The Talking Leaves | Page 4

there was no grass for their horses, but they could hold a council while they were eating, and they could listen to a speech from the short, broad, ugly-looking old chief who now stood in the middle of the circle.
"To-la-go-to-de will not go back now till he has struck the Apaches. He has come too far. The squaws of his village would laugh at him if he rode through the mountains and came back to them with empty hands."
That was the substance of his address, put again and again in different shapes, and it seemed to meet the approval of his listeners.
There is nothing a Lipan brave is really afraid of except ridicule, and the dread of being laughed at was the strongest argument their leader could have used to spur them forward.
Once, indeed, he made another sharp hit by pointing to the spot where Murray and Steve were standing.
"No Tongue has the heart of a Lipan. He says if we go back he will go on alone. He will take the Yellow Head with him. They will not be laughed at when they come back. Will the Lipans let their squaws tell them they are cowards, and dare not follow an old pale-face and a boy?"
A deep, half-angry "ugh" went around the circle.
To-la-go-to-de had won over all the grumblers in his audience, and need not have talked any more.
He might have stopped right there and proceeded to eat another slice of buffalo-meat, but when an Indian once learns to be an orator he would rather talk than eat, any day.
In fact, they are such talkers at home and among themselves, that Murray had earned the queer name given him by the chief in no other way than by his habitual silence. He rarely spoke to anybody, and so he was "No Tongue."
The chief himself had a name of which he was enormously proud, for he had won it on a battle-field. His horse had been killed under him, in a battle with the Comanches, when he was yet a young warrior, and he had fought on foot with a knife in each hand.
From that day forward he was To-la-go-to-de, or "The chief that fights with two knives."
Any name he may have been known by before that was at once dropped and forgotten.
It is a noteworthy custom, but the English have something almost exactly like it. A man in England may be plain Mr. Smith or Mr. Disraeli for ever so many years, and then all of a sudden he becomes Lord So-and-So, and nobody ever speaks of him again by the name he carried when he was a mere "young brave."
It is a great mistake to suppose the red men are altogether different from the white.
As for Steve, his hair was nearer chestnut than yellow, but it had given him his Indian name; one that would stick to him until, like To-la-go-to-de, he should distinguish himself in battle and win a "war name" of his own.
He and Murray, however they might be regarded as members of the tribe and of that war-party, had no rights in the "Council." Only born Lipans could take part in that, except by special invitation.
It happened, on the present occasion, that they were both glad of it, for No Tongue had more than usual to say, and Yellow Head was very anxious to listen to him.
"That peak yonder would be an awful climb, Steve."
"I should say it would."
"But if you and I were up there, I'll tell you what we could do; we could look north and east into New Mexico, north and west into Arizona, and south every way, into Mexico itself."
"Are we so near the border?"
"I think we are."
Something like a thunder-cloud seemed to be gathering on Murray's face, and the deep furrows grew deeper, in great rigid lines and curves, while his steel-blue eyes lighted up with a fire that made them unpleasant to look upon.
"You lived in Mexico once?"
"Did I? Did I ever tell you that?"
"Not exactly. I only guessed it from things you've dropped."
"I'll tell you now, then. I did live in Mexico--down yonder in Chihuahua."
"She-waw-waw?" said Steve, trying to follow the old man's rapid pronunciation of the strange, musical name.
"Down there, more than a hundred miles south of the border. I thought we were safe. The mine was a good one. The hacienda was the prettiest place I could make of it. I thought I should never leave it. But the Apaches came one day--"
He stopped a moment and seemed to be looking at the tops of the western mountains.
"Did you have a fight with them?" asked Steve.
"Fight? No. I was on a hunt in the sierras that day. When I came home it was all gone."
"The Apaches?"
"The mine was there, but the works were all burnt. So