shining in my face. It had been
starlight when I went to sleep, I remembered, and I raised my eyelids
warily. A wild life teaches the dullest to know when he has been
wakened by some one watching him. And I knew it now.

The world was white light and thick shadow. Wigwams, dogs, stumps,
trees, sleeping Indians, I counted them in turn. Then I saw more. A
pine tree near me had too thick a trunk. That was what I had expected.
I let my eyes travel cautiously upward till they met the shining points
of eyes watching me.

I lay and looked, and the eyes looked in return. I did not dare glance
away and the Indian would not, so we stared like basilisks. It was not
an heroic position, and having a white man's love for open action, I
had to argue with myself to keep from letting my sword whistle. But
fighting with savages is not open nor heroic. It is tedious, oblique,
often uninteresting, and frequently fatal. I was unwilling to lose my
head just then. So I lay still. If this were the Huron, he was
probably merely reconnoitring, as I had reason to believe he had done
several times before. His game interested me, for he seemed to work
unnecessarily hard for meagre returns, and Indians are seldom
spendthrifts of endeavor. I could accomplish nothing by capturing him,
for I should learn nothing. There was ostensible peace between the
Huron nation and myself. I would let him work out his plans till he
did something that I could lay hold of. Yet I would not look away. I
had grown very curious to see his face.

I do not know how it would have ended, or whether dawn would have found
us still staring like barnyard cats, for chance, and a dog, suddenly
settled the matter. The dog, a forlorn, flea-driven cur, snuffed the
fresh trail, followed it to the tree, and snarled out a shout of
protest. He snarled but once. The Indian drew his knife, stooped, and
I heard the sound of tearing hide and spouting blood. It was only a
dog, but I cursed myself for not having been quicker.

And so I sat up. I was forced to shift my eyes for an instant in order
to pick up my musket, which, secure in a friendly camp, I had dropped
at a careless arm's length from me on the ground. When I looked again
the Indian was gone. I went to the tree. The Indian had had but an
instant, but he had secured himself out of reach of my eyesight; had
faded into the background as a partridge screens itself behind mottled
leaves. If I followed him