"H'm, you don't know the Yankees, Mr. Edward. I am sure that, if we were to go ten paces further, we should be saluted by a shower of bullets."
"Nonsense!" the young man said, with a shrug of his shoulder; "they are not so mad as to act in that way."
"It's possible; but they would do as I tell you. Look attentively, and you will see from this spot the barrels of their rifles glistening between the stakes of the barricades."
"By Jove! it's true; then they want to be massacred."
"They would have been so long ago, had not my brother interceded in their favour," Natah Otann said, joining in the conversation.
"And I thank you, chief. The desert is large; what harm can those poor devils do you?"
"They, none; but presently others will come and settle by their side, and so on; so that in six months my brother would see a city at a spot where there is now nothing but nature as it left the omnipotent hands of the Master of Life."
"That is true," Bright-eye said, "the Yankees respect nothing; the rage for building cities renders them dangerous madmen."
"Why have we stopped, chief?" the Count said, recurring to his first question.
"To negotiate."