Hawkeye, between the
stone-headed arrow of the warrior, and the leaden bullet with which you
kill?"

"There is reason in an Indian, though nature has made him with a red
skin!" said the white man, shaking his head like one on whom such an
appeal to his justice was not thrown away. For a moment he appeared to
be conscious of having the worst of the argument, then, rallying again,
he answered the objection of his antagonist in the best manner his
limited information would allow: "I am no scholar, and I care not who
knows it; but judging from what I have seen, at deer chases and squirrel
hunts, of the sparks below, I should think a rifle in the hands of their
grandfathers was not so dangerous as a hickory bow and a good flint-head
might be, if drawn with Indian judgment, and sent by an Indian eye."

"You have the story told by your fathers," returned the other, coldly
waving his hand. "What say your old men? do they tell the young
warriors, that the pale-faces met the redmen, painted for war and armed
with the stone hatchet and wooden gun?"

"I am not a prejudiced man, nor one who vaunts himself on his natural
privileges, though the worst enemy I have on earth, and he is an
Iroquois, daren't deny that I am genuine white," the scout replied,
surveying, with secret satisfaction, the faded color of his bony and
sinewy hand; "and I am willing to own that my people have many ways, of
which, as an honest man, I can't approve. It is one of their customs to
write in books what they have done and seen, instead of telling them in
their villages, where the lie can be given to the face of a cowardly
boaster, and the brave soldier can call on his comrades to witness for
the truth of his words. In consequence of this bad fashion, a man who is
too conscientious to misspend his days among the women, in learning the
names of black marks, may never hear of the deeds of his fathers, nor
feel a pride in striving to outdo them. For myself, I conclude the
Bumppos could shoot, for I have a natural turn with a rifle, which must
have been handed down from generation to generation, as, our holy
commandments tell us, all good and evil gifts are bestowed; though I
should be loth to answer for other people in such a matter. But every
story has its two sides; so I ask you, Chingachgook, what passed,
according to the traditions of the redmen, when our fathers first met?"

A silence of a minute succeeded, during which the Indian sat mute; then,
full