“Betcher we will!”
“It’s unnecessary to ask you, Jack, if you’ve got your shooting irons ready?”
“Ready and loaded, Bill.”
The two scouts were as watchful as antelopes, and as cautious. But they appeared to ride along at an easy lope, and in a most careless fashion. This is the coolness born of long familiarity with peril; they could meet death itself without the quiver of a nerve.
They progressed but slowly, and the eyes of most of the red men were fixed upon them. It was plain that the savages did not understand just what was going forward when they saw he who appeared to be their king riding thus quietly, and armed and caparisoned, with Long Hair, the white scout. They could not understand why he was coming back to them in company with Pa-e-has-ka.
Soon they began to move forward in a body to meet the coming “chief” and his comrade.
“Give ’em the sign language, Jack. It’s time,” muttered Buffalo Bill.
Omohondreau was an adept at this wonderful [means] of communication, which was really a general language understood by the members of all the red tribes. He raised first one hand, palm outward, and then the other, and motioned the red men back. The warriors hesitated—then obeyed.
But a mounted figure came dashing from another part of the field, and this silent sign manual did not retard it.
“Face of a pig!” ejaculated Texas Jack, in the patois of the French Canadian, and which he sometimes lapsed into in moments of excitement. “Here comes that gal, Bill!”