The Prairie by James Fenimore Cooper

about its victim before it strikes. Satisfied at
length, not only of the condition but of the character of the stranger,
Mahtoree was in the act of withdrawing his head, when a slight movement
of the sleeper announced the symptoms of reviving consciousness. The
savage seized the knife which hung at his girdle, and in an instant it
was poised above the breast of the young emigrant. Then changing his
purpose, with an action as rapid as his own flashing thoughts, he
sunk back behind the trunk of the fallen tree against which the other
reclined, and lay in its shadow, as dark, as motionless, and apparently
as insensible as the wood itself.
    The slothful sentinel opened his heavy eyes, and gazing upward for
a moment at the hazy heavens, he made an extraordinary exertion, and
raised his powerful frame from the support of the log. Then he looked
about him, with an air of something like watchfulness, suffering his
dull glances to run over the misty objects of the encampment until
they finally settled on the distant and dim field of the open prairie.
Meeting with nothing more attractive than the same faint outlines of
swell and interval, which every where rose before his drowsy eyes, he
changed his position so as completely to turn his back on his dangerous
neighbour, and suffered his person to sink sluggishly down into its
former recumbent attitude. A long, and, on the part of the Teton, an
anxious and painful silence succeeded, before the deep breathing of the
traveller again announced that he was indulging in his slumbers. The
savage was, however, far too jealous of a counterfeit to trust to the
first appearance of sleep. But the fatigues of a day of unusual toil lay
too heavy on the sentinel to leave the other long in doubt. Still the
motion with which Mahtoree again raised himself to his knees was
so noiseless and guarded, that even a vigilant observer might have
hesitated to believe he stirred. The change was, however, at length
effected, and the Dahcotah chief then bent again over his enemy, without
having produced a noise louder than that of the cotton-wood leaf which
fluttered at his side in the currents of the passing air.
    Mahtoree now felt himself master of the sleeper's fate. At the same time
that he scanned the vast proportions and athletic limbs of the youth, in
that sort of admiration which physical excellence seldom fails to
excite in the breast of a savage, he coolly prepared to extinguish the
principle of vitality which could alone render them formidable. After
making himself sure of the seat of life, by gently removing the folds of
the intervening cloth, he raised his keen weapon, and was about to unite
his strength and skill in the impending blow, when the young man threw
his brawny arm carelessly backward, exhibiting in the action the vast
volume of its muscles.
    The sagacious and wary Teton paused. It struck his acute faculties that
sleep was less dangerous to him, at that moment, than even death itself
might prove. The smallest noise, the agony of struggling, with which
such a frame would probably relinquish its hold of life, suggested
themselves to his rapid thoughts, and were all present to his
experienced senses. He looked back into the encampment, turned his head
into the thicket, and glanced his glowing eyes abroad into the wild and
silent prairies. Bending once more over the respited victim, he assured
himself that he was sleeping heavily, and then abandoned his immediate
purpose in obedience alone to the suggestions of a more crafty policy.
    The retreat of Mahtoree was as still and guarded as had been his
approach. He now took the direction of the encampment, stealing along
the margin of the brake, as a cover into which he might easily plunge at
the smallest alarm. The drapery of the solitary hut attracted his notice
in passing. After examining the whole of its exterior, and listening
with painful intensity, in order to gather counsel from his ears, the
savage ventured to raise the cloth at the bottom,