The anger in the Indian’s eyes died down.
“Indian man’s hand good so as the white man,” he said. “Yet him not shake so this thing is mush good. This Kid. Him mak wife to you. You give her all thing good plenty. So. That thing you say big. Usak give her all, too. Usak think lak she is the child of Pri-loo. Usak love him good boss, Marty, her father. Oh, yes. All time plenty. Usak fight, kill. All him life no thing so him Kid only know good.”
Bill inclined his head. The man was speaking out of the depth of his fierce heart, and he warmed to the simple sturdiness of his graphic pleading.
“I know all that,” he said.
“Then—?”
The Indian’s hand was slowly, almost timidly thrust towards him again. But the movement remained uncompleted.
“Usak,” Bill began deliberately, and in the tone of a purpose arrived at. “I know you for the good feller you’ve been to all these folk. I know you better than I guess even they know you. I guess it don’t take me figgering to know if I’d hurt a soul of them you’d never quit till you’d shot me to pieces. I know all that. Let it go at that. A whiteman grips the other feller by the hand when he knows the things back of that other feller’s mind. Do you get that? Ther’s a mighty big stain of blood on the hand you’re askin’ me to grip, an’ I’m not yearning to shake the hand of a—murderer.”
The men were gazing eye to eye. The calm cold of Wilder’s grey eyes was inflexible. The Indian’s had lit with renewed fire. But his resentment, the burning fires of his savage bosom were no match for the whiteman’s almost mesmeric power. The gaze of the black eyes wavered. Their lids slowly drooped, as though the search of the other’s was reading him through and through and he desired to avoid them.
“Well?”
The whiteman’s challenge came with patient determination.