"You will have to answer for it if she dies," said Stephens getting up. He had satisfied himself that the girl was not seriously injured.
"Not to you then," said the Indian, his courage reviving, when he realised that the threat was, after all, blank cartridge, seeing that the girl was alive. He tried to work himself into a rage again. "What do you break into my house for and interfere with me? I'll do what I like with my own." He stepped forward close to Stephens, between him and Josefa. "Go out, or I'll kill you!" he said, raising his voice to a tone of fury.
For a moment the American paused, uncertain. The Indian was a powerful man, full as big and strong as himself, well armed with knife, pistol, and loaded whip, to say nothing of his fifty friends outside the door.
The hesitation was momentary. "I can't leave this girl to that brute's mercy," he said to himself. "Perhaps I can back him down."
He looked Salvador square in the eyes. "Where's Felipe?" said he calmly. "You must answer for him, too. Have you killed him?"
"None of your business," said the Indian roughly. "Be off!" and he raised his hand.
At this moment Josefa, hitherto as still as a corpse, turned her face from the floor, but without rising. She looked up at Stephens. "He gave him two shots," she said, in a voice wonderfully steady considering the pain she was enduring. "I saw him fall."
"Then I arrest you for the murder of Felipe. You are my prisoner. Give up your arms."
The only answer the cacique made to this demand was to take out his revolver, but instead of surrendering it he thrust the muzzle in Stephens's face, cocking it as he did so.
The steady gaze of the American met, without quailing, the black, flashing eyes of the Indian. Grey eyes against black, white man against red, the strife is as old as the history of the continent they stood upon; perhaps it will last as long.