Across a patch of radiance she beheld the swaggering promenade of one of the young cookees; he brandished a hatchet truculently. Old Vittum reached out and swept the weapon from the youngster’s grasp.
Lida heard Vittum’s rebuke, for it was voiced sharply. “None o’ that! We don’t fight that way. And I’m believing that there are still enough honest rivermen in the Comas crowd to make it a square fight, like we’ve always had on the Noda when a fight had to be!”
Unreconciled, all her woman’s nature protesting, she had come to a settled realization that the fight must happen; Vittum was putting it in words. Now that the struggle was imminent—on the eve of it—she wanted to go down on her knees and beg them to give up the project; but she did not dare to weaken their determination or wound their pride. She crouched on her cot of spruce boughs in anguished misery.
“Nobody has got to the point of using hatchets and guns on this river,” corroborated a man on the other side of the fire from Vittum.
Other men pitched their voices higher then, giving up the cautious monotone of the preceding conference.
“Is any man afeard?” asked Vittum.
They assured him with confidence and gay courage that no man was afraid.
“I didn’t hear any of you Injuns pipe up,” said Vittum. “You ain’t very strong on talk, anyway. But I’d kind of like to know how you feel in this matter. We all understood—all of us regulars—that we was coming up here to fight when it got to that point. You have grabbed in later and perhaps didn’t understand it. We ain’t asking you to do anything you don’t want to do.”
The Indians were silent. Even Felix Lapierre said nothing when Vittum questioned him with a glance. The French Canadian turned to Frank Orono, squatting within arm’s reach, and patted him on the shoulder. It became plain that there was an understanding which did not require words.
Orono rose slowly; he grinned. From the breast of his leather jacket he brought forth a cow’s horn and shook it over his head, and its contents rattled sharply. The other Indians leaped up. They were grinning, too.