The mood of the original party, after this incident, was grim. The bonds of plains brotherhood had been lightly broken.
Alfred had resorted to such desperate measures in making the best of undesirable conditions brought to pass by someone else.
Billy Knapp had done so because he had entered into a game, and declined to be beaten by anyone.
Jim alone was happy. He had done it solely and simply for a woman; and the woman had seen him fight for her.
V
LAFOND DESERTS
The eight men of the attacking party returned slowly to the little dip of land which held the temporary camp. They were defeated, baffled, and angry. If a stranger had accosted them at that moment, he would probably have been gruffly answered one minute and assaulted the next. But for the present they were silent. They were Anglo-Saxons and Tennessee mountaineers for the most part; hence they were also adaptable, and attuned to the fatalism that comes from much contemplating of cloud-capped peaks and wind-swept pines.
Not so with Michaïl Lafond, who alternately raved and wept, frantically brandishing his rifle. An impassive mountaineer sat behind him, holding him to the party. If not thus restrained, he would, in the heat of anger, have attacked the whole train single-handed, for he was brave enough in his way. The sober second-thought of the Indian in him might perhaps have caused him to pause on the brink of the charge and sink into the long grasses to await the chance of a more silent blow; but the impulse up to that point would have been real and whole-souled. So it was now. The man raved as a maniac might. He called down the curses of heaven on his companions for cowards.
And in this, when he reached camp, he was ably seconded by the women. They surrounded him in a voluble and indignant group, and listened to him with sympathy, casting glances of scorn toward their passive lords and masters in the background. In their way they became as excited as Lafond. One or two wept. Most employed the variety of their vocabularies in giving the world what is known as a "piece of their minds."