After a few minutes’ consultation among themselves, they agreed. Kennelly watched them from the corner of his squint eye, but pretended to be utterly uninterested in the matter which spelled life or death to him.
The young chief threw off his buffalo robe and stepped out into an open space near the fire, naked to the waist, but gorgeously painted with the war colors of his tribe. He was a Cheyenne.
As he stood in the firelight, straight as a young sapling, with his right hand resting upon the tomahawk in his belt, he looked a formidable foe.
Kennelly glanced at him for a few moments through half-closed eyelids, and then yawned sleepily and knocked the ashes out of the bowl of his pipe.
The Indians, on the one side, and the two scouts, hidden behind the bushes on the other, watched the scene with interest.
The young chief stamped his foot impatiently, and Kennelly slowly raised his huge, bulky form from the ground.
Once he was upon his feet, however, a wonderful change came over him.
Seated upon the ground, he had seemed as lazy and inert as a hog, but now his body was as tense and active as that of a panther.
Stealthily he crept toward the Indian, and they looked into one another’s eyes as intently as if they were both hypnotized.
An old Crow chieftain gave the signal for the duel to commence by dropping his tomahawk to the ground.