While uttering these words, White Buffalo pointed to the Count and his comrades lying on the grass, at the skirt of a wood, about two hundred yards from the Indian encampment.
"Ah, they keep aloof," the Chief observed, bitterly.
"Is not that better for the conversation which we wish to have with them?"
"You are right."
The two men then walked up to the hunters without speaking again. The latter had really kept away, not through contempt for the Indians, but in order to be more at liberty. What had occurred after the death of the cougars, the brutal way in which the Chief spoke to Prairie-Flower, had vexed the Count, and it needed all the power he possessed over himself, and the entreaties of Bright-eye, to prevent him breaking out in reproaches of the Chief, whose conduct appeared to him unjustifiably coarse.
"Hum," he said, "this man is decidedly a ruffian: I am beginning to be of your opinion, Bright-eye."
"Bah! that is nothing yet," the latter replied, with a shrug of his shoulders; "we shall see plenty more, if we only remain a week with these demons."
While speaking, the Canadian had reloaded his rifle and pistols.
"Do as I do," he continued; "no one knows what may happen."
"What need of that precaution? are we not under the protection of the Indians, whose guests we are?"