White Calf arose and faced the white men.

“White men go!” he said, his voice rising.  “Injun heap shoot!”

“B’gad, I believe the haythen thinks he can scare us,” said Battersleigh, calmly.

Franklin pointed to the carcasses of the buffalo, and made signs that after they had taken the meat of the buffalo they would go.  Apparently he was understood.  Loud words arose among the Indians, and White Calf answered, gesticulating excitedly: 

“Heap good horse!” he said, pointing to the horses of the party.  “White man go!  Injun heap get horse!  Injun heap shoot!”

“This is d——­d intimidation!” shouted Battersleigh, starting up and shaking a fist in White Calf’s face.

“Give up our horses?  Not by a d——­d sight!” said Curly.  “You can heap shoot if you want to turn loose, but you’ll never set me afoot out here, not while I’m a-knowin’ it!”

The situation was tense, and Franklin felt his heart thumping, soldier though he was.  He began to step back toward the wagons with his friends.  A confused and threatening uproar arose among the Indians, who now began to crowd forward.  It was an edged instant.  Any second might bring on the climax.

And suddenly the climax came.  From the barricade at the rear there rose a cry, half roar and half challenge.  The giant Mexican Juan, for a time quieted by Curly’s commands, was now seized upon by some impulse which he could no longer control.  He came leaping from behind the wagons, brandishing the long knife with which he had been engaged upon the fallen buffalo.

“Indios!” he cried, “Indios!” and what followed of his speech was only incoherent savage babblings.  He would have darted alone into the thick of the band had not Franklin and Curly caught him each by a leg as he passed.

The chief, White Calf, moved never a muscle in his face as he saw his formidable adversary coming on, nor did he join in the murmurs that arose among his people.  Rather there came a glint into his eye, a shade of exultation in his heavy face.  “Big chief!” he said, simply.  “Heap fight!”

“You bet your blame life he’ll heap fight!” said Curly, from his position upon Juan’s brawny breast as he held him down.  “He’s good for any two of you, you screechin’ cowards!”

Curly’s words were perhaps not fully understood, yet the import of his tone was unmistakable.  There was a stirring along the line, as though a snake rustled in the grass.  The horse-holders were crowding up closer.  There were bows drawn forward over the shoulders of many young men, and arrows began to shiver on the string under their itching fingers.  Once more Franklin felt that the last moment had come, and he and Battersleigh still pressed back to the wagons where the rifles lay.