The warrior was a brawny, full-grown Indian, almost in middle life, who had sunk on one knee and brought his gun to his shoulder, after briefly studying the form which had approached his lurking place. He had never seen the stranger until that moment, and he only knew that he belonged to some totem unknown to him. It was probable that his home was on the eastern shore of the Mississippi, and he resented the intrusion upon his hunting grounds as he did that of a white man: consequently he was as quick to take the life of one as of the other.