Etzeeah stood motionless and scowling.
"Call them out!" repeated Jack, "or I will pull them out by the hair."
Etzeeah raised his voice in sullen command, and the rest of the women and the children issued out of the tepees, the little children scurrying madly to hide behind their mothers, and clinging to their skirts.
Jack pointed to the bottom of the square. "All stand close together!" he ordered.
The men scowled and muttered, but obeyed. There was no reason why any one of them should not have put a bullet through Jack's breast, sitting on his horse before them empty-handed—no reason, that is, except the terrible blue eyes, travelling among them like scorching fires. Many a little man's soul was sick with rage, and his fingers itching for the trigger, but before he could raise his gun the eyes would fall on him, withering his breast. It was the white man's scorn that emasculated them. How could one fire at a being who held himself so high?
"Go through the tepees as quickly as you can," Jack said to Mary. "I will hold your horse and watch them."
Dismounting, she made her way to Etzeeah's lodge.
A hundred pairs of black eyes watched their every movement. Etzeeah made to edge back toward the crowd.
"Stand where you are!" Jack commanded. "I am not through with you."
Etzeeah lowered his eyes, and stood still.