of defence. The quivers were soon exhausted;
and though blood had been drawn, it was not in sufficient quantities to
impair the energy of the combat.

A series of masterly and rapid evolutions with the horses now commenced.
The wheelings, the charges, the advances, and the circuitous retreats,
were like the flights of circling swallows. Blows were struck with the
lance, the sand was scattered in the air, and the shocks often seemed to
be unavoidably fatal; but still each party kept his seat, and still each
rein was managed with a steady hand. At length the Teton was driven to
the necessity of throwing himself from his horse, to escape a thrust
that would otherwise have proved fatal. The Pawnee passed his lance
through the beast, uttering a shout of triumph as he galloped by.
Turning in his tracks, he was about to push the advantage, when his own
mettled steed staggered and fell, under a burden that he could no longer
sustain. Mahtoree answered his premature cry of victory, and rushed
upon the entangled youth, with knife and tomahawk. The utmost agility
of Hard-Heart had not sufficed to extricate himself in season from the
fallen beast. He saw that his case was desperate. Feeling for his knife,
he took the blade between a finger and thumb, and cast it with admirable
coolness at his advancing foe. The keen weapon whirled a few times in
the air, and its point meeting the naked breast of the impetuous Sioux,
the blade was buried to the buck-horn haft.

Mahtoree laid his hand on the weapon, and seemed to hesitate whether to
withdraw it or not. For a moment his countenance darkened with the
most inextinguishable hatred and ferocity, and then, as if inwardly
admonished how little time he had to lose, he staggered to the edge
of the sands, and halted with his feet in the water. The cunning and
duplicity, which had so long obscured the brighter and nobler traits of
his character, were lost in the never dying sentiment of pride, which he
had imbibed in youth.

"Boy of the Loups!" he said with a smile of grim satisfaction, "the
scalp of a mighty Dahcotah shall never dry in Pawnee smoke!"

Drawing the knife from the wound, he hurled it towards the enemy
in disdain. Then shaking his arm at his successful foe, his swarthy
countenance appearing to struggle with volumes of scorn and hatred, that
he could not utter with the tongue, he cast himself headlong into one
of the most rapid veins of the current, his hand still waving in tri