The chiefs bowed in evidence of their satisfaction, and Running Water replied--
"What does my son say? Why does he thus praise himself," he remarked in a sonorous voice, "for having done his duty? Does he not know that every man was placed in this world by the Wacondah to fulfil an often rough and painful task? Happy those whose task is the most arduous! The Wacondah loves them and regards them with a favourable eye, and for them he reserves after death the most productive territory in the happy hunting grounds. Of what does my son complain? In devoting him to live among the palefaces, I made him the saviour of my people and the avenger of their insults. All the braves, all the warriors of my tribe envy his lot; he alone complains like a cowardly Yori. He finds the task which has been allotted to him too heavy; be it so, let him retire, let him give up the post of honour which the chiefs consented to confide to him, for the sake of us; let him return to the desert, but he must shun the calli of his fathers; he will not find brothers, relatives, or friends in his country; all will reject him and compel him to take refuge among the wild beasts that are less cruel and cowardly than he."
The majordomo listened to this severe reprimand with drooping head, but without daring to interrupt it. When the old chief ceased, he drew himself up--
"My father," he replied in a humble voice, with an accent of the greatest deference, "your words are severe; they fall upon my heart like red-hot coals. I do not deserve these reproaches; the Wacondah is my witness that my thoughts have ever been with my tribe, and that avenging the insults offered you has been the sole object for which I have striven. My abode among the palefaces has, perhaps, unconsciously, given my words a strange turn that has led you into error. Be not wroth with me, father, for I am worthy of your esteem, if not of your praise. If I complained it was because my heart suffers at being absent from you, and that I long for the moment when I shall be allowed to throw far from me this borrowed garb, to resume the free, glorious, independent life of the Comanches, that noble nation, without an equal on the prairie, beloved by the Wacondah, respected by all the redskins, and feared by the ferocious palefaces, who have never succeeded in bowing them beneath the shameful yoke which they have imposed on all the other Indians."