Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: June 25, 2025
Another thing; if this phantom canoe was now within an hour of us, and going with the current, it must at one time have been very, very close to us in fact, just ahead and within sight of the Wyandotte, if, indeed, it had not come silently downstream from behind us and shot past us in plain view of the Black-Snake. Was the Wyandotte a traitor? For only he could have seen this.
"I wonder if you know what a black-snake whip is, or a cattle-adder? Well, they're both painful and convincing. As director of morals in the camp I have just left behind me, it was my official duty on frequent occasions to see to it that current offenders had from fifteen to fifty applications of the black-snake in a public sort of way.
"They say," continued the Sagamore, "that the Erie priesthood learned from the Nez Perces a strange and barbarous fashion." "What fashion?" asked Grey-Feather, so innocently that I could not determine whether he was playing into the Sagamore's hands. "The fashion of wearing the hair in a short, stiff ridge," said the Mohican. "Has the Black-Snake ever seen it worn that way?"
I had heard and seen a black-snake whistle. I had never even known of the habit before. Since then I have seen one other snake do it, and I think I have heard the sound three or four times. It is almost indescribable. The jaws were closed as it was made, not even the throat moving, that I could see.
But it was clean-cut, with power in every line of jaw and neck; with power and speed and certainty in the pose, so easy, ready, and erect. There was no fear in the creature's eye, something rather of aggressiveness, and of such evil cunning that I stood on guard. Afraid of a snake? of a black-snake! No. I think, indeed, there are few persons who really do fear snakes. It is not fear, but nerves.
Scores of garter-snakes had been his victims; once even a milk-snake had yielded up the ghost, and once a great day that he had seen a black-snake in the open and had assailed it valorously with stones hurled from a distance. When it came toward him he retreated, but did not abandon the bombardment, and finally drove it into a cover of deep bushes.
The Wyandotte did not lose his temper, nor even, apparently, perceive how slyly he was being baited by all except myself. "What is the opinion of the Loup, O Sagamore?" he asked lightly. "Does my brother the Black-Snake desire to know the Sagamore's opinion concerning the cawing of yonder crows?" The Wyandotte inclined his ugly head.
Sadie Todd's cousin, who had been born in England, was shipped out on this first train, and also a Finnish lumberman whom Peter had known in the I. W. W., and a Bohemian cigar worker at whose home he had several times eaten, and finally Michael Dubin, the Jewish boy with whom he had spent fifteen days in jail, and who had been one of the victims of the black-snake whippings.
The Head Buffalo is a head taller than the tallest man of his tribe. Can the moose crawl into the fox's hole? Can the swan hide himself under a little leaf? The Young Eagle was little, save in his soul. He was not full-grown, save in his heart. He could go and not be seen or heard. He was the cunning black-snake which creeps silently in the grass, and none thinks him near till he strikes.
Beyond them the river swung southward, walling our view with its flanking palisade of living green. "We camp here," I said quietly. "No fire, of course. Two sentinels the Night Hawk and the Black-Snake. The guard will be relieved every two hours. Wake me at the first change of watch."
Word Of The Day
Others Looking