small sword swung it his belt. He was not more than thirty.

The fair man was leaning lazily but gracefully against the trunk of a
tree, and he talked in a manner that seemed indolent and careless, but
which was neither to a youth in buckskins who sat opposite him,
a striking contrast in appearance. This youth was undeniably of the
Anglo-Saxon type, large and well-built, with a broad, full forehead, but
with eyes set too close together. He was tanned almost to the darkness of
an Indian.

"You tell me, Señor Wyatt," said Don Francisco Alvarez, the leader of the
Spanish band, "that the new settlers in Kaintock[A] have twice driven off
the allied tribes, and that, if they are left alone another year or two,
they will go down so deep in the soil that they can never be uprooted.
Is it not so?"

"It is so," replied Braxton Wyatt, the renegade. "The tribes have failed
twice in a great effort. Every man among these settlers is a daring and
skillful fighter, and many of the boys--and many of the women, too. But if
white troops and cannon are sent against them their forts must fall."

The Spaniard was idly whipping the grass stems with a little switch. Now
he narrowed his metallic, blue eyes, and gazed directly into those of
Braxton Wyatt.

"And you, Señor Wyatt?" he said, speaking his slow, precise English.
"Nothing premeditated is done without a motive. You are of these people
who live in Kaintock, their blood is your blood; why then do you wish to
have them destroyed?"