The old men drew closer together with a mutter of low words, and each pair of dim eyes selected their man. The clicking of their guns was ominous, and Pierce turned white.
Speed drew his revolver-holster round to the front. “They’re going to fight,” he said. “Every man get ready!”
But Seger, eager to avoid the appalling contest, cried out to Pierce:
“Don’t do that! It’s suicide to go on. These old men have come out to fight till death.” To Lone Wolf he signed: “Don’t shoot, my friend!—let us consider this matter. Put up your guns.”
Into the hot mist of Pierce’s wrath came a realization that these old men were in mighty earnest. He hesitated.
Lone Wolf saw his hesitation, and said: “If you are here by right, why do you not get the soldier chief to come and tell me? If the Great Father has ordered this—then I am like a man with his hands tied. The soldiers do not lie. Bring them!”
Seger grasped eagerly at this declaration. “There is your chance, Pierce. The chief says he will submit if the soldiers come to make the survey. Let me tell him that you will bring an officer from the fort to prove that the government is behind you.”
Pierce, now fully aware of the desperate bravery of the old men, was looking for a knothole of escape. “All right, fix it up with him,” he said.
Seger turned to Lone Wolf. “The chief of the surveyors says: ‘Let us be friends. I will not run the line.’”
“Ho, ho!” cried the old warriors, and their faces, grim and wrinkled, broke up into smiles. They laughed, they shook hands, while tears of joy filled their eyes. They were like men delivered from sentence of death. The desperate courage of their approach was now revealed even to Pierce. They were joyous as children over their sudden release from slaughter.