Still the others held to their friendly gestures, and upon looking back, we could see the rest of their party making no less friendly demonstrations among our soldiers. We were partly reassured when we learned that the warriors were not Loups, but a party from the Grand Pawnee. But the confirmation of our surmise that they were returning from an unsuccessful raid upon the Tetans, or Ietans,--whom the Spaniards call Comanches,--caused us to fall back upon our main party and work it around to a camp in a little grove as speedily as possible. During this man[oe]uvre more than one of our unwelcome visitors bent their bows. But the firm insistence of our gallant leader won its way with the savages. Soon all sixty were seated about us in a ring. The Lieutenant then sat down opposite their chief, with the council pipe laid out before him. At his orders, gifts of tobacco, knives, and flints were placed beside the chief. The present was greeted with guttural cries of dissatisfaction, and the chief demanded with great insolence that we should give them a quantity of our most valuable equipage, from ammunition to blankets and kettles. To this, despite the advice and even urgent plea of Baroney, our commander firmly refused to accede. At last, after no little grumbling and threatening, they presented us with a vessel of water, and drank and smoked with us, in token of amity. Not satisfied with this, and warned by Baroney, I kept on my feet, watching the treacherous warriors. Our wariness was justified by the contemptuous manner in which many of their number threw away their presents. When, immediately after this, we began to reload our pack horses, the entire band pressed into our midst and began to pilfer right and left. For a time all was in the most perilous confusion, Pike and I having to mount our horses to save the very pistols in our holsters. On every side the savages were snatching articles, which the soldiers were doing their best to wrest from them. "The rogues!" cried Pike. "Baroney, command the chief to call off his men. I'll not submit to open robbery!" Even while Baroney interpreted the order, the chief slipped a knife from the belt of one of the privates who was turned the other way, and hid it behind his shield. Almost in the same moment he faced the Lieutenant, and flung out his hand in a gesture of injured innocence. Baroney hastily interpreted his ironic, hypocritical reply: "The great white chief has an open hand, a good heart. It cannot be he grudges his poor red friends a few small gifts. My braves are wretched; they are needy; they hunger." "Hungry, are they?" shouted Pike. "Then we'll give them lead to eat! Stand ready to fire, men!" He rose in his stirrups and pointed his pistol at the chief. "By the Almighty! I'll shoot the next scoundrel who touches our goods!"