Dagard looked sadly about him. Of his own race, hardly another save Margottet was upright anywhere near him. He shook his head despairingly.
"My poor children," said he in French, stifling a sob.
"Come out of this," cried Leon, offering to draw him away.
"I thank you, generous boy," was the answer with a noble courtesy, repulsing him gently, "and you, too, brave old hunter," he subjoined, addressing Ridge, "but your interference is useless. I am catching the hot soup deservedly for having linked myself with a chain gang. Look round! All the boys from Red River are dead, or gasping their last, under our feet. I am not seeking to escape the massacre. But, anyhow, here goes to save my top hair!"
And before anybody could thrust out a hand, he drew one of those pocket pistols, loaded to the muzzle, which frontier men often carry expressly to blow off the skull pan, in order to rend the scalp to shreds and remove the suicide from the tortures. He clapped the muzzle to his forehead, pulled the trigger, and fell headlong in the smoke, uttering one word:
"My country!"
Ridge and the youth recoiled, and even the Piegans were stupefied into inaction.
"Good notion, boys!" cried Captain Kidd in his sarcastic voice, "Let us save our topknots same fashion!"
Half a dozen pistol shots cracked, and as many of the bandits dropped to the earth. But what was the amazement, though only temporary, of the savages, on rushing forward, to find that the supposed suicides had crawled away in the smoke!
With marvellous presence of mind, Kidd, under pretence of imitating the Half-breed's heroism, had turned the act into a "dodge." They heard the laughing, taunting whoop of his little band of survivors as they raced down the slope and glided among the boulders.