Cody and Hickok both jumped up, ready to accept the challenge and avenge their friend, but Wharton had already risen from the ground, and he stepped in between them.
“Wait a minute, old pards!” he said. “This hyar is my funeral. I ain’t had my bellyful yet, not by a long shot! I want the best two out of three.”
When Leaping Dog understood this he said that he was perfectly willing. He would throw the white man again, as he had thrown him before.
“It is no use, my brother,” said Red Cloud, taking Nick Wharton aside for a moment. “In wrestling we are all as children in the hands of Leaping Dog. He is a champion against whom no man can stand. He has beaten the best wrestlers of all the tribes.”
Old Wharton said nothing, but a look of grim determination came into his face that meant volumes.
The other Indians seemed to be of the same opinion as their chief, for they shouted to the white man not to meet their champion again, saying that he might hurt him seriously.
“Gol-durn him, let him go as fur as he kin!” muttered Nick savagely, as he stepped forward and faced his late victor.
Leaping Dog did not seem to hold his opponent so cheaply this time. He saw, by the glitter in the old trapper’s eyes, that he was indeed a man to be feared.
He held his body as tense and rigid as that of a panther, and his coal-black eyes did not waver for a second in their baleful glance into those of the white man.
Suddenly he leaped like a wild beast straight at the throat of his opponent, seeking to grapple him round the neck—a favorite hold among the less sportsman-like of Indian wrestlers.