The savage seized the knife which hung at his girdle,
and in an instant it was poised above the breast of the young
emigrant. Then changing his purpose, with an action as rapid as his
own flashing thoughts, he sunk back behind the trunk of the fallen
tree against which the other reclined, and lay in its shadow, as dark,
as motionless, and apparently as insensible as the wood itself.
The slothful sentinel opened his heavy eyes, and gazing upward for a
moment at the hazy heavens, he made an extraordinary exertion, and
raised his powerful frame from the support of the log. Then he looked
about him, with an air of something like watchfulness, suffering his
dull glances to run over the misty objects of the encampment until
they finally settled on the distant and dim field of the open prairie.
Meeting with nothing more attractive than the same faint outlines of
swell and interval, which every where rose before his drowsy eyes, he
changed his position so as completely to turn his back on his
dangerous neighbour, and suffered his person to sink sluggishly down
into its former recumbent attitude.
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