Mahletonkwa calmly repeated his demand. He, too, thought it wisest to play the part of the close-fisted trader, and show no hurry to make a bargain.
"Well, look here then, Mahletonkwa and Navajos all," said the American, appealing directly to the cupidity of the followers as well as of the chief. "It's a big thing I've offered you on my own hook already in this matter of the amnesty. It's a big thing for me to say I'll stand between you and Uncle Sam" (he did not say Uncle Sam, but the Great Father at Washington); "but I stick by that, and I'll do it. And I've offered you payment for the dead man, same as Don Nepomuceno, a hundred and twenty-five dollars; and you say it aint enough. Now, I can't meet you the whole way, but I'll raise my offer a bit, and you can take it or leave it. It's my last word." He rose to the level of the part he was playing, and threw himself into it with all the sincerity he was master of. "You see that rifle"--he pointed to the long, heavy, muzzle-loading hunter's rifle that lay beside Mahletonkwa's right knee--"well, I'll give you the weight of that rifle in silver dollars. Me, looking as I do, I'll see that you get them. There's my word upon it. This is my personal offer to compensate you for your dead brother. You shall have silver dollars enough to weigh down that rifle on the scales. I don't know how many that'll take, but it's bound to be a right big pile. Now understand me, you chaps, we'll take a balance, a fair and square balance, and put the rifle in one scale and pour silver dollars into the other till the rifle kicks the beam. _Sabe?_"
The sons of the desert looked one at another, and curious excited sounds came from their lips, and significant gestures were made. Some of them had actually seen scales used to weigh out the rations at Fort Defiance, and they quite understood what they were for, and made the thing clear to the less instructed among them. The American saw that his offer had created an impression, and he did his best to rub it in.
"You'll find it pay you to accept, Mahletonkwa," he said. "You'll be able to fix things in grand style with all that silver. Here, let's have a look at that rifle of yours, and let me heft it." He put out his hand cautiously--no objection was offered; he laid it on the piece--still no objection; he raised the rifle slowly on both palms, dandling it, as it were, up and down. "Why, it's a real heavy gun. It don't weigh less than twelve or thirteen pounds, I reckon. I tell you that'll come to no end of a lot of silver; all silver dollars, mind you; and it'll take hundreds of them, you bet, to weigh down this gun." He turned his eyes from one to the other of the redskins, and they seemed to understand him as he laid it down again beside the chief.