"If one of them stirs a finger towards me, shoot into the mass," whispered Oliver, rising leisurely, to his comrade.
He left the table, and strode up to the Indians, among whom he stopped, his back to the edge of the table they disdained, leaning on his rifle, of which the beauty and value (for a breechloader is a miracle to their eyes) made their nervous tongues lick their thin upper lip and thick lower one like a snake when the game is presented.
"See here, chief," said he, "the Ocelot has hearing as fine as they make 'em, and the faintest sounds tell their story in his ear. Did I not know you and your cavalyada were down to'rds the Smoking Mountain, and have I not heard the amble of those mules out thar, a-toting a litter between them? In that litter is a white woman. I'm atter her, for her family's sake—what's the price of the captive?"
The Indians exchanged a look of amazement, but they were not disconcerted. Indeed, Tiger Cat answered without wincing:
"Who can make (dead) meat of the white hunter? Beside the Ocelot, the Tiger Cat is a prairie cricket."
"Speak out plain, then, chief. If you have the woman along with you, guarded by your soldiers (the young warriors) so carefully, it is to claim much price. What's the figure?"
"The Ocelot has all the wit of the palefaces, all the cunning of the red men. The Tiger Cat does not debate. He has a captive of worth—ay, 'the purest of pearl' is worth her weight in dressed buffalo robes. But the prize is his. Why should the Ocelot hunger for the prey of the Tiger Cat?"
"You'll jess let me back out about now, chief," said Oregon Oliver, negligently. "If we cannot trade, we'll take the back paths apart from one another, and no bad blood."
He half turned as if to go away, but not without a glance of sympathy in bitterness at the certainly strange palanquin, draped with Navajo waterproof blankets, suspended elastically between two mules, now visible to him without.
But the wily redskin was evidently perplexed. The guides who have intimate relations with the United States army always are looked upon peculiarly by the Indians who have been thrashed by the blue cape coats. He detained the hunter by gently plucking at his blanket.