Soon dark figures could be discerned against the patches of green thicket; they came nearer and nearer, and now entered the open glade where Silvertip stood with his warriors.
Joe counted twelve, and noted that they differed from his captors.
He had only time to see that this difference consisted in the head-dress, and in the color and quantity of paint on their bodies, when his gaze was attracted and riveted to the foremost figures.
The first was that of a very tall and stately chief, toward whom Silvertip now advanced with every show of respect.

In this Indian's commanding stature, in his reddish-bronze face, stern and powerful, there were readable the characteristics of a king.

In his deep-set eyes, gleaming from under a ponderous brow; in his mastiff-like jaw; in every feature of his haughty face were visible all the high intelligence, the consciousness of past valor, and the power and authority that denote a great chieftain.
The second figure was equally striking for the remarkable contrast it afforded to the chief's.

Despite the gaudy garments, the paint, the fringed and beaded buckskin leggins--all the Indian accouterments and garments which bedecked this person, he would have been known anywhere as a white man.

His skin was burned to a dark bronze, but it had not the red tinge which characterizes the Indian.
This white man had, indeed, a strange physiognomy.