"I'll try," said Robert, and he tried so successfully that in a few
minutes he too slumbered, with his figure outstretched, and his head
on his arm. Tayoga made a circle about three hundred yards in diameter
about them, but finding no hostile sign came back and lay on the turf
near them. He relaxed his figure again and closed his eyes, which may
have seemed strange but which was not so in the case of Tayoga. His
hearing was extraordinarily acute, and, when his eyes were shut, it
grew much stronger than ever. Now he knew that no warrior could come
within rifle shot of them without his ears telling him of the savage
approach. Every creeping footstep would be registered upon that
delicate drum.

With eyes shut and brain rested, Tayoga nevertheless knew all that was
going on near him. That eardrum of infinite delicacy told him that a
woodpecker was tapping on a tree, well toward the north; that a little
gray bird almost as far to the south was singing with great vigor and
sweetness; that a rabbit was hopping about in the undergrowth,
curious and yet fearful; that an eagle with a faint whirr of wings
had alighted on a bough, and was looking at the three; that the eagle
thinking they might be dangerous had unfolded his wings again and was
flying away; that a deer passing to the west had caught a whiff
of them on the wind and was running with all speed in the other
direction; that a lynx had climbed a tree, and, after staring at them,
had climbed down again, and had fled, his coward heart filled with
terror.

Thus Tayoga, with his ears, watched his world. He too, his eyelids
lowered, felt a peace that was soothing and almost dreamy, but, though
his body relaxed, those wonderfully sensitive drums of his ears caught
and registered everything. The record showed that for nearly two hours