The dead
Indian lay in grim quiet where he had left him, the warrior who had
shown himself from the forest had already vanished, and the woods
themselves were as silent and seemingly deserted as the day they
came fresh from the hands of their great Creator. This profound
stillness, however, lasted but a moment. When time had been given
to the scouts of the enemy to reconnoitre, they burst out of the
thicket upon the naked point, filling the air with yells of fury
at discovering the death of their companion. These cries were
immediately succeeded by shouts of delight when they reached the
body and clustered eagerly around it. Deerslayer was a sufficient
adept in the usages of the natives to understand the reason of the
change. The yell was the customary lamentation at the loss of a
warrior, the shout a sign of rejoicing that the conqueror had not
been able to secure the scalp; the trophy, without which a victory
is never considered complete. The distance at which the canoes
lay probably prevented any attempts to injure the conqueror, the
American Indian, like the panther of his own woods, seldom making
any effort against his foe unless tolerably certain it is under
circumstances that may be expected to prove effective.
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