On the other side sat the hunters quivering under a double indignation. I say double. I can hardly explain what I mean. They had never before been so braved by Indians. They had, all their lives, been accustomed, partly out of bravado and partly from actual experience, to consider the red men their inferiors in subtilty and courage; and to be thus bearded by them, filled the hunters, as I have said, with a double indignation. It was like the bitter anger which the superior feels towards his resisting inferior, the lord to his rebellious serf, the master to his lashed slave who has turned and struck him. It was thus the hunters felt.
I glanced along their line. I never saw faces with such expressions as I saw there and then. Their lips were white, and drawn tightly over their teeth; their cheeks were set and colourless; and their eyes, protruding forward, seemed glued in their sockets. There was no motion to be detected in the features of any, save the twitching of angry muscles. Their right hands were buried in the bosoms of their half-open shirts, each, I knew, grasping a weapon; and they appeared not to sit, but to crouch forward, like panthers quivering upon the spring.
There was a long interval of silence on both sides.
It was broken by a cry from without—the scream of the war-eagle!
We should not have noticed this, knowing that these birds were common in the Mimbres, and one might have flown over the ravine; but we thought, or fancied, that it had made an impression upon our adversaries. They were men not apt to show any sudden emotion; but it appeared to us that, all at once, their glances grew bolder, and more triumphant. Could it have been a signal?
We listened for a minute. The scream was repeated; and although it was exactly after the manner of a bird well known to us—the white-headed eagle—we sat with unsatisfied and tearful apprehensions.
The young chief, he in the hussar dress, was upon his feet. He had been the most turbulent and exacting of our opponents. He was a man of most villainous and licentious character, so Rube had told us, but nevertheless holding great power among the braves. It was he who had spoken in refusal of Seguin’s offer, and he was now about to assign his reasons. We knew them without that.
“Why,” said he, looking at Seguin as he spoke, “why is it that the white chief is so desirous of choosing among our captives? Is it that he wishes to get back the yellow-haired maiden?”
He paused a moment, as if for a reply; but Seguin made none.
“If the white chief believes our queen to be his daughter, would not he wish that her sister should be her companion, and return with her to our land?”