his horse.
"Well," Bright-eye muttered, "he will be killed, but for all that he is a fine fellow: I will not leave him."
In truth it was a critical moment: the Indians, formed in close column, were preparing to make a desperate charge on the three men—a charge which would, probably, be decisive, for the Europeans, without shelter, and entirely exposed to the shots of their enemies, could not hope to escape. Still, that was not the Count's conviction. Not noticing the gestures and hostile cries of the Redskins, he advanced towards them, with his glass still in his eye. Since the Count's apparition, the Indian sachem, as if struck with stupor at the sight, had not made a move, but stood with his eyes fixed upon him, under the influence of extraordinary emotion. Suddenly, at the moment when the Blackfeet warriors were shouldering their guns, or fitting their arrows to the bows, Natah Otann seemed to form a resolution: he rushed forward, and raising his buffalo robe,—