“That was not at all necessary, and in any case we are quits, for I insulted you.”
“Yes. Isn’t a blow of the fist an insult?”
“That was in combat, where it cannot count as an insult. My brother is noble and generous; we will not forget it in him.”
“Let us speak of other things, dear Winnetou. I am to become an Apache; how will it be with my comrades?”
“They cannot be taken into the tribe, but they are our brothers.”
“To-morrow we will smoke the pipe of peace with them. In my white brother’s home in the rising sun is there no calumet?”
“No; Christians are all brothers, and it is not necessary to announce it.”
“All brothers! Is there no strife between them?”
“Then they are not different from us, or better than we. They teach love, but do not feel it. Why did my brother come here?”
The Indians never ask such personal questions; but Winnetou could do so in my case, because we were to be brothers, and he must learn to know me.
“I wanted to see the West, and I wanted to try my skill in my profession, and above all I wanted to win honor.”
“I do not see how you could win honor by—” He paused.
“By stealing your lands,” I finished for him. “Truly, Winnetou, I never thought of that side at all. I was not to profit by the road, except as I did my work well, and was paid for it.”
“Paid! paid! Do you care for gold? Do you need it?”
“I have an uncle, a second father, who will give me all I require; but every young man of spirit wants to make his own name and fortune.”
“And measuring for that road would have done this?”
“It would have been a first step, and a long one, towards it.”
“And now you will not get your reward, because the measuring is not done?”
“How much longer time would have been necessary to finish it?”
“Had I known you as I know you now we would have delayed a day in coming back.”
“That I might have finished my work?” I asked, touched by such generosity.
“That means that you would have consented to the robbery.”
“Not to the robbery, but only to the measuring. The lines you make on paper do us no harm; the robbery only begins when the laborers of the pale-faces come to build the road for their fire-horse.”
He considered a while, and a thought was shaping in his brain of such nobility that I doubt if many white men would have been capable of entertaining it. At last he uttered it: “My white brother shall receive all the instruments again, and I will ask my father to allow him to finish measuring for the road. We will go with our warriors and protect him while he does this, and he shall send his papers to the men who wanted them, as well as their instruments, and so shall he make this first step towards the name and fortune he desires.”