orce on his ammunition-pouch, the
inner side of which, being made of thick, tough buffalo-hide, had stayed
its further progress--though the shock had been so severe as to lay him
senseless many minutes. Consciousness and the power of motion returning
to him at the close of the fight, he had leaped to his feet, and by
reason of the wound in his left arm disabled from wielding a rifle, had
snatched up the nearest tomahawk to hurl that at the Big Black Brave
with a Bushy Head, where he was still standing on the brow of the hill,
peering through his rifle smoke at the river-bank below.

Up to this moment Grumbo had kept his powerful jaws clenched
unrelentingly on the throat of the dead savage; but seeing the new
danger threatening his master, he had at last released his hold, and
with a growl and a bound was at the enemy's skirts, which he seized with
a violent backward tug, just as the tomahawk was on the point of being
hurled, and with a force and an aim which else had sent the black giant
rolling in his turn to the bottom of the hill. Again had the war-dog
turned the scale of battle in his leader's favor.

"I yi, you dogs!" And with his battle-cry resounding again through the
lonely wilds, the Fighting Nigger threw himself on his new antagonist,
whom the invincible Grumbo still held back by the skirts, and wresting
the scalping-knife from the young brave's hand, bore him with
resistless force to the ground--Indian, nigger, and dog, all in a
huddle together.

"Han's uff, Grumbo!" For the war-dog, now that his blood was up, could
hardly be restrained from falling tooth and nail on the prostrate foe.
"Han's uff! You's chawed up one uf de varmints; jes' let Burlman Rennuls
wind up dis one. Han's uff, I say; or I'll----." And with this the
Fighting Nigger made a sham thrust with the knife at his comrade's nose,
which forced him to fall back a few paces, where he sat doggedly down on
his tail, with the injured air of a faithful follower who had been
defrauded of his dues.

Big Black Burl looked down on the young Indian brave: the young Indian
brave, with unflinching bright, black eyes, looked up at Big Black Burl.
Slowly the victor raised the murderous knife aloft, his eyes still bent
on the young brave's face, and seeing there something that made his hand
less swift than was its wont in dealing the death-blow. But the knife
was on the point of descending when Bushie came running up to the spot,
crying out in beseeching ac