Page:The last of the Mohicans (1826 Volume 1).djvu/66

 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, in proud disdain. "What say your old men? do they tell the young warriors, that the pale-faces met the red-men, painted for war, and armed with the stone hatchet, or 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 colour 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