ce of mind, while yet the
excited echoes were noising the thing from hill to hill, the black
hunter, to mislead the minds of the Indians as to the cause of the
uproar, mimicked the snarling growl of a wolf. Then he lay perfectly
still for several moments, not daring to venture farther till assured
that his cunning device had succeeded. After a brief space of silence,
which seemed to be spent in listening, the murmur of voices above him
recommenced, when he likewise recommenced his stealthy approaches. When
he had advanced so far as to be no longer able to walk upright without
risk of discovery, he threw himself prone on the ground, and like a
black-snake went crawling along on his belly, inch by inch, foot by
foot, yard by yard, warily, noiselessly, slowly--his rifle laid along
the hollow of his back. Thus painfully had he worked his way for more
than forty yards, when he found himself, almost unawares, at the very
edge of his covert. Here, peering through the leafy chinks, he could
plainly see the enemy, whose footsteps he had so long been dogging.

Yes, there they were--the three Indians--not twenty paces from Betsy
Grumbo's muzzle. Breakfast by this time ended, they were composedly
smoking their pipes, and, for Indians, chatting away quite socially, as
if in no hurry to be off on their day's tramp. The giant--for such in
fact he proved to be--whose foot-prints Burl had so gravely scanned
along the trail, was sitting on the ground at the foot of a tree; while
over against him, with the now smoldering camp-fire between, were his
two comrades, seated on opposite ends of a log. A little to one side lay
a slain buck, upon whose flesh they had supped the evening before and
breakfasted this morning. Against the log, leant side by side, between
the two smaller Indians, rested their three rifles; while their
hatchets, of which they had freed themselves to be the more at their
ease, were sticking deeply sunk into the tree above the giant's
head--their scalping-knives being the only weapons retained about their
persons. The giant, a savage of terrible aspect, was dressed in complete
Indian costume--his robe being richly decorated with bead-work and
stained porcupine quills, and where it showed a seam or border was
fringed with scalp-locks, brown, flaxen, and red, as well as
black--taken by his own hand from the heads of his enemies--the last
_agony_, doubtless, as the fashions had it among the swells in his
quarter of the world