“Live?” I answered. “He fell, when I struck him with my gun, as though life had left him.”
“For all that he is not dead. Men like him do not die so easily. He was stunned by the blow; he will be laid up for a week, and then he will be as well as ever.”
I confess to feeling glad at this. Although I had struck the trader to save my friend’s life, I cared not to have on my hands his blood. It is true that had my gun been loaded at the moment when he held the Sioux tightly locked in his embrace, I would not have hesitated shooting him dead to set free my friend, but I would always have regretted being compelled to do so.
It was better as it was; the Sioux was safe. McDermott still lived.
We then spoke of the earlier events of the morning. I heard how Red Cloud had always counted upon his enemy forming part of the pursuing force. It was that belief which had induced him first of all to accept the chance of flight offered by the Blackfoot chief. I asked him how he had hoped to resist the trader successfully, seeing that he was without arms of any kind.
“The spirit of his dead father would watch over him,” he said. And when I told him of my fears and anxieties on the previous day, and how I had determined to turn back to the rock hill, with a vague purpose of helping him in his need, he again remarked,—
“It was the spirit of my father that led you.”
Of the loss of his favourite horse he thought much.
“Had I done my work as well as he did his,” he said, “my enemy would not have escaped me.”
“But you have gained even a better animal,” I said, “than the one lost.”