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 warning, and the marshman, his attention focused upon the eagle, saw the great reptile, half-hidden by the grass at his feet, at the very moment when the glittering, lustrous coils sprang open as though released by a trigger and the hideous head with its yawning jaws flashed forward and upward.

With a scream Jen leaped, slashing wildly at the snake with the stick held in his left hand. Even in that mad moment he knew that he was too late. He had felt the impact of the snake's head on his thigh, and a swift overpowering surge of terror turned the green jungle black around him. As he staggered, fainting, barely able to see, his legs suddenly weak, his foot caught in the light, strong cord leading from the eagle's trap to the pine clog fifteen yards away in the thicket. Pitching forward on his face, he lay motionless in the grass six feet behind the king.

At an equal distance in front of the eagle the great rattler squirmed and writhed, twisting and turning with convulsive spasmodic jerks of his burly, muscular body. Plainly he was in trouble. Jen's slender stick, whipping through the air, had struck the side of the snake's head as it drew swiftly back after delivering its thrust, and the big reptile, his lower jaw knocked askew, was dazed by the blow.

Possibly his spine had been injured. He seemed unable to lift his head and neck more than an inch

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 or two from the ground, and apparently he could not bend his body back into the close symmetrical coil which was his fighting attitude. That coil was a living spring, supplying the motive power for the long swift thrusts of his head, and only when coiled could he strike with his accustomed strength, quickness and accuracy.

Yet, crippled though he was, he was still formidable, and the pain which racked him added to his fury. Whether by chance or by design, his frenzied writhings and lashings to and fro were bringing him nearer and nearer to the eagle. Soon he was within half his length of the king, and the javelinlike head, its jaws flaring crookedly, shot forward close to the ground in the direction of his foe. The blow fell short, but in another moment the seemingly aimless and uncontrolled contortions of the snake landed him almost at the king's feet, and savagely the broad flat head lunged again.

The king could retreat no farther. When Jen, fainting with terror, had stumbled across the trap line and fallen, his foot had pulled the line taut, and the trapped eagle was anchored where he stood. The king knew this, for he had tried vainly to move. His muscles tightened and his eyes glowed a fiercer yellow as the writhing monster drew nearer and nearer. Just as the rattlesnake's poisoned javelin shot forward two inches above the ground in that

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 final thrust, the eagle's wings opened, beating powerfully, and with his free foot he struck forward and downward, his talons spread to the utmost. Next moment his claws closed upon the rattler's head.

The king was fast to his foe, clamped to him with a grip that could not be shaken. Two long claws had pierced the snake's wide head from above, another had sunk deep into his throat from below, and the muscles operating those claws were strong enough to drive them through gristle and bone. The huge serpent threshed and writhed like a creature in convulsions, and the eagle, one foot in the trap, the other imbedded in his enemy, was all but torn in two. Pulled this way and that as the contortions of the stricken snake dragged eagle and trap here and there over the ground, the king could not keep himself upright no matter how desperately his Pinions beat the air. His wing beats were growing weaker when another convulsive twist of the giant snake's powerful body almost wrenched the big bird asunder and a sharp, intolerable pain shot through him.

That pain was the signal of his victory. A corner of the trap had been jammed under a grass tussock, and the toes of the eagle's left foot had been jerked free by that last and mightiest plunge of the rattler, the trap's steel jaws raking them to the bone.

Somehow the king knew that his chance had come.

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 Putting all his strength into the effort, he drew the talons of his other foot out of the rattler's head. Next moment his wide pinions, strongly beating, were bearing him upward into the air.

Jen Murray, the marshman, with all his faith in his own woodcraft, was never quite sure that he had figured out correctly precisely what happened while he lay insensible. The first thing that he saw when he opened his eyes and rolled over on his back was an eagle high in the air, spiraling upward into the blue, his snowy head gleaming like silver in the sun. Instantly, then, came recollection and, with it, another wave of the overpowering terror which had dropped him in a dead faint in the grass. Not until a hurried examination revealed the fact that the rattler's fangs had imbedded themselves harmlessly in the thick, bulky folds of the big handkerchief wrapped about the rounded stone in his pocket did Jen recover command of his faculties.

Then, assured that he was not going to die, he looked about him and saw the great snake ten feet from him in the grass, writhing feebly, evidently near death. He saw the holes and gashes in the rattler's bloody head, he saw in the grass and on the ground the evidences of a struggle, he saw the empty trap. But he was still feeling somewhat sick

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 and weak and ne did not stay to study to the last detail the mystery of the king's escape and of the dying serpent.

The priceless Eagle Stone, which would bring him riches incalculable, was safe in his pocket, and already it had proved its virtue by saving his life. He smashed the rattler's head with an oak stick, then slung the huge carcass over the stick and started homeward. It would yield much oil, excellent for rheumatism, and the skin, nicely tanned and stretched, could be sold for half a dollar to some young blood of the Odistash plantations who would make a dashing scarf out of it for his lady.

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URING the night fierce unearthly voices had screamed or roared in the darkness. With the coming of morning, other and More numerous voices were added to those of the hunting beasts.

From the sunlit tops of tall cypresses near at hand a hundred wild turkey cocks sent out a rolling incessant clamor of defiant and amorous calls. Another great flock took up the challenge, another flock, and another, until the whole swamp for miles around rang and echoed with the noise. Fifty feet above the cypress summits sailed an army of giant white cranes, raining down repeated volleys of clear, resonant, whooping cries. Wilder by far, the deep reverberant dragon music of huge alligators shook the air, while, like a sharper echo of these tremendous love bellowings, the hunting cry of a wolf pack trailing a deer through high pine woods a mile away rose and fell in sinister cadence as the fitful breeze freshened and lulled. Twice the hoarse coughing roar of a bear rolled from the depths of the cypress fastness; once from a greater distance came the long

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 drawn melancholy wail of a puma; again and again three wildcats hunting together screeched savagely to startle and confuse their prey.

Such was the chorus which greeted Black Bull at the hour of his birth on an April morning when the Low Country was young and the fear of the white man had not yet settled over the wilderness and stilled the wilderness voices. The spring had been damp and cold. This was the first warm clear dawn in many weeks, and for that reason the outcry of the preying beasts and the great birds which frequented the cypress swamp swelled louder and longer than usual. The wild black cow, standing guard over her first-born in the recesses of a vast canebrake, shook her horns and glanced apprehensively to right and left. Many times she had listened to this fearful concert of the primeval forest—listened unmoved and indifferent, because she was a child of the forest herself and knew how to meet its dangers. But on this morning, when she had just become a mother, she was afraid.

Her calf, glossy black from nose to tail tip, lay on a dry bed of leaves in the midst of canes which towered thirty feet above him. For forty miles or more the canebrake stretched between the great swamp and the dry upland woods, forming an evergreen belt a half mile in width, the height and girth of the canes attesting the richness of the dark

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 moist soil from which they sprang. So close together stood the smooth green stems that no creature larger than a fox could make its way between them; but through every part of the brake wound well-trodden paths made by the buffalo and the deer and now used also by the wild black cattle which abounded in certain regions of the swamp country. It was at the intersection of two of these paths that the black calf was lying.

His mother could scarcely have chosen a more perilous spot for the bringing forth of her young. From any one of four directions danger might come, and she could not guard all four approaches at once. The wild cow seemed fully aware of the disadvantages of the situation. She stood squarely over the calf, facing that one of the paths which led straight into the depths of the brake; and, as though already warned of the approach of some formidable foeman along this shadowy tunnel, she presently took six steps forward, lowered her head and flourished her long sharp-pointed horns in a gesture of angry defiance.

Yet it was from the opposite direction that the first intruder came. The light breeze blew from the heart of the canebrake. It had brought news of danger in that quarter and had concentrated her attention there. The moccasined feet of the tall young Indian hunter approaching from the cane-

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 brake's edge fell soft as velvet on the damp leafy carpet of the trail behind the black cow. Noiseless as a stalking lynx, the lithe brown form, naked above the waist, stole swiftly nearer. In the deceptive twilight of the cane thicket the black calf, motionless on its bed of fallen leaves, was all but invisible at a little distance. Not until he had come within fifteen feet of it did Keenta the Beaver see the baby bull.

He halted, undecided. Catching her unawares and having her at a disadvantage in the—narrow path, he had meant to attack the wild cow; but, discovering that she was the mother of a newly born calf, he realized that his spear could not save him when she charged, and he had dropped his long bow in the trail behind him so that he could use both hands in driving the spear home. Yet Keenta, boldest of young hunters, disliked to draw back from an adventure; and when he had set out from the village, well before daylight, Ahowhe the Long-Haired had bade him remember that she was weary of venison.

A young bear's paws would suit her taste well, she had said, or, better yet, a haunch of beef from the wild black cattle which had spread inland from the white men's settlements near the coast and now ranged in hundreds through the swamps. Keenta had rejoiced when, as he stole along the trail through

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 the canes, he saw the black cow in the path ahead of him, up the wind from him and with her head turned the other way. With good luck he could come within arm's length of her and he knew a thrust which would kill her before she could travel twenty bow shots. But seeing the calf, Keenta knew that the wild cow would not run when the thrust had been delivered. She would wheel and charge like lightning; and Keenta the Beaver was a bold hunter, but no fool.

A moment the young Indian stood motionless, considering; then, with dramatic suddenness, fate solved his problem for him. Already his eyes had been searching the path beyond the cow, for he had noted the tossing of her head, the nervous lashing of her tail, and he knew that along that dim winding tunnel through the canes some great beast must be coming. Wolves, bears and pumas walked the canebrake paths, and from the cow's actions Keenta judged that she had scented one of these three; but, alert and expectant though he was, the swiftness of the tragedy surprised him.

For a fraction of a second he glimpsed a vague shape at the bend of the trail beyond the cow—a shadowy, indeterminate form which seemed to fill the path and in the midst of which two large eyes gleamed cold and bright like jewels. Then, instantaneously, the puma was blotted from his view by

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 the black bulk of the cow impetuously charging her foeman.

Keenta the Beaver stood and watched, his nerves a-tingle. The puma was the Cat of God, the greatest hunter of all the wild hunters; but surely this puma, confronted in that narrow trail by those long sharp horns rushing down upon him, must turn and run or perish. Halfway to the bend in the trail the black cow stumbled slightly, her forefoot bogged in a deep hole in the treacherous floor of the pathway; and in that same instant Keenta saw the tawny master of the wilderness hurl his long sinewy bulk upon his victim. Just how the thing was done even the quick vision of the red warrior could not distinguish. But a moment later the cow lay motionless in the path, her neck broken, while upon her body stood the great Cat of God, his long tail waving slowly to and fro, his round, cold, passionless eyes fixed steadfastly upon the young Indian.

For perhaps a minute Keenta the Beaver returned that glassy stare, standing erect in his tracks, his spear poised in his right hand. The Cat of God was no coward in those days. The white man's weapons had not then broken his spirit. He was no fool, like the buffalo bull, to rush heedless to destruction. But he knew his own might and was master of the wild creatures of the primeval forest; and the copper-colored men of the forest respected him and

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 did him honor, because he was the greatest of all hunters and killed only to satisfy his need. Be tween them and him a sort of truce existed; yet it was a truce which was sometimes broken in time of stress when the red man tried to take the puma's kill. So for a while Keenta the Beaver and the black cow's tawny slayer watched each other warily in the twilight of the overarching canes, neither knowing what the other might do.

Presently Keenta, his gaze never straying from those cold inscrutable eyes, began to speak. First and at great length he paid the puma many compliments, hailing him as the forest's lord, extolling his lithe beauty, praising his skill as a hunter, lauding the niceness and cleanliness of his feeding habits. Then, with glowing eloquence, he told of the loveliness of Ahowhe the Long-Haired and of her capriciousness and of how she had wearied of deer's meat. In conclusion, he proposed a bargain. The Cat of God should keep his kill, he should feast on the cow that he had stricken down; and Keenta the Beaver, young warrior of the Yemassees, would take as his share the little black bull calf and carry it alive to Ahowhe.

He paused, searching the unwavering yellow eyes for a sign. Then, thrusting his spear into the ground, he walked slowly forward. The great yellow-brown form looming above the body of the

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 cow stiffened and crouched, the cold eyes narrowed and gleamed. But Keenta walked on, smiling a little in satisfaction with his own valor. Calmly he knelt beside the calf. He could no longer see the puma, because his back was turned. He knew that at one bound the huge cat could strike him lifeless. Yet he stopped to stroke the calf and to speak to it gently.

"Little black bull," he said, "Ahowhe, who sent me to hunt, has saved you, for the great beast yonder would have killed you had I not come. With Ahowhe you will be safe, for she loves all young things. And some day you will be known as Yanasa, the Very Great Bull, the Master of the Herds."

Slowly he lifted the calf and slung it across his broad bare shoulders. Turning, he faced the puma and made with his right hand the stately gesture of farewell. Then he strode off along the canebrake trail.

Burliegh, the English hunter, coming down to Charles Town with a small mounted caravan from the trading posts of the Muskogee country, camped for the night near the head of the great cypress swamp. Again it was spring, the season of late jasmine and Indian rose. At first dawn Burliegh,

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 awakened by the bellowing of great alligators and the incessant tumult of tall white egrets roosting in thousands in a black gum bay near by, mounted his wiry Chickasaw pony and rode out in advance of his comrades to get meat, his larder being empty. In a land of miraculous plenty, where the poorest man—provided he could shoot—might dine on the choicest of meats, Burliegh craved plain and common food. Surfeited with venison and bears' paws, with wood duck and wild turkey, he yearned for a breakfast of roasted rabbit.

Leaving camp, he rode along the outer edge of the canebrake through wild pea vines and dark green rushes as high as his horse's back. Away to his right stretched a long narrow prairie, two miles long and half a mile wide, a natural meadow reaching deep into the virgin forest, which walled it in on either side. Down this green vista Burliegh's gaze roved casually, viewing familiar things—deer grazing in herds of thirty or forty, a droveof fifty wild black cattle, a flock of ten thousand passenger pigeons flying like the wind, a swarm of vultures crowding about a carcass, a lordly bull elk striding through a group of whitetails toward the forest's rim. On the prairie the pea-vine growth was luxuriant, but not so tall, and in the moister places it was supplanted by short vivid green grass. One such spot, an acre or more in extent, gleamed

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 white as snow—a solid mass of big birds of various sizes, some of them almost as tall as a man; whooping cranes, wood ibises, white ibises and egrets of two kinds.

Where the deer paths entered the canebrake the tall rushes through which the hunter rode fell away. In one of these openings at the entrance of a path his horse stopped suddenly with a snort. A small black bear which had just emerged from the brake wheeled with ludicrous haste and vanished amid the canes. At the next opening, warned by an ominous sound, Burliegh scanned the ground ahead of him, tickled his horse's flanks with his heels and spoke two words. The pony, well trained and unafraid, bounded forward, then jumped. His small hoofs passed high over the obstacle—a sixfoot diamond rattlesnake, coiled at the threshold of the canebrake trail.

Presently the hunter found a spot suited to his purpose—the entrance of a wide path striking straight into the cane thicket and crossing another path thirty feet from the thicket's edge. Burleigh halted, sitting motionless in his saddle, his rifle ready, his eyes fixed on the place where the two trails crossed. Two raccoons, a whitetail doe and five swamp rabbits came and went before he saw and shot a rabbit big enough to suit him.

Securing his game, he rode on, still skirting the

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 cane thicket, intending to stop and cook his breakfast in the woods just ahead where no rushes or wild pea vines cumbered the ground. On the prairie a group of ten deer, feeding in tall grass close to the forest edge, scattered suddenly in all directions. Burliegh craned his neck and saw a sinuous movement in the grass as though a huge snake were winding through it.

It was a young puma, he concluded, young and small; or else an old and very wily one, wily enough to crouch low as it made its way through the grass and thus keep its body hidden. After a minute, he swore softly. Proud of his woodcraft, he permitted himself no excuses. The serpentine weaving of the grass had ceased at the edge of a small circular opening around a sink hole, and across this opening had passed four black wolves of the small Low Country breed, one trotting behind the other.

Burliegh stared moodily at the spot where they had reëntered the grass, frowning over his mistake as though some misfortune had befallen him. Suddenly his expression changed. Rising in his stirrups and pushing back his wide-brimmed hat, he gazed for a long minute at a dark object far down the prairie, a bow shot from the edge of the woods.

A troop of whitetails intercepted his view and he rode on a dozen yards, then halted to examine the

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 distant object again. Presently he was satisfied. No bull of the wild black cattle, which were generally lean and undersized, could bulk so large. It was a buffalo, he was sure; yet for years buffalo had been practically unknown in the Low Country—where, indeed, they had never been abundant, preferring the uplands where the prairie-meadows were more extensive. Burliegh marked the spot where the bull was feeding, then rode on at a quicker pace to the edge of the woods.

There he decided that breakfast could wait. The lone bull out on the prairie interested him and something in its shape puzzled him. A short ride just within the forest margin would afford him a better view. He broke a sapling to show his comrades the direction he had taken. Then he set off at a brisk canter at right angles to his former course.

No undergrowth hampered his pony's progress through the splendid parklike forest of gigantic white oak and red oak, hickory, magnolia and beech, alive with gray squirrels and fox squirrels, some of the latter coal-black save for white noses and ears. Many times deer lying just within the woods-edge bounded away before him, most of them running out into the open. A large flock of brilliant green and yellow parrakeets, screaming like mad, passed low over his head. Alighting on the ground a little distance to the left, they covered a space fifty

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 feet square with a gorgeous carpet of rich green and vivid gold. Alarmed at his approach, they took wing again and flew with shrill screechings out of the woods and across the prairie.

Burliegh paid no attention to them, but marveled a little at the wild turkeys. The place was evidently a courting ground for the big flocks which roosted in the cypress swamp beyond the belt of canes; and on every side, as he rode amid the far-spaced trees, he saw great bronze gobblers strutting and pacing before coquettish hens. Once or twice he fingered his weapon nervously as some exceptionally magnificent gobbler tempted him; but remembering the object of his quest, he rode on.

Black Bull, lazily cropping the succulent prairie grasses a bow shot from the forest's edge, raised his head often to look and listen. Six springs had passed since, as a newly born calf, he had been borne out of the canebrake, ten miles farther down, on the strong young shoulders of Keenta the Beaver, who had carried him to Ahowhe the Long-Haired and laid him at the girl's feet. Thus he had become Ahowhe's pet and had so continued through his babyhood. Later he was known as Black Bull of Ahowhe; and later still, when he had attained his full astonishing bulk, there were some—Keenta among them—who called him Yanasa, the Very Great Bull, though in truth that name belonged

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 rightfully to the buffalo. Yet there was warrant for the title, for very soon it became evident that—the black calf's sire had been a bison—some lone wanderer from the herds of the upper country who in his loneliness had found a mate among the wild black cattle of the Low Country swamps.

Black Bull showed plainly his buffalo blood. His great size, his splendid frontlet and beard, his highhumped shoulders, the shaggy coat of hair on neck and hump—all these came from his sire. But he was jet-black instead of brown; his tail was long; his horns, of much greater length and curving forward, were far more serviceable weapons than a buffalo's horns. From his mother's race he had inherited also something even more valuable than those long forward-pointing pikes—a brain alert instead of sluggish. The wild black cattle of the swamps, originating as strays from the vast herds of the rich white planters near the coast, had deteriorated in size but increased enormously in numbers despite the preying beasts with which the great swamps teemed. With each generation they had grown sharper of wit, keener of scent and of hearing, until in these respects they rivaled even the deer. In bulk and in form, in massive head and shaggy coat, Black Bull was his father's son. But the brain in that head was not the brain of a buffalo.

All this Keenta had pointed out to Ahowhe long

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 before Black Bull was full grown and while he still grazed with tame cattle about the outskirts of the Indian village. Ahowhe, lover of all young things, had loved the little black calf which she had reared from infancy, providing it with a foster mother and caring for it herself; but when it had become a yearling bull her affection for it had cooled.

Not only was the bull of great stature for its age but it was also of a proud and dangerous temper. Ahowhe, comely as ever, but still childless, transferred her affections to other young things—fawns which Keenta brought her from the forest, a baby bear, two young ring-tailed raccoons; and Black Bull, grown more and more arrogant as his bulk increased, would have been dealt with as a menace to the village had not Keenta's influence protected him until the time came, as Keenta knew it would, when Black Bull bade the village farewell.

Even then, so far as was possible, Keenta continued to watch over him. All the tribesmen knew why. Kanakaw the conjurer had read in the writhing entrails of a slaughtered kid that Keenta's fate was bound up with the fate of the black bull calf which he had taken from under the eyes of the great Cat of God; that a day would come when Keenta, in peril of death, must perish unless Black Bull chose to save him; that not until then would Ahowhe bear him the son that he desired.

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 It was a great prophecy and all the village approved it. Black Bull, as wild and wary now as the deer, ranged far and wide. Keenta could not follow him on all his journeyings, and for weeks at a time never saw him. Yet the young warrior knew the wild bull's favorite ranges, trailed him when opportunity offered, and viewed him from the thickets to make sure that no bullet had harmed him, that no snake had struck him and that his health was good.

A white hunter's bullet, a rattlesnake's venom, disease—these were the dangers which Keenta feared for Black Bull. The red hunters, aware of the prophecy, would not shoot him. His strength and his cunning would keep him safe from puma and bear and wolf pack, and from the huge alligators lurking in ambush in the lagoons and rivers where the deer and the wild black cattle drank. Most of all, Keenta feared the white hunters. These seldom came into Black Bull's range, because the region on that side of the great cypress swamp was recognized as an Indian hunting ground. But sometimes small parties of them passed through, and their long, heavy rifles shot straight and far.

Black Bull, cropping the grasses languidly and often lifting his massive shaggy head to look about

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 I found first, that my education in steering from the bow was of no avail; second, that it was all right if you reversed it. For instance, when you are in the bow, and make an inward stroke with the paddle on the right-hand side, the bow goes to the right; whereas, if you make an inward stroke on the right-hand side, when you are sitting in the stern, the bow then goes to the left. Understand? Having grasped this law, I crept along up river; and, by Allah! before I had gone twenty yards, if that wretch, the current of the greatest, &c., did not grab hold of the nose of my canoe, and we teetotummed round again as merrily as ever. My audience screamed. I knew what they were saying, "You'll be drowned! Come back! Come back!" but I heard them and I heeded not. If you attend to advice in a crisis you're lost; besides, I couldn't "Come back" just then. However, got into the slack water again, by some very showy, high-class steering. Still steering, fine as it is, is not all you require and hanker after. You want pace as well, and pace, except when in the clutches of the current, I had not so far attained. Perchance, thought I, the pace region in a canoe may be in its centre; so I got along on my knees into the centre to experiment. Bitter failure; the canoe took to sidling down river broadside on, like Mr. Winkle's horse. Shouts of laughter from the bank. Both bow and stern education utterly inapplicable to centre; and so, seeing I was utterly thrown away there, I crept into the bows, and in a few more minutes I steered my canoe, perfectly, in among its fellows by the bank and secured it there. Mme. Forget ran down to meet me and assured me she had not laughed so much since she had been in Africa, although she was frightened at the time lest I should get capsized and drowned. I believe it, for she is a sweet and gracious lady; and I quite see, as she demonstrated, that the sight of me, teetotumming about, steering in an elaborate and showy way all the time, was irresistibly comic. And she gave a most amusing account of how, when she started looking for me to give me tea, a charming habit of hers, she could not see me in among my bottles, and so asked the little black boy where I was. "There," said he, pointing to the tree hanging against the rock


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 him, saw a herd of ten deer, far away up the prairie, suddenly scatter in all directions. He shook his head and snorted. He knew what that lively commotion of the whitetails meant. Some hunting beast—puma or bear or wolf—had made a foray from the forest's edge. Black Bull had no dread of any of these, but the thought of them angered him. Again he snorted and flourished his horns, then turned to look at his herd of fifteen black cows lying in the wild pea vines a hundred yards behind him.

A half mile away grazed a much larger herd, including many bulls; but Black Bull was not interested in these. Overawing all rivals, he had: taken his pick of the cows and he concerned himself only with these favorites. A glance showed him that they were well out on the prairie, safe from any marauder that might be lurking in the cover of the woods. For himself, he feared nothing. He resumed his feeding, moving closer and closer to the forest's edge.

Presently he saw a buck run at full speed out of the woods near the spot where the other whitetails had taken fright. A few minutes later three wild turkeys flew out; then, nearer at hand, another deer emerged, and another still nearer. Soon a large flock of green-and-yellow parrakeets appeared, screeching shrilly. Plainly the marauder, what-

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 ever it was, was moving along the edge of the forest just within the outermost ranks of the trees, its progress marked by the deer, turkeys and parrakeets which its advance drove out into the open.

Black Bull made up his mind that the unseen enemy steadily drawing nearer within the forest margin was a puma. He tossed his huge head and blew loudly through his nose. Another deer dashed out of the woods not more than a hundred yards away. Lashing his tail, Black Bull marched majestically across the narrow strip of prairie and into the woods, his arrogant eyes searching the long sun-spotted vistas for the big tawny cat that had dared approach the feeding ground of his wives.

He saw no puma, nor any other foeman worthy of his attention. Only the smaller folk of the forest were visible—a troop of fox squirrels, a grizzled opossum nosing about amid the leaves, a flock of flickers searching the ground for insects, a scarlet-crested ivory-billed woodpecker, as big as a duck, scaling the bark from a rotting log.

Black Bull waited and watched, snorting at intervals and pawing the ground. There was no undergrowth to impede his view; but the sun rays, slanting down through the high roof of dense foliage, dazzled his vision somewhat and made a deceptive ever-changing mosaic of light and shadow on the forest carpet amid the huge upstanding

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 pillars of gray hickory and mottled sycamore. Black Bull, facing into the light, failed to distinguish the buckskin-clad form of the white hunter sitting still as a graven image on his sorrel pony, which, at a whispered word, had frozen into statuelike immobility.

Burliegh gazed at the great beast before him with narrowed eyes which plainly betrayed his astonishment. Having the sun behind him, he could distinguish every detail, and he knew at once that this huge coal-black creature was of a kind which he had never met with before and which no other hunter had ever described to him. Probably because of the bull's great size and because he had never heard of an instance of the sort, Burliegh did not suspect a cross of buffalo and wild black cattle. Here, he concluded naturally enough, was a new species of buffalo the like of which no other white man had ever seen—a buffalo black instead of brown, longer horned than the common sort, lower humped, yet longer limbed, a little less shaggy, yet royally clad in a thick sable coat which would bring a high price in the fur market.

Burliegh, confident of his own invisibility and thankful that he was to leeward of his quarry, studied the bull with the most minute care to impress indelibly upon his memory every detail of the animal's appearance in life. Years might pass

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 before he saw another of its kind. He wanted to learn all he could about this one before he shot it.

Black Bull, unconscious of the scrutiny, impatiently awaiting the puma whose coming he still expected, stood in an open sunny spot midway between two giant white oaks whose boughs interlaced forty feet above him. For a space of minutes he stood thus, tossing his head and stamping, a superb picture of massively proportioned strength and defiant fearlessness. Then, as no enemy answered his challenge, he turned broadside to the hunter and walked slowly toward the larger white oak.

Burliegh moved not a muscle. His practiced eye told him that the bull was going to lie down; and he would probably lie with his back to the sun, thus facing away from the hunter and making possible a closer approach.

It was as Burliegh expected, but even better. The great bull moved deliberately across the glade, chose a shady place close to the oak, lowered his massive body to the ground with a sinuous writhing of bulging muscles under the sleek hide of his hind quarters. Not only was his head turned away from the hunter but the latter knew that the vital spot behind the bull's shoulder was widely exposed for a fatal shot.

Burliegh touched the Chickasaw pony's flank

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 with his heel, tightened and twitched the bridle. The pony, ears pricked, moved forward very slowly, his small hoofs delicately pressing the ground. Burliegh dropped the bridle rein, raised his long rifle halfway to his shoulder. The pony would halt at a whisper. The hunter hoped to get yards closer to his prey but would shoot the instant the bull took alarm.

Ten feet to the left of the white oak a long reddish-brown snake, flowing silently across the leaves, stopped suddenly. Black Bull had flicked an ear to dislodge a fly and the snake's beady eyes had caught the motion. Four inches of the serpent's slender tail quivered rapidly, making a slight but distinctly audible rattling noise amid the dead leaves. Black Bull's shaggy head swung quickly toward the sound.

The Chickasaw pony stopped. Burliegh's rifle went to his shoulder. The long barrel wavered a fraction of a second, then steadied. Burliegh, peering along the rifle barrel, his finger caressing the trigger, saw a small white object flash downward. Twenty feet in front of him a white-feathered arrow stood quivering, its head buried in the ground.

The Chickasaw pony bounded forward as heels dug into his flanks, wheeled to the right as the

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 iron bit wrenched his mouth, steadied and stiffened as the bridle rein tightened. Already Burliegh, crouching low in his saddle behind—the horse's neck, had the Indian covered.

The hunter's square-jawed, sun-tanned face glowed a dark red with excitement or anger; his gray eyes, narrow and sparkling, not only scanned the approaching red man but searched also the forest vistas behind him and the tree trunks to right and left.

The Indian, very tall and straight, naked save for a single deerskin garment about his waist, walked calmly forward, carrying his bow in his left hand. As he came on, he made with his right hand the gesture of peace. Burliegh, gazing grimly along his rifle barrel, made no sign or movement in reply. Fifteen paces from the rifle muzzle the red man halted.

"It is Keenta the Beaver who speaks," he said in the Yemassee tongue, "and Keenta is alone. The white hunter need not shoot. The arrow was not meant to do harm."

Burliegh's narrowed eyes searched the other's face. His frown darkened.

"Arrows are not sent as tokens of peace," he said in the same language. "Why did Keenta the Beaver drop an arrow at Burliegh's feet if he comes as a friend? Let him speak quickly and plainly, for

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{| style="margin:auto;" ! style="text-align:center;" | English. ! style="text-align:center;" | Hokkien. ! style="text-align:center;" | Cantonese. ! style="text-align:center;" | Chinese Characters. ! style="text-align:center;" | Remarks as to Meaning.
 * Municipal Office
 * Kang-po-kek
 * Kung-po-kuk
 * 局部工
 * ‘Board of works' office.'
 * Police Office
 * Toa-kau-thau-e ge-mng
 * Tai kang-thau nga-mun
 * 門衙之頭狗大
 * ’Chief big dog's office or Chief Inspector's office.' (PelicePolice [sic] officers are apparently all 'dogs', for all those above the rank of Sergeant are called 'big dogs'; the Cantonese use another idiom: 'foreman', the same word as is used in speaking of an overseer or mandore.)
 * Post Office
 * (i)Phue kuan
 * 舘批
 * (i) 'Letteroffice.'
 * (ii) Tai shü-sun kwun
 * 舘信書大
 * (ii) 'Big letter-office.'
 * Singapore Railway Station
 * Hue-chhia thau
 * Fo-chhe thau
 * 頭車火
 * 'Fire-carriage head.'
 * Supreme Court
 * Toa kok
 * Tai kot
 * 咯大
 * 'Big Court.' ('Kok' or 'Kot' is not Chinese, but an imitation of 'Court'.)
 * Tan Tok Seng's Hospital
 * (i) Nam-seng hue-hng piⁿ
 * 邊園花生南
 * (i) 'Beside Nam Seng flower garden.' (Nam Seng was the chop of the Chinaman known to Europeans in Singapore as as Whampoa, i.e. Mr. Ho ah Kee C. M. G., former owner of the property known as Bendemeer on Serangoon Road.)
 * (ii) Thiaⁿ-kha keng
 * 間脚痛
 * (ii) 'Sore feet (or legs) building.'
 * (iii) Lan-keuk kwun
 * 舘脚爛
 * (iii) 'Broken leg office.'
 * }
 * (i) Nam-seng hue-hng piⁿ
 * 邊園花生南
 * (i) 'Beside Nam Seng flower garden.' (Nam Seng was the chop of the Chinaman known to Europeans in Singapore as as Whampoa, i.e. Mr. Ho ah Kee C. M. G., former owner of the property known as Bendemeer on Serangoon Road.)
 * (ii) Thiaⁿ-kha keng
 * 間脚痛
 * (ii) 'Sore feet (or legs) building.'
 * (iii) Lan-keuk kwun
 * 舘脚爛
 * (iii) 'Broken leg office.'
 * }
 * (iii) Lan-keuk kwun
 * 舘脚爛
 * (iii) 'Broken leg office.'
 * }
 * 舘脚爛
 * (iii) 'Broken leg office.'
 * }


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 Burliegh's trigger finger itches and his eyes long to see daylight through Keenta's head."

The tall Indian's face remained utterly impassive.

"Keenta has heard of Burliegh of Wadboo," he said, his voice a little deeper than before, "and has learned that his words are strong. It pleases him now to threaten. Yet Keenta will do the white warrior's bidding. Let Burliegh listen.

"The, black bull which Burliegh saw on the prairie is the bull of Ahowhe, Keenta's woman. When Burliegh rose in his stirrups and viewed the bull, Keenta was watching from the canebrake. When Burliegh turned and rode through the forest, Keenta knew that he sought the black bull. Keenta followed, but was almost too late. Burliegh's rifle was at his shoulder. Keenta winged a slow arrow over Burliegh's head. He could as easily have sent that arrow into Burliegh's back. Now that he has spoken, he asks that Burliegh spare Ahowhe's bull."

The white hunter's frown had become a scowl. Burliegh was of that school which ruled the red men by overawing them. It was his boast among his fellows that he could read in any Indian's countenance the quality of his courage and that there was not one red man in ten whom he could not bend to his will. Largely, he was right; for from Santee to Edisto, from Kiawah to Unaka Kanoos,

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 Burliegh of Wadboo was respected and feared. He ripped out an oath.

"Keenta the Beaver is a liar," he said in a voice as hard as steel. "He is a liar like all his race. And he is a serpent, hiding in canebrakes and spying on honest men. The black bull is a wild bull. Burliegh will shoot him from this spot while Keenta looks on."

The Indian started to speak. Burliegh cut him short.

"Let Keenta listen," he said. "With Burliegh are five Englishmen, great warriors and hunters, including Almayne himself. By now they have broken camp beside the cane thicket and are following Burliegh's trail to this place. Keenta is a liar, but no fool."

Contemptuously he turned his back upon the Indian and wheeled the pony around. Black Bull, hearing the sound of voices, had risen. The red hunters had never harmed him; the white hunters he had never chanced to meet; hence he had little or no fear of man. He stood tossing his head defiantly, more inclined to charge than to retreat.

Burliegh, a little surprised at the bull's boldness, nevertheless recalled the proverbial stupidity of many buffalo. Evidently these black buffalo were sometimes as slow-witted as the brown. He leveled his weapon, aiming at the brain. It was a long

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 shot, but so much the better. The Indian would be the more impressed.

The pony moved a fraction of an inch. Burliegh growled a reprimand and readjusted his aim. Keenta must not see him miss. He took plenty of time, drawing a fine and careful bead.

Burliegh, his shoulder turned to the Indian, saw nothing of the latter's movements. They were few, but marvelously swift. It was because Keenta excelled with the bow that he still hunted with the weapons of his fathers, though many of his tribesmen now used the white man's powder and shot.

Burliegh never knew whether Keenta threw the arrow with his hand or shot it from his bow. It must have been the latter, for the arrow pierced Burliegh's throat and made a deep dent in the hard wood of the rifle stock pressed against his chin.

The rifle dropped from the white hunter's hand. Turning slowly in his saddle, he stared dully at the Indian while blood jetted over his chest. Then, as the Chickasaw pony reared, he fell forward, clasping the horse's neck. The pony wheeled and galloped wildly along the back trail. Just before it vanished amid the tree trunks, Keenta saw Burliegh fall from the horse's back.

Keenta the Beaver turned and faced Black Bull. A strange light shone in his eyes, a light born of the thoughts and the hopes racing through his brain.

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 Somehow he knew suddenly that the time had come, the time for the testing of the prophecy, the hour which would determine his fate and, if he lived, perhaps bring promise of the son for whom he yearned. He had waited long for that hour and he was weary of waiting. In a sudden burst of light, knowledge had come to him that, if he had courage for the test, he could bring it to pass now.

Burliegh's comrades had already broken camp. This Keenta knew, for before he took up the hunter's trail he had seen them stirring. They, too, would follow Burliegh's tracks. Any moment might bring them, their coming hastened by the riderless horse. If they found Keenta, there would be drama in the forest—and Keenta knew the methods of Almayne. There would be no doubt as to Keenta's fate if he awaited the coming of Burliegh's friends and if Black Bull, on whom his fate depended, chose to let him die.

Keenta the Beaver, after the manner of his race, addressed to Black Bull, standing in the middle distance, a long and solemn speech. Then, as the Indian's quick eye caught a movement amid the trees near the spot where Burliegh had fallen, he crouched low, ran swiftly to a sycamore and stood behind its stout trunk. There he fitted another arrow to his bow.

Almayne, stooping beside Burliegh's body, wasted

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 little time there. The dying man had whispered half a dozen words: "Keenta the Beaver—alone—on foot." In an instant Almayne was on his horse again, giving his orders. The five horsemen spread out in a wide are and moved on, Almayne himself in the center, following the tracks of Burleigh's pony. They rode forward silently but swiftly, their grim eyes searching the woods ahead, their rifles ready.

Suddenly, straight in front of Almayne, Keenta the Beaver stepped into view from behind a sycamore. His long bow was in his hand, an arrow fitted to the string; but his back was turned to the white hunter, as though he were unaware of the latter's approach.

Slowly he lifted the bow and drew the shaft to the head. Almayne, looking where the arrow pointed, saw for the first time a great black bull standing motionless a long bow shot away.

Carefully Keenta aimed, seemingly unaware of his peril, his back still turned to the white hunter; and swiftly Almayne slipped from his horse and ran forward, his moccasined feet making no sound.

The long bow twanged. Keenta bent forward, his eyes following the arrow's flight. The shaft sped true. It entered Black Bull's right shoulder a half second before Almayne leaped upon Keenta's back and bore him to the ground.

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 What happened then happened quickly. Keenta, writhing and heaving under Almayne's weight, heard the noise of hurrying hoofs as the other horsemen dashed up from both sides—heard and saw them fling themselves from their saddles and rush to their leader's aid. In that same instant, too, he heard another sound—Black Bull's thunderous bellow as red rage surged up in him after the first shock of pain. It was then that Keenta prayed to his gods, for there was one chance that he had overlooked—the chance that Black Bull would charge the horses instead of the struggling mass of men.

Keenta heard Almayne's hoarse cry, "Take him alive," felt the ground shake under a mightier tread than the tread of any horse, heard a white hunter's shout of amazement and alarm. Next moment Black Bull was upon them. Two men leaped clear in time. A third, who saved himself from death by clinging to Black Bull's horns as the irresistible sable avalanche rushed past, was tossed and broke his leg as he struck ground. A fourth lay on his back, groaning; and a fifth, Almayne himself, sprawled on his face utterly still, stunned by the impact of a flying hoof.

Keenta the Beaver, uninjured save for a long gash on his left arm, leaped to his feet and in an instant reached the nearest horse, rearing with terror but too well trained to bolt. Lithe as a

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 lynx, he bounded upon the horse's back. The light of triumph, the joy of fulfillment in his eyes, he gave the long war whoop of his tribe. Then, as two white hunters dashed for their horses and their guns, he dug his heels into the pony's flanks and raced for the canebrake and the swamp where ten thousand hunters could not track or find him.

The chuck-will's-widows, those strange night fowls which are like the whippoorwills but much larger, do not understand the nature of moonlight. Ordinarily they sing chiefly at dusk and toward dawn; but when the moon shines in spring they think that the whole night is one long dusk or one long dawn, and they sing unceasingly from sunset to sunrise.

All night, in a sparkleberry thicket near Ahowhe's round hut in the village, a chuck-will's-widow had been singing. It was only one of many, for these birds were plentiful about the Yemassee town. Ahowhe, wakeful because of the trouble that had befallen, had listened to the bird for hours, scarcely aware that she heard it, her mind being full of other things.

She knew that Sinnawa, the aged chief, must bow to Almayne's demand. At dusk the famous white warrior and four others, one of them groaning with

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 a broken rib, another nursing a smashed leg, had ridden into the village and brought word that Keenta the Beaver had killed the English hunter, Burliegh of Wadboo. Almayne's order was that Keenta the Beaver, the moment he returned, be sent a captive to Charles Town to pay the death penalty. Failing this, Almayne had said, the white troopers would come and burn the town.

Two hours before dawn, when clouds had obscured the moon, Ahowhe realized suddefily that the chuck-will's-widow sang with a new note. No one saw her when she went out into the darkness. No one saw her when she returned. No one saw her when she went out a second time.

Nor was Ahowhe ever seen in that village again; and Keenta the Beaver, Ahowhe's warrior, was seen there no more. Years afterwards, a young man of that village, returning from a mission to Moytoy of Tellequo, Emperor of the Nations, said that he had met Keenta and Ahowhe in a town of the Cherokees beyond the mountains, and that with them was a young boy, their son. His mother called the boy Black Bull of Ahowhe; but Keenta called him Yanasa, the Very Great Bull, the Master of the Herds.

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OE-ISHTO, the puma, whom the Cherokees called the Cat of God, was king of the mountain forests; but Storm-Rider, the great golden eagle of Younaguska peak, was lord of all the blue empire of the air. As is often the way with monarchs whose kingdoms lie close together, there was a certain rivalry between these two and some day there would be a reckoning. At least this was what Little Wolf, son of Sanuta the War Captain, said to himself, and to certain others, though whether he believed it or only pretended to believe it even Pakale the Blossom did not know.

Little Wolf, the young Cherokee brave, just now coming to manhood, was at once a warrior and a dreamer. Straight as a poplar, lithe as a panther, keen of eye and sharp of ear, he was already a better hunter than many tribesmen of riper years and longer experience. Yet, man of action though he was, expert with the bow and the spear, tireless on the hunting trail and versed in all the stratagems of the forest, his active brain found time and inclination to weave strange fancies about the wild-folk of the woods.

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 Often these fancies were not fancies at all but truths unperceived or unrealized by duller minds. Sometimes they were romantic imaginings in which he indulged for the fun of it, knowing all the while that they were imaginative but delighting in them, nevertheless, because they invested the wild creatures with a certain glamour and mystery. So, when Little Wolf told Kana the Conjurer that there was war between Koe-Ishto, the puma of Unaka Kanoos, and Storm-Rider, the golden eagle of Younaguska, Kana scarcely knew how seriously to take the young brave's words.

For a few moments the old magician turned the matter over in his mind as he squatted in the sun outside his hut near the middle of the Cherokee town. Very proud of his wisdom was Kana and very jealous of any man, especially any young man, who sought to tell him something he did not know. Yet he was cautious, too, and he could not afford to be caught in a mistake. To be caught by Little Wolf would be bitter indeed, for he disliked Little Wolf for various reasons, and most of all because of the young warrior's affection for Pakale the Blossom. At last, however, Kana made up his mind that this time he was on safe ground. He grunted scornfully.

"Behold," he said to the half-dozen young braves sitting in a half circle in front of him, "Little Wolf

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 brings us more of his strange wisdom. He tells us now that Koe-Ishto, the king of the woods, is at war with the king of the air, who has his home on Younaguska, the sacred mountain. Yet all men know that the paths of the puma and the eagle do not cross, that each rules his own kingdom and is High Chief there, and that no enmity lies between them. Behold, all ye, how Little Wolf's wisdom is deceit. If what he says is truth, let him prove it. Till then let him stand silent among his betters."

Little Wolf made no reply. Kana was a power in the tribe. Even the son of a War Captain could not dispute him too boldly. But the young warrior's dark eyes gleamed, the muscles of his bare red-brown arms rippled and tightened as he clenched his hands in anger.

He knew that Kana disliked him, but never before had the conjurer rebuked him publicly. He knew also that unless he could prove the truth of what he had said, his repute among the young men must rest under a cloud. Little Wolf realized that a hard task lay before him, one that would tax his woodcraft to the utmost.

For three days he went his way as usual. But he could not help noticing the changed attitude of the other young warriors and the averted glances of Pakale the Blossom. The Blossom had many suitors. She need not look at one who had been

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 held up to scorn before his fellows. Besides, she was tempted to teach Little Wolf a lesson which in her opinion he needed—a lesson on the unwisdom of stirring Kana's wrath.

On the afternoon of the third day Little Wolf sought out Pakale's brother, Striking Hawk, a young man of about his own age, who was his closest friend; and the next day at dawn the two went out together into the forest and were gone for many days. But before they went Little Wolf sent a message to Kana the Conjurer.

"Tell Kana," he said, "that on the thirtieth day Little Wolf will return to prove him a false prophet."

It was a daring challenge and the village rang with it. The warriors scowled and shook their heads. They feared that the young brave had attempted the impossible; and they knew that if he failed, he would not return.

Noiseless as a ghost, Koe-Ishto, the puma of Unaka Kanoos, stole along a dim winding tunnel threading the dense rhododendron thicket of Crystal Run. His padded feet fell soft as velvet on the damp carpet of dead leaves; his long, lithe, yellow-brown form moved amid the crooked rhododendron stems with the sinuousness of a snake; his round,

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 inscrutable eyes gleamed cold and hard like pallid, polished jewels. So soundless was his passage that even the marvelous ears of a horned owl, dozing through the daylight hours in the obscurity of the thicket, failed to record the great cat's coming.

Koe-Ishto, gliding around a bend of the path, saw the big bird perched on a bough some fifteen feet above the ground, his back turned; and for a half-second the puma paused, the tip of his tail twitching to and fro, his cold eyes measuring the distance. It would be a long, high leap, yet it might be accomplished. Koe-Ishto tightened his muscles for the mighty effort which would launch his sinewy body forward and upward; but at that moment from far away to the left a sound came to his ears.

It was the gobble of a wild turkey cock; and in a flash it sent Koe-Ishto's thoughts back to the business in hand—the mission which had brought him down from the heights of Unaka Kanoos to the rhododendron tangles bordering the bank of Crystal Run.

The big puma was a rather fastidious feeder. He would take all prey that came to him, all prey that he could capture with little effort; but in a land abounding with deer, wild turkeys and ruffed grouse, he seldom exerted himself in pursuit of smaller or less succulent game. The deer were his mainstay—his staple diet; but he had fed abundantly on veni-

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 son the day before, and now he was sensible of a craving for the taste of fish or of birds. After his ample meal of deer's meat he had slept long; in fact, contrary to his custom, he had slept not only through the rest of that day but also during practically the whole night. Not until dawn had he awakened; and it was then that the craving for fish or fowl had come upon him.

It was spring; and Koe-Ishto had no occupation at that season except the satisfying of his own appetite. The time of mating was long past. The family of four playful, yellowish, spotted cubs in the cave near the summit of Unaka Kanoos were looked after by their mother, who ministered to them with devoted care and also did her own hunting. Koe-Ishto, unburdened by domestic duties, gave no thought to the cave on Unaka Kanoos but set out immediately in search of the delicate food which he desired.

For an hour he had followed the little mountain river down its narrow valley, jumping lightly from rock to rock, leaping with marvelous agility and grace from one to another of the gray boulders which strewed the river's bed. A dozen times he had crouched, motionless as the rocks themselves, close by deep dark pools where many trout lurked, his great paw raised, ready for the lightninglike blow which would scoop some unwary fish out

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 of the water; but not once in any of those pools had a trout risen to the surface within reach of that mighty paw.

Koe-Ishto realized at last that on this morning the fish were not rising; and when he had reached the lower part of the valley, where the forested mountain-slopes on either side of the stream were less steep and the great rhododendron thicket of Crystal Run began, he decided to abandon his fishing and, instead, try his luck with the wild turkeys at a certain spot where he had captured many turkeys in the past. He was on his way to this spot when the gobble of a turkey interrupted his hastily formed design against the horned owl.

Koe-Ishto gave the owl not another thought. The big bird, drowsing on its perch, never knew how close it had been to death, though it was startled out of its accustomed composure when it saw the long tawny body of the puma glide past along the trail directly under it.

Koe-Ishto no longer moved slowly; he no longer paused at each bend of the winding trail to search the dim path ahead for possible prey. He moved swiftly, purposefully, wasting no time; but, if possible, he moved even more silently than before. No stick cracked under his velvet paws; if the leaves upon which he trod stirred, only the worms and insects of the mold were aware of it. So he came

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 presently, like a dim, dreadful, pale-eyed ghost, to the edge of the thicket whence he could look out upon the spot which he had often utilized as a turkey ambush.

The path had brought him back again to the river; but the character of the stream had changed. At this point Crystal Run was no longer a narrow brawling mountain torrent, rushing swiftly amid great tumbled masses of rock, foaming in white waterfalls over sharp ledges under which lay dark, still, seemingly bottomless pools.

Here, where the valley was wider and flatter, the river had widened also and had become a placid shallow stream scarcely more than a foot in depth and perhaps fifty feet from shore to shore, flowing slowly over a flat bed of smooth rock and yellow sand. On the further bank the forest came down close to the water; but on the bank where the rhododendron thicket stood a clear space of level rock and dry sand intervened between the river margin and the edge of the thicket. Into this clear space an arm of the thicket, composed, however, not of rhododendrons but of alders, was thrust almost to the water's edge, forming a sort of hedge as straight as if some careful gardener had lined the bushes there.

Koe-Ishto, the puma, did not know why the wild turkeys of the mountain woods were in the habit

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 of coming often to this shallow part of the river to drink. He did not know why so many of them, when they had slaked their thirst, turned and walked back across the space of flat rock and sand, passing within ten feet of the alder hedge. He knew only that this often happened, that it seemed to be a habit of the turkey kind. The fact alone interested him; the reasons did not matter.

From the thicket's edge his pale eyes searched the open space before him and roved up and down the stream, seeking the gobbler whose voice he had heard perhaps five minutes before. Then he stole slowly along the alder hedge nearly to its end and crouched there utterly motionless, completely invisible.

So still was he, so perfectly did his tawny body blend with the foliage of the screening alders and the yellow sand under them, that even the farsighted eyes of Storm-Rider, the golden eagle of Younaguska, failed to distinguish the outline of the puma's form. Yet, when a wood mouse scuttled across the flat surface of the rock near the alder hedge, Storm-Rider noted its passage instantly; and when a crayfish moved slowly across a little space of sand, the eyes of the soaring eagle picked it out and his gaze dwelt momentarily upon it.

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 But wood mice and crayfish were of no interest to Storm-Rider; and he was not looking for pumas either and entertained no expectation of finding one at that spot beside Crystal Run. No more than Koe-Ishto did the golden eagle understand why this particular spot was often visited by wild turkeys, and no more than Koe-Ishto was he interested in the why and wherefore of it. But just as well as the puma knew it, the eagle knew that turkeys came here often; and for the eagle of Younaguska, as well as for the great cat of Unaka Kanoos, the place had often proved a profitable hunting ground.

Unaka Kanoos reared its rocky summit near at hand. The loftier dome of Younaguska, the sacred mountain, was many miles distant. But to Storm-Rider the leagues of air were nothing. His kingdom was broad; his hunting ground stretched as far as his tireless wings could bear him in a day. For fifty miles on every side of his home on Younaguska he ruled the airy spaces above the Overhills, as the Cherokees called the high mountains; and at any spot in that vast domain he might appear at any moment to claim his booty. He circled now on motionless wings high above the shoals of Crystal Run because he, too, had become suddenly aware that morning of a craving for turkey-meat.

For some five minutes the fierce frowning eyes of the soaring eagle had been searching with peculiar

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 intensity the margins of the open space beside the river. He, also, had heard the turkey-call which had come to the ears of Koe-Ishto in the rhododendron thicket. From his post in the air he had been able to note accurately the direction from which the sound had come; and since then he had been waiting impatiently but confidently for the gobbler to emerge from the woods and walk across the open to the water's edge.

Suddenly the long yellow-brown body of the puma crouching in the alder hedge quivered and grew tense and hard; and in that same moment the head of the circling eagle dropped lower, his great yellow feet with their armament of black trenchant claws opened and shut convulsively, his deep-set eyes glowed momentarily as though a flash of inner fire had lit them. A half-minute more he circled quietly, his eyes never shifting from his prey. Then, his dark wings half-closed his banded tail spread, his talons opened wide beneath him, he shot downward through the singing air.

Few of the wild folk are blessed with keener hearing than the wild turkey. Yet because the roar of a distant waterfall filled the air, a fatal moment elapsed before the gobbler sensed a strange, low, humming sound, faint yet somehow portentous and menacing. Instantly he turned and raced for the thododendron thicket. Another quarter-second and

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 he would have been safe within its barricade of stiff, unyielding branches; but twenty feet from its portals a great dark shape fell upon him from the sky, struck long needle-pointed claws into his neck and breast, slashed his throat with a hooked knife-edged beak which ripped through feathers and flesh and severed his.

Storm-Rider the golden eagle stood for a moment upon the quivering body of his victim, his wings half-spread, his proud head lifted high. Then with a scream he tore his talons loose from the turkey's body and with quick, powerful wing-beats lifted himself into the air.

He was just in time. From the hedge of alders forty feet to his right, a great tawny form was racing across the sand in long bounds. High over the bleeding prostrate turkey Koe-Ishto the puma leaped, and landing on a bare space of level rock just beyond, launched his long sinewy body upward. A big furry paw, bristling with curved retractile claws, swished like a flail not six inches under the eagle.

For a fraction of a second the fierce eyes of the king of the air looked into the pale glittering orbs of the king of the forest. Then, as the eagle's laboring wings lifted him higher, Koe-Ishto turned, walked slowly back to where the gobbler lay, picked up the big bronze bird in his jaws, and carried it to-

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 wards the thicket's edge, while the eagle, screaming with rage, circled well above him.

The white man has learned about birds and beasts many things which the red man never learned—things which only the white man's science could discover. But there are other things which the red man knew or believed and which are still dark to the white newcomer. This is so because the red man lived very close to the wild folk of the woods, the waters and the air, and because his very life depended on his knowledge of the wild folk.

The red man knew the great golden eagle of the mountain forests as no white man has ever known that mighty bird; and Little Wolf, the young Cherokee brave, who was a dreamer as well as a great hunter, knew the eagle even better than most of his fellows. So it may be that Little Wolf was right in his belief that it was not mere chance which brought about the strange thing that happened at the cave on Unaka Kanoos where Koe-Ishto's mate kept watch over her brood of four spotted yellowish kittens.

The sun rose that morning in a clear sky; and presently, when it had risen well above the purple wall of mountains rimming the eastern horizon, its slanting rays warmed and dried the flat shelf of

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 rock in front of Koe-Ishto's cave. Koe-Ishto's tawny mate, nursing her little ones just within the cave's entrance, noted this fact with joy. For days a steady drizzle had kept the puma cubs under cover. A wetting might not have harmed them, but they did not like the feel of the rain on their backs. So they had stayed inside the cave; and now their mother welcomed the sunshine because, like most human mothers, she liked her little ones to romp and play outdoors.

The wide flat ledge in front of the cave made a splendid playground for the cubs. They were safe there, for no Indian hunter had ever invaded the puma's almost inaccessible lair on the precipitous slope of Unaka Kanoos, while the preying beasts of the forests stood too much in dread of the great lionlike cats ever to approach their dwelling-place.

True, the ledge ended in a sheer drop of perhaps a hundred feet to the wooded mountain side below, and a human onlooker might on that account have considered it a perilous nursery. But the puma cubs were in no danger of falling over the ledge. Young as they were, they were wonderfully sure-footed, blessed with a marvelous gift for keeping their balance. Their mother could leave them wrestling and tussling on the ledge within a foot of its brink and remain away for hours without feeling the slightest anxiety regarding their safety.

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 On this morning, the first sunny morning in many days, the mother puma cut short the breakfast of her nursing kittens. She, too, disliked the rain and had postponed her hunting, remaining in the cave throughout the previous night; and now she was hungry and was eager to find meat. Presently she pushed the kittens away from her, rose, walked out upon the ledge, yawned hugely and stretched her long lithe body. Then, with a low farewell to the cubs which had followed her outside, she walked to the end of the ledge around a jutting shoulder of the rock, leaped to the slanting trunk of a big chestnut oak, and gliding lightly down its rough surface, disappeared into the forest.

Some two hours later a black speck appeared in the sky high above the summit of Unaka Kanoos. For many minutes it swung there, moving in circles and ellipses, gradually growing larger. The puma cubs, playing on the sunny ledge in front of their cave, either did not see it or, if they saw it, paid no attention to it.

Neither instinct nor the teaching, which, even at that early age, they might have had from their mother, had ever warned them of danger from above. Probably they knew vaguely that the air was peopled, for doubtless from time to time they had seen turkey vultures or a solitary raven or duckhawk pass over; but never had any harm come to

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 them from these aerial wayfarers which as yet were the only ones among the wild folk that their eyes had ever looked upon.

Storm-Rider, the golden eagle of Younaguska, looked down from the high air and saw on a sunny ledge of Unaka Kanoos four small furry creatures which moved erratically here and there. Whether or not he knew what they were; whether or not he recognized them as the young of Koe-Ishto the puma; whether or not there flashed into his brain at that moment memory of the morning not long ago when Koe-Ishto had robbed him of his prey—these are questions which no man can answer. But certain it is that, after watching them for a while, he spiraled gradually downward for perhaps five hundred feet, then closed his wide wings and plunged.

If the puma cubs heard the low hum of his coming, they did not know what it was or what it meant. If they saw that living spearhead shooting down from the sky, pinions half-opened now, widespread talons thrust beneath it, trenchant beak pointing straight downward, they saw it too late to regain the shelter of the cave.

Storm-Rider chose as his target the cub which happened to be closest to the brink of the precipice. A moment the baby pumas crouched in terror as the air, buffeted by mighty wings, swirled and eddied

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 out in the river; and she, seeing me hitched with a canoe against the rock, and knowing the danger and depth of the river, got alarmed.

Well, when I got down to Lembarene I naturally went on with my canoeing studies, in pursuit of the attainment of pace. Success crowned my efforts, and I can honestly and truly say that there are only two things I am proud of—one is that Doctor Günther has approved of my fishes, and the other is that I can paddle an Ogowé canoe. Pace, style, steering and all, "All same for one" as if I were an Ogowé African. A strange, incongruous pair of things: but I often wonder what are the things other people are really most proud of; would be a quaint and repaying subject for investigation.

Mme. Jacot gave me every help in canoeing, for she is a remarkably clear-headed woman, and recognised that, as I was always getting soaked, anyhow, I ran no extra danger in getting soaked in a canoe; and then, it being the dry season, there was an immense stretch of water opposite Andande beach, which was quite shallow. So she saw no need of my getting drowned.

The sandbanks were showing their yellow heads in all directions when I came down from Talagouga, and just opposite Andande there was sticking up out of the water a great, graceful, palm frond. It had been stuck into the head of the pet sandbank, and every day was visited by the boys and girls in canoes to see how much longer they would have to wait for the sandbank's appearance. A few days after my return it showed, and in two days more there it was, acres and acres of it, looking like a great, golden carpet spread on the surface of the centre of the clear water—clear here, down this side of Lembarene Island, because the river runs fairly quietly, and has time to deposit its mud. Dark brown the Ogowé flies past the other side of the island, the main current being deflected that way by a bend, just below the entrance of the Nguni.

There was great rejoicing. Canoe-load after canoe-load of boys and girls went to the sandbank, some doing a little fishing round its rim, others bringing the washing there, all skylarking and singing. Few prettier sights have I ever seen than those


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 around them. Then curved grappling hooks closed upon one of them and lifted him from the rock. In the ears of the three others rang the golden eagle's scream of triumph as he swept outward from the ledge with his victim.

In front of the round hut of Kana the Conjurer the braves of the Cherokee town sat in a half-circle, their bronze faces lit by the fire burning in front of Kana's low door. Behind the braves stood the women and girls, Pakale the Blossom in their midst. Facing the throng, Kana sat at one side of the fire. At the other side, wearing the ornaments and feathers which were symbols of their rank, sat Tiftoe, the aged chief, and Sanuta, the War Captain, father of Little Wolf.

Little Wolf stood in the center in the full light of the fire; and beside him, resting his hand on a large object over which a deerskin had been thrown, stood his friend Striking Hawk, Pakale's brother. Little Wolf spoke, addressing himself to the chief.

"I have come," he said, "as I promised. For many days and nights I have kept watch in the woods with Striking Hawk, my comrade. I have come to prove Kana a false conjurer whose wisdom is deceit. Listen and I will relate what we have seen, and Striking Hawk will tell you if I lie.

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 "Kana put shame upon me because I said that there was war between Koe-Ishto, the Cat of God, whose lair is on Unaka Kanoos, and Storm-Rider, the eagle of Younaguska, the sacred mountain. Kana said that I lied.

"For many days, with Striking Hawk by my side, I watched in the woods where Koe-Ishto hunts and searched the air where Storm-Rider seeks his prey. My task was hard, for the forest is vast and many things happen there unseen. But I knew where to look and the Great Spirit was good. One morning, by the shoals of the Crystal Water, where the turkeys drink, we saw Storm-Rider fall from the air upon a turkey, and saw Koe-Ishto the puma leap from his ambush and rob the eagle of his prey."

A murmur ran around the circle of braves. A louder murmur was heard among the women and girls. But Little Wolf raised his hand.

"It was good," he said, "but it was not enough. The spirit told me to keep watch at the cave where Koe-Ishto's mate nurses her little ones. For three days we watched there, hidden on the mountain side in a place which I knew; and the Spirit sent rain and a favoring breeze so that Koe-Ishto's mate never scented us nor knew that we were near. And on the fourth morning, when the she-puma had gone out to get meat, we saw Storm-Rider, the eagle, fall from the sky and seize a cub in his claws."

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 Kana the Conjurer rose, drew to its full height his lean body streaked with paint and decked with feathers, and pointed an accusing finger at the young brave.

"Little Wolf lies," he cried in a high cracked voice. "His words are empty as wind. Let him be dry-scratched with snakes' teeth and scourged from the town with rawhide thongs. For he comes with lies, bringing no proof, and such as he cannot dwell among us."

Little Wolf turned to Striking Hawk and spoke a guttural word. The latter, with a quick motion, removed the deerskin covering the object at his feet. The eager braves saw a large cage made of willow withes. On a perch in the cage stood a splendid golden eagle.

Little Wolf spoke again.

"I bring proofs which all must believe," he said. "With a blunt arrow I shot at Storm-Rider as he flew over our ambush with the cub. It was a far shot, but again the Spirit was good. The blunt arrow struck the eagle's wing and brought him down. This is he in the cage—Storm-Rider, the golden eagle of Younaguska. When his wing is healed, I will set him free."

The young warrior paused for a moment, his gaze fixed on Kana. But the Conjurer was staring with wide panic-stricken eyes at Striking Hawk who,

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 almost unnoticed, had slipped for a moment out of the glare of the firelight to the spot where his sister, Pakale the Blossom, stood among the maidens. Pakale had given him something which she had kept concealed under her loose garment and the youth was now returning with it to his post beside his friend.

Little Wolf laughed in triumph.

"Kana sees his doom," he cried. "He sees in Striking Hawk's hand the puma cub, the whelp of Koe-Ishto, which Storm-Rider captured. Let him come nearer and he can see on it the marks of Storm-Rider's claws."

The young brave turned and faced Tiftoe, the aged chief.

"Now let it be known," he said in a low tone which was his tribute to the chief's authority, "whether it is Little Wolf, or Kana, the false conjurer, that must be scourged from the town."

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HE king of the river was predestined to ad© venture. It was his heritage and he accepted it phlegmatically, as he accepted all things, both good and ill. His adventures began early in his career—on the day when he first saw the light. They began not gradually or mildly, but grimly and fiercely, and it was only a fortunate chance that prevented his first day from being his last. But the king of the river had also been born lucky. The outcome of that first day's encounter marked the beginning of his luck.

He lay with twenty-seven of his brothers and sisters in the warm shallow water close to the edge of a small cypress-bordered lagoon. He was very tired, for he had just made a long journey—a journey of more than two hundred yards from the dry ridge in the swamp, where the alligator nest was situated, to the margin of the lonely swamp lake which was to be the home of his youth. The eight-foot saurian which had laid the eggs in that nest, covering them with sand and leaves and committing them to the care of the sun, had not returned when the time for hatching came, and the little black

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 and-yellow gators had no guide save unerring instinct.

Automatically, that one of them who was afterwards to be king of the river took command. He was fully nine inches long, longer by an inch than any of the others, and doubtless it was his superior size and strength that put him in the van as the strange procession started for the lagoon. So it fell to him to break a path through the lush weeds and stiff grasses, and when at last he reached a small shallow cove of the little woods lake he was too weary to swim on to the broader reaches beyond.

He lay at the surface of the still wine-brown water, in the midst of his brothers and sisters, basking in the warm sunshine, despite his weariness deliciously content; and as he lay thus, indolently enjoying his first taste of life, death came out of the rank reeds along the shore of the cove and struck right and left, claiming a victim at each stroke. For the tall white-and-black wood ibis who had been standing motionless as a statue at the edge of the water, his long bill resting on his chest, the arrival of the gator family was an unexpected piece of luck, and he was quick to take advantage of it.

A wise old bird was this long-legged, long-necked ibis. He moved not a muscle or a feather as he watched the little saurians come down through the narrow fringe of short marsh. Only when the last

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 of them had reached the water did he stir. Then, hidden from them by a small peninsula of reeds, he hurried with swift awkward strides to the feast.

His mandibles gaped greedily, his wide, white, black-tipped wings were half open as he stalked like a tall ghost out of the reeds into the midst of his victims. If they saw him coming the instinct which was their only friend in the hard battle for life could not warn them in that brief instant that here was a foe who would cut life short before it had well begun. Down flashed the stout curved bill, its mandibles closed, a heavy, sharp-pointed pickax of which the ibis' long sinewy neck formed the handle—down, then up, down in another place, up once more, then down again with marvelous quickness and with perfect aim. Each time the pickax fell it fell upon a baby gator, generally striking the little saurian on the domelike head or just where neck and body joined. Six in all the ibis slew or stunned in quick succession before the survivors, awake at last to the danger, scuttled out to the deeper water or hid themselves under the duckweed and green slime. Then, with half a dozen victims dead or insensible behind him, the slayer opened his mandibles, thrust out his long neck and seized a seventh just as it was disappearing under a lily pad.

This seventh victim was he who was afterwards

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 to be known as king of the river. He dangled by his tail from the ibis' bill as the tall bird stalked toward the shore; and it was fortunate for him that heavy rains had raised the water level of the cove, covering the dead logs and cypress knees that ordinarily studded its surface at that point. Had there been a log close at hand, the ibis would have killed him instantly by slapping his head against it; but the only log visible lay on the shore close to the spot where the gator procession had come down to the water's edge.

The ibis strode with swift steps toward this log which was to serve as an execution block for the little gator hanging from his bill; but because a tangle of smilax lay in front of the log, between it and the edge of the water, he did not approach it directly. Making a slight detour, he followed for ten feet or so the faint trail which the gator procession had made, then turned toward the log from the landward side where no smilax vines would hamper the movements of his head as he hammered his captive to death.

Preoccupied with the pressing business in hand, he did not see the furry form crouching close to the ground behind the smooth gray-green trunk of a young sycamore close beside the trail. He turned his back on the sycamore and took two steps toward the execution log; and instantly the gray fox, his

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 delicate feet lightly touching the ground, skimmed silently over the grass and weeds and leaped upon him from the rear. It was a stroke of fortune for the fox. He had picked up the trail of the gator family on the ridge in the swamp and had followed it as fast as he could, hoping to overtake the procession before it reached the water. But this tall whiteand-black bird would furnish sweeter meat than the meat of baby gators; and, big though the bird was, the fox, landing squarely upon the ibis' back, knew how to chop that long neck neatly and effectively from behind.

This was the first manifestation of the luck that was to follow the future king of the river through the first months of his life—those perilous months when, far from being lord of all the water wild folk, he was among the least formidable of them all and was beset on all sides by enemies of many kinds against whom he had no defense except instinct and the cunning that grew in him as he grew.

This cunning must have begun to develop very early. Perhaps there was a hint of it in his behavior on that first day when, as the stricken ibis struggled in the throes of death, the little gator, released from the grip of that cruel bill, did not make straight for the water as blind instinct might have directed. Had

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 he done so, he would have been spotted instantly by the fox, which would have had baby gator as an appetizer. Instead, he crawled very slowly under the log at a point where it was raised a little from the ground and buried himself in the muck, lying there utterly motionless until the gray-and-russet killer had feasted and had gone on his way. If the fox's nose told him that there was a little gator under the log, he was well fed by that time and did not think it worth while to dig the youngster out.

Thenceforward the baby saurian knew that danger lurked in the shallows along the margins of the lagoon. Whether this knowledge was merely instinct awakened by his encounter with the ibis, or whether it was the beginning of the wisdom that developed in his small brain as the months passed, it was a decisive factor in carrying him through his perilous babyhood. He still kept mainly to the shallows, for somehow he knew that there were even greater dangers in the brown translucent depths; but always he had a sharp eye open for tall birds which frequented the lagoon margins—for wood ibises, which he saw only occasionally, and for herons, which he saw in great numbers every day. The small life of the warm teeming waters afforded him abundant food; and all the while he was growing, not slowly, as most people suppose that alligators grow, but very fast.

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 The first and most dangerous season of his babyhood was also the shortest. A few weeks after he had emerged from the egg came the cool weather of fall; and, burying himself in the mud near the edge of the lagoon, he slept through the winter in peace. When he reappeared in early March he entered upon a period of still swifter growth. By the end of that summer he had more than doubled his length, and as he grew longer and bulkier the number of his enemies decreased. When he emerged from his second winter sleep the tall birds of the lagoon margins no longer terrified him; and that same summer he turned the tables on his feathered foes.

His warfare against the feathered water folk began on a modest scale. Many gallinules nested in wampee beds along the sunny margins and on floating islands of aquatic plarits in the open spaces, while at least half a dozen wood duck mothers had laid their eggs in deep holes dug in dead pines by big red-crested pileated woodpeckers or logcocks, giants of the woodpecker tribe. The saurian inhabitants of the lagoon, both large and small, took toll of the downy ducklings and the little gallinules; and now and again the yawning jaws of a big gator, rising suddenly from the depths, engulfed a parent bird.

It was late summer before the future king of the

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 river had his first taste of revenge on the tall javelinbilled waders that had loomed so large among the ogres of his babyhood. One sunny morning, as he lay at the surface close to the shore, a great blue heron, which probably mistook the young gator for a small log, lit so near him that a sudden flirt of his muscular tail knocked the heron's stiltlike legs from under him. In an instant the saurian's long jaws clamped upon the bird's body, and in another half second the heron had been pulled into deep water. Two other young gators, attracted by the commotion, laid hold of the draggled bloody body and helped to tear it to pieces and devour it.

One more blow the tribes of the air were to strike at their saurian enemy; but before that happened a great change came to pass. In late summer came torrential rains continuing for many days. All the swamps of the Low Country were filled to over flowing, and the water level of the lagoon rose until the highest of the old watermarks on the bulging trunks of the cypresses were four inches under the surface. Dry swales and bottoms became pools or ponds, and the lagoon, as its level rose, sent out long arms of water, reaching like tentacles far off through the woods.

Exploring one of these new coves of the lagoon one September day, the future king of the river pushed on and on until he crossed a divide and came

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 to the edge of the river ricefields. It was easier then to go on than to go back; and presently he was swimming down an old ricefield canal which led through a sunny wilderness of big round lotus leaves covering the abandoned flooded rice lands as far as the eye could see. The canal deepened as he swam on, emptying finally into another canal, which in turn emptied into a creek. Down this creek he followed the ebbing tide; and at last, in midafternoon, he came to the river of which he was destined to be king, and the cypress lagoon of his babyhood knew him no more.

The change was an advantageous one. Fish formed his staple food and the river teemed with fish of many kinds, while the scores of canals and ditches extending from the river far across the wet rice lands on either side of the winding stream were inexhaustible hunting grounds. The young gator fed bounteously and grew faster than ever. He was big enough now to prey on the biggest of the black bass; purple gallinules which lived in the lotus fields occasionally fell victim to him; once he was lucky enough to dine on an unwary marsh rabbit; and once a young raccoon, which rashly attempted to swim a break in a ricefield bank, afforded htm a sumptuous repast.

Little by little he was learning strategy. At a certain bend of the river many kingbirds perched

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 on snags and sticks projecting from the soft sloping mud exposed along the banks at low tide. An inch above that mud innumerable winged insects darted and danced, and on these the kingbirds fed. Barn swallows, also, skimming with infinite grace back and forth above the marginal mud flats, preyed on these insect hosts, and never a wing of a swallow touched the mud. But the kingbirds, swooping down from their sticks and snags, often patted the mud with their wings. That mud was like oily glue. Little wings that patted it were sometimes held fast by it, and many kingbirds were thus trapped. Once they fell upon the mud, it incased them all over, clogging their feathers, rendering them incapable of flight.

Close to the edge of the water the young gator found a panting kingbird lying helpless. He swallowed the bird; then, slipping back into the water, he resumed his sun bath, lying six feet or so from the shore, only his eyes and nostrils showing above the surface. Soon he saw another kingbird touch the mud with its wing, flutter wildly, then lie still. This bird, too, he caught; and thenceforward for a week, while the kingbird migration was at its height, he found it profitable to lie in wait by the muddy margins at low tide. Late one afternoon, however, when the sun was sinking through crimson-dyed skies toward the distant purple woods beyond the

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 lotus fields, something happened that cured him of this habit.

He had not learned to look for peril from above. His periscope eyes, projecting from the surface, kept keen watch upon the river and the river margins, but they neglected the upper spaces of the air. He was swimming slowly when the blow fell, his body barely submerged; and the red shafts of the late sunlight, shimmering and glinting on the myriad wavelets of the river, must have deceived the great white-headed eagle hurrying homeward after a long journey to distant hunting grounds.

Perhaps the eagle had hunted vainly that day and, mistaking the young gator's submerged body for a slow-moving fish, decided that this was one of those rare occasions when he would deign to do his own fishing instead of having his underlings, the ospreys, perform that service for him. At any rate, the moment he saw the gator gliding slowly through the rippling shallows close to the muddy margin where the kingbirds perched on their snags, he closed his wide wings and plunged, his legs thrust downward, his trenchant talons spread to the utmost.

In a whirl of wind from wildly beating wings, and in a shower of spray, those claws struck the saurian's back and side just behind the forelegs. The leathery plates of his back were not pierced; but on

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 his flank, where the hide was less tough, the long claws penetrated deeply, so deeply that they could not be withdrawn. Once the eagle screamed—a farewell, perhaps, to the wide skies and the lonely swamp woods and the river lotus fields and marshes which he had known for nearly fifty years; but whether or not in that instant he realized his fate, he fought fiercely and bravely to wrench himself free as the terror-stricken young gator raced for the deeper water. For ten yards or so the river bottom shelved gradually, and for that distance the proud white head and the laboring wings remained above the surface. Then suddenly they vanished.

The years passed, and year by year the king of the river grew in length and bulk and cunning. A time came when he was king in fact, lord of all the river wild folk and afraid of no wild creature of the waters, the woods, or the air. Of monstrous girth and stretching fully fourteen feet from nose to tail tip, he was the greatest gator that the river had seen in half a century—a dragonlike monarch of the waters, rivaling those mighty saurians of the old days that lived out their allotted span because their armor was proof against the red man's weapons. That time had long gone by. Though the saurian race still abounded in the beautiful winding rivers

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