round the camp in a menacing attitude, while one
of their chiefs stepped forward to hold a palaver. For
some time the conversation on both sides was polite
enough, but by degrees the Indian chief assumed an
imperious tone, and demanded gifts from the trappers,
taking care to enforce his request by hinting that thousands
of his countrymen were not far distant. Cameron
stoutly refused, and the palaver threatened to come to
an abrupt and unpleasant termination just at the time
that Dick and his friends appeared on the scene of