Will the boy never move? To the black hunter, there lying in ambush, the suspense was becoming all but insupportable. With an interest far more intense than that of the boy did he watch the nimble fingers of the young Indian, as the whittling task went on--the heavy-footed seconds creeping draggingly by, and made, by the suspense, to seem as long as minutes. At last the hatchet was handled and delivered to the impatient Bushie, who, the moment he received it, sprung forward to try its edge on the bark of a large walnut that grew a few paces in front of them. That same instant, while yet the pitying, good-humored smile, with which he watched the movements of the little captive, was still bright on the young brave's handsome face, the ambushed rifle rang out on the quiet scene, and with loud yells the two Indians fell over backward behind the log, and after a few convulsive struggles, there lay as dead. "I yi, you dogs!" And with this his battle-cry shaking the lonely wilds, and finding echo in a deep-mouthed howl from the brindled dog in the dingle below, the Fighting Nigger burst from his ambush, all the lion of his nature now roused and rampant within him. Throwing himself with a prodigious bound into the arena, on with huge strides he came, his ponderous battle-ax in broad, bright circles gleaming high over his head. "I yi, you dogs!" With a terrible cry, half as a yell of astonishment, half as a whoop of defiance, Black Thunder--the red giant being, in fact, none other than that redoubtable Wyandot brave--leaped to his feet, and wrenching his tomahawk from the tree beside him, hurled it, with a horrible hiss, full at the shaggy front of this most unexpected, formidable foe. But, quick of eye and strong of hand, the Fighting Nigger caught the murderous missile on the head of his ax, and sent it ringing, like an anvil, high up in the air. On he came amain, and with another lion-like bound had planted himself square in front of his antagonist just as a second tomahawk was on the tip of leaping at him, which he sent ringing after the other, before it had quitted the red giant's grasp. Foiled again, and seeing the ax uplifted, himself this time the mark for the impending blow, Black Thunder, pushed to desperation, darted sheer under the descending arm, thus bringing his shoulder under the handle of the weapon, instead of his head under its cleaving edge, and causing the force of the blow to be spent harmless on the ground behind him.