“Yes,” Running Water promised. He would at least do that.
“And will you say to them in your own tongue the words that I speak to them in English, so that they will understand me?”
Buffalo Bill did not understand the dialect spoken by the chief.
Running Water agreed that he would do that, so far as he could. It was very hard for him to understand his white friend, or to make himself understood by him. It was “slow talk,” he said, and “much fog.”
“Let me tell you then, now, part of what I want said to them.”
The chief nodded.
“A man has a right to kill his enemy in order to save his own life, has he not?”
With some difficulty, the Sioux was made to understand this proposition, but when he did he heartily assented to it.
“This white man whom you have made prisoner thought that you had come to kill us.”
“Uh! No—no! No business t’ink dat.”