“Nor Blackfeet neyther.”
“Cheyennes, then? I’ll stake a bale o’ beaver it’s them same Injuns, in my opeenyun, the most trecher-most as scours these hyar perairies.”
“Ye wouldn’t lose yur skins,” quietly responded ’Lije. “It air Cheyennes es hez done it.”
“And who do you say chiefed ’em?”
“There’s no need asking that,” said one, “now we know it’s Cheyennes. Who should it be but that young devil they call Yellow Chief? He’s rubbed out more o’ us white trappers than the oldest brave among ’em.”
“Is it he, ’Lije?” asked several in a breath. “Is it the Yellow Chief?”
“’Taint nobody else,” quietly declared the trapper.
The declaration was received by a perfect tornado of cries, in which curses were mingled with threats of vengeance. All of them had heard of this Indian chieftain, whose name had become a terror to trapperdom—at least that section of it lying around the head waters of the Platte and Arkansas. It was not the first time many of them had sworn vengeance against him, if he should ever fall into their power; and the occasion appeared to have arrived for at least a chance of obtaining it. The air and attitude of ’Lije Orton led them to believe this.
All at once their mutual quarrels were forgiven, if not forgotten; and, with friendships fresh cemented by hostility to the common foe, they gathered around the old trapper and his companion—first earnestly listening to what these two had still to tell, and then as earnestly giving ear to the trapper’s counsels about the course to be pursued.
There was no question of their remaining inactive. The name of the Yellow Chief had fired one and all, from head to foot, rousing within them the bitterest spirit of vengeance. To a man they were ready for an expedition, that should end either in fight or pursuit. They only hesitated to consider how they had best set about it.