“The Apaches are still seven,” shouted Bois-Rose, in a voice of thunder, anxious to finish the struggle, and feeling all his hatred of the Indians awakened within him, “will they dare to come and take the scalps of the whites?”
But the disappearance of their chief and the death of their comrades had disconcerted the Indians; they did not fly, but they remained undecided and motionless, as black rocks bathed by the shining waters of the river.
“Can the red warriors only scalp dead bodies?” added Pepé with a contemptuous laugh. “Are the Apaches like vultures who only attack the dead? Advance then, dogs, vultures, women without courage!” shouted he, at the sight of their enemies, who were now rapidly regaining the bank. Suddenly, however, he noticed a body floating on its back, whose bright eyes showed that it was not a corpse, as the extended arms and motionless body seemed to indicate.
“Don Fabian, my rifle! there is the ‘Blackbird’ pretending to be dead and floating down the stream.”
Pepé took the rifle from Fabian, and aimed at the floating body, but not a muscle stirred. The hunter lowered his rifle. “I was wrong,” said he, aloud, “the white men do not, like the Indians, waste their powder on dead bodies.”
The body still floated, with outspread legs and extended arms. Pepé again raised his rifle and again lowered it. Then, when he thought that he had paid off anguish for anguish to the Indian chief, he fired, and the body floated no longer.
“Have you killed him?” asked Bois-Rose.
“No, I only wished to break his shoulder bone, that he may always have cause to remember the shudder he gave, and the treason he proposed to me. If he were dead, he would still float.”
“You might have done better to have killed him. But what is to be done now? I hoped to finish with these demons, and now our work is still to be done. We cannot cross the river to attack them.”
“It is the best thing we can do.”