 he must have listened to very bad, in that affair.
There's only one king of this lake, and he's a long way off, and is'n't likely
ever to see it. Floating Tom is some such king of this region, as the wolf that
prowls through the woods, is king of the forest. A beast with two tails is well
worth two such scalps!«
    »But my brother has another beast? - He will give two -« holding up as many
fingers - »for old father?«
    »Floating Tom is no father of mine, but he'll fare none the worse for that.
As for giving two beasts for his scalp, and each beast with two tails, it is
quite beyond reason. Think yourself well off, Mingo, if you make a much worse
trade.«
    By this time the self-command of Rivenoak had got the better of his wonder,
and he began to fall back on his usual habits of cunning, in order to drive the
best bargain he could. It would be useless to relate more than the substance of
the desultory dialogue that followed, in which the Indian manifested no little
management, in endeavoring to recover the ground lost under the influence of
surprise. He even affected to doubt whether any original for the image of the
beast existed, and asserted that the oldest Indian had never heard a tradition
of any such animal. Little did either of them imagine, at the time, that long
ere a century elapsed, the progress of civilization would bring even much more
extraordinary and rare animals into that region, as curiosities to be gazed at
by the curious, and that the particular beast, about which the disputants
contended, would be seen laving its sides, and swimming in the very sheet of
water, on which they had met.4 As is not uncommon on such occasions, one of the
parties got a little warm, in the course of the discussion, for Deerslayer met
all the arguments and prevarication of his subtle opponent, with his own cool
directness of manner, and unmoved love of truth. What an elephant was he knew
little better than the savage, but he perfectly understood that the carved
pieces of ivory must have some such value in the eyes of an Iroquois, as a bag
of gold, or a package of beaver skins would in those of a trader. Under the
circumstances, therefore, he felt it to be prudent not to concede too much at
first, since there existed a nearly unconquerable obstacle to making the
transfers, even after the contracting parties had actually
