He was evidently of a breeding inferior to that of his companion, but he had so sturdy and swinging a gait, so stalwart and goodly a build, so engaging a manner, and so florid a smile, that the very sight of him was disarming, despite the patent crafty deceit in his face.  It seemed as if it could not be very deep or guileful, it was so frankly expressed.  It was suggestive of the roguish machinations of a child.  He had twinkling brown eyes, and reddish hair, plaited in a club and tied with a thong of leather.  His features were blunt, but his red, well-shaped lips parted in a ready, reassuring smile, and showed teeth as even and white as the early corn.  Both men were arrayed in the buckskin shirt and leggings generally worn by the frontiersmen, but the face of the other had a certain incongruity with his friend’s, and was more difficult to decipher.  It looked good,—­not kind, but true.  It had severe pragmatic lines about the mouth, and the lips were thin and somewhat fixedly set.  His eyes were dark, serious, and very intent, as if he could argue and protest very earnestly on matters of no weight.  He would in a question of theory go very far if set on the wrong line, and just as far on the right.  The direction was the matter of great moment, and this seemed now in the hands of the haphazard but scheming Irishman.

“If it plaze yer honor,” said O’Kimmon in English, taking off his coonskin cap with a lavish flourish as a tall and stately Indian hastily garbed in fine raiment of the aboriginal type, a conspicuous article of which was a long feather-wrought mantle, both brilliant and delicate of effect, detached himself from the group and came forward, “I can’t spake yer illigant language,—­me eddication bein’ that backward,—­but I kin spake me own so eloquent that it would make a gate-post prick up the ears of understanding.  We’ve come to visit yez, sor.”

The smile which the Hibernian bent upon the savage was of a honeyed sweetness, but the heart of his companion sank as he suddenly noted the keen, intuitive power of comprehension expressed in the face of the old Indian.  Here was craft too, but of a different quality, masked, potent, impossible to divine, to measure, to thwart.  The sage Oo-koo-koo stood motionless, his eyes narrowing, his long, flat, cruel mouth compressed as with a keen scrutiny he marked all the characteristics of the strangers,—­first of one, then deliberately of the other.  A war captain (his flighty name was Watatuga, the Dragon-fly, although he looked with his high nose and eagle glance more like a bird of prey), assuming precedence of the others, pressed up beside the prophet, and the challenge of his eyes and the contempt that dilated his nostrils might have seemed more formidable of intent than the lacerating gaze of the cheera-taghe, except that to an Irishman there is always a subtle joy even in the abstract idea of fight.  The rest of the braves, with their alert, high-featured cast of countenance, inimical, threatening, clustered about, intent, doubtful, listening.