Suddenly the crow began to laugh and Chu-ta-win opened his eyes to look at him. Then he opened them wider at what he saw, and raised himself up, forgetting for a moment his fright.
“Where did you come from?” asked the eagle, “and where is Redskin?”
“Oh, Redskin,” answered Kaw in a voice that was choking with laughter, “Redskin is dripping off your back! The rain transferred him from me to you. Cho-gay declared the color was fast—but—Oh, haw—haw—haw—I don’t think even he knew how fast!” and then as he saw that the eagle was beginning to understand what had happened, he started to hop up and down in his usual, grave way, and to chant:
“Sometimes very dull is the eye of a crow,
But the eye of an eagle—Oh, never—Oh, no!
Oh, never. Oh, never—
For truly whoever,
Has heard of the eye of an eagle that’s so!”
Chu-ta-win watched Kaw for a moment, while the rain poured in a steady stream from his feathers and dripped from the bush from under which Cho-gay followed their every word. Then a slow grin spread over the eagle’s usually fierce features—perhaps at the comical appearance of Kaw, whose feathers were most wonderfully streaked with red and black, with here and there a smear of white from his bill.
“Well, we’re even, Kaw,” he said at last. “I don’t think that either of us can laugh at the other in the future, and I promise not to laugh at you any more if you’ll forget to-day and not laugh at me!”