The three groups now resembled so many fleets at sea, lying with their topsails to the masts, with the commendable precaution of reconnoitring, before each could ascertain who among the strangers might be considered as friends, and who as foes.
During this moment of suspense, the dark, threatening, eye of Mahtoree rolled from one of the strange parties to the other, in keen and hasty examination, and then it turned its withering look on the old man, as the chief said, in a tone of high and bitter scorn-- "The Big-knives are fools! It is easier to catch the cougar asleep, than to find a blind Dahcotah.

Did the white head think to ride on the horse of a Sioux ?" The trapper, who had found time to collect his perplexed faculties, saw at once that Middleton, having perceived Ishmael on the trail by which they had fled, preferred trusting to the hospitality of the savages, than to the treatment he would be likely to receive from the hands of the squatter.

He therefore disposed himself to clear the way for the favourable reception of his friends, since he found that the unnatural coalition became necessary to secure the liberty, if not the lives, of the party.
"Did my brother ever go on a war-path to strike my people ?" he calmly demanded of the indignant chief, who still awaited his reply.
The lowering aspect of the Teton warrior so far lost its severity, as to suffer a gleam of pleasure and triumph to lighten its ferocity, as sweeping his arm in an entire circle around his person he answered-- "What tribe or nation has not felt the blows of the Dahcotahs?
Mahtoree is their partisan." "And has he found the Big-knives women, or has he found them men ?" A multitude of fierce passions were struggling in the tawny countenance of the Indian.

For a moment inextinguishable hatred seemed to hold the mastery, and then a nobler expression, and one that better became the character of a brave, got possession of his features, and maintained itself until, first throwing aside his light robe of pictured deer-skin, and pointing to the scar of a bayonet in his breast, he replied-- "It was given, as it was taken, face to face." "It is enough.

My brother is a brave chief, and he should be wise.