They stared at me and at each other, horror and anger hardening their faces. Lo-as-ro had stopped smiling and was glancing about the circle in obvious bewilderment.
"You mean he's doing all that for us?" Storm demanded.
"For all Indians," I said. "Free them from the iron heel of the oppressor, and all that."
"Nuts, brother!" Iron Eagle snapped. "Tell him I'm a graduate of Carnegie Tech, make twenty-five grand a year with Standard Oil, and vote the Republican ticket. If he thinks for a goddam minute I'm going to chasing around on a pinto pony hunting buffalo, he's got rocks in his head!"
"And that goes for me—double!" Lone Pine growled. "I never heard anything so screwy!"
I repeated what they had said, putting it into words Lo-as-ro could understand. He had the look of a man who couldn't believe his ears. "They speak with stupid tongues," he cried. "Do they deny the blood of their fathers?"
"They live as they want to live, noble chief," I said. "They are grateful for your wish to help but they ask me to decline the offer."
He came to his feet with a bound, his lean face hardening into a copper mask of anger. "These are not true Orbiwah!" he thundered. "These are as women, soft with idleness and pleasure, weakened by their white conquerors. The land is not for them; it is for those forced to live in degradation and squalor, dying of hunger and disease, ignored by the white chiefs. It is they who shall be given back the ways of their fathers, that they may become a great Orbiwah nation once more. I have spoken!"
"Look at these braves," I said. All of us were standing now. "Of all the Orbiwah in this world it is such as these who could hope to survive under the conditions you wish to establish. The Orbiwah you describe would starve amid a thousand buffalo, they would fall from their horses, they would flee in battle. Take away the protection of the white chiefs and they would die."