as still bright on the
young brave's handsome face, the ambushed rifle rang out on the quiet
scene, and with loud yells the two Indians fell over backward behind the
log, and after a few convulsive struggles, there lay as dead.

"I yi, you dogs!" And with this his battle-cry shaking the lonely wilds,
and finding echo in a deep-mouthed howl from the brindled dog in the
dingle below, the Fighting Nigger burst from his ambush, all the lion of
his nature now roused and rampant within him. Throwing himself with a
prodigious bound into the arena, on with huge strides he came, his
ponderous battle-ax in broad, bright circles gleaming high over his
head. "I yi, you dogs!"

With a terrible cry, half as a yell of astonishment, half as a whoop of
defiance, Black Thunder--the red giant being, in fact, none other than
that redoubtable Wyandot brave--leaped to his feet, and wrenching his
tomahawk from the tree beside him, hurled it, with a horrible hiss, full
at the shaggy front of this most unexpected, formidable foe. But, quick
of eye and strong of hand, the Fighting Nigger caught the murderous
missile on the head of his ax, and sent it ringing, like an anvil, high
up in the air. On he came amain, and with another lion-like bound had
planted himself square in front of his antagonist just as a second
tomahawk was on the tip of leaping at him, which he sent ringing after
the other, before it had quitted the red giant's grasp. Foiled again,
and seeing the ax uplifted, himself this time the mark for the impending
blow, Black Thunder, pushed to desperation, darted sheer under the
descending arm, thus bringing his shoulder under the handle of the
weapon, instead of his head under its cleaving edge, and causing the
force of the blow to be spent harmless on the ground behind him.

Then did those doughty giants close and grapple together in the wrestle
for life and death. The red giant had the advantage in height, if not in
weight; the black giant in strength of muscle, if not in suppleness of
limbs. Again, though not so good a wrestler, the red was better
breathed, while the black, though fighting in a better cause, had not
yet eaten his breakfast. So, when we come to weigh them fairly, it will
be found that the advantages which each had over the other made the
chances of war about nip and tuck between the black and the red.

Pushing and pulling, writhing and tugging and twisting, round and round
with whirl and fling they went--now over