"My son has quite understood?"
"The words of my mother have fallen on the ears of a chief; his mind has received them."
"The sky on the horizon is covered with red bands, the sun will soon appear: let my brother return to his tribe; he must not arouse the suspicions of his enemy by his absence."
"I go; but before leaving my mother, whose wisdom has discovered all the schemes of the Palefaces, has she not made a great medicine to know if our enterprise will succeed, and if we shall conquer our enemy?"
At this moment a loud noise was heard in the canebrake, and a shrill whistle traversed the air; the Indian's horse laid hack its ears, made violent efforts to break the rope that fastened it, and trembled all over. The woman seized the chiefs arm firmly, and said in a gloomy voice,—
"Let my brother look!"
Red Wolf stifled a cry of surprise, and gazed, motionless and terrified, at the strange sight before him. A few paces off, a tiger cat and a rattlesnake were preparing for a contest. Their metallic eyeballs flashed, and seemed to emit flames. The tiger cat, crouching on a branch, with hair erect, was meowing and spitting, while closely following every move of its dangerous enemy, and awaiting the moment to attack it advantageously. The Crotalus, coiled up, and forming an enormous spiral, with its hideous head thrown back, whistled, as it balanced itself to the right and left, with a movement full of suppleness and grace, apparently trying to fascinate its enemy. But the latter did not allow it a long rest; it suddenly bounded on the serpent, which, however, moved nimbly on one side, and when the cat, after missing its leap, returned to the charge, gave it a fearful sting on the face.
The tiger cat uttered a yell of rage, and buried its long and sharp claws in the eyes of the serpent, which, however, wound round its enemy with a convulsive movement. Then the two rolled on the ground, hissing and howling, but unable to loose their hold. The struggle was long; they fought with extraordinary fury; but at length, the rings of the snake became unloosened, and its flaccid body lay motionless on the ground. The tiger cat escaped, with a meow of triumph, from the monster's terrible embrace, and bounded on a tree; but its strength was unequal to its will, and it could not reach the branch on which it wished to climb, but fell back exhausted on the ground. Then the ferocious animal, struggling with death and overcoming its agony, crouched back to the body of its enemy, and stood upon it. It then uttered a final yell of triumph, and fell, itself a corpse, by the side of the snake. The Indian had followed all the moving incidents of this cruel contest with ever-increasing interest.
"Well," he asked the unknown, "what does my mother say?"
She shook her head.