Cloud Wings the Eagle. 93 



enthusiasm or confidence. He had chased the same 

 eagle before — all one summer, in fact, when a sports- 

 man, whom he was guiding, had offered him twenty 

 dollars for the royal bird's skin. But Old White- 

 head still wore it triumphantly; and Simmo proph- 

 esied for him long life and a natural death. " No 

 use hunt-um dat heagle," he said simply. " I try 

 once an' can't get near him. He see everyt'ing; and 

 wot he don't see, he hear. 'Sides, he kin feel danger. 

 Das why he build nest way off, long ways, O don' 

 know where." This last with a wave of his arm to 

 include the universe. Cheplahgan, Old Cloud Wings, 

 he proudly called the bird that had defied him in a 

 summer's hunting. 



At first I had hunted him like any other savage ; 

 partly,' of course, to get his skin for the curator; 

 partly, perhaps, to save the settler's lambs over on the 

 Madawaska ; but chiefly just to kill him, to exult in 

 his death flaps, and to rid the woods of a cruel tyrant. 

 Gradually, however, a change' came over me as I 

 hunted ; I sought him less and less for his skin and 

 his life, and more and more for himself, to know all 

 about him. I used to watch him by the hour from 

 my camp on the big lake, saiHng quietly over Caribou 

 Point, after he had eaten with his little ones, and 

 was disposed to let Ismaquehs go on with his fishing 



