"Very good; I like you better like that; we only need to understand each other. You are now prepared to listen to me, I fancy?"
"Quite."
There are certain men, like John Black, with whom it is necessary to employ extreme measures, and prove your superiority to them. With such persons you do not argue, but smash them; after which it always happens that these men, before so intractable, become gentle as lambs, and do all you want. The American, possessed of great strength, and confiding in it, thought he had a right to be insolent with a slight and weak looking man; but so soon as this man had proved to him, in a peremptory manner, that he was the more powerful of the two, the bull drew in his horns, and recoiled all the distance he had advanced.
"This night," the Count then said, "you were attacked by the Blackfeet; I wished to come to your aid, but it was impossible, and, besides, I should have arrived too late. As, however, for some reason or other; the men who attacked you feel a certain amount of consideration for me, I have profited by my influence to make them restore the cattle they stole from you."
"Thanks; believe that I sincerely regret what has passed between us; but I was so annoyed by the loss I had experienced."
"I understand all that, and willingly pardon you, the more so as I, perhaps, gave you rather too rude a shock just now."
"Oh, do not mention it, I beg."
"As you please; it is all the same to me."
"And my cattle?"
"Are at your disposal. Will you have them at once?"