erley, who lay near him. "I onderstan' what they're
up to, dad dast 'em! More'n forty years ago, in Ca'lina, they put me
an' Jim Hipes through the ga'ntlet, an' arter thet, in Kaintuck, me an'
Si Kenton tuck the run. Hi, there, Si! where air ye?"

"Shut yer fool mouth," Kenton growled under his breath. "Ye'll have
that Injun a kickin' our lights out of us again."

Oncle Jazon winked at the gray sky and puckered his mouth so that it
looked like a nutgall on an old, dry leaf.

"What's the diff'ence?" he demanded. "I'd jest as soon be kicked now as
arter while; it's got to come anyhow."

Kenton made no response. The thongs were torturing his arms and legs.
Beverley was silent, but consciousness had returned, and with it a
sense of despair. All three of the prisoners lay face upward quite
unable to move, knowing full well that a terrible ordeal awaited them.
Oncle Jazon's grim humor could not be quenched, even by the galling
agony of the thongs that buried themselves in the flesh, and the
anticipation of torture beside which death would seem a luxury.

"Yap! Long-Hair, how's yer arm?" he called jeeringly. "Feels pooty
good, hay?"

Long-Hair, who was not joining in the dance and song, turned when he
heard these taunting words, and mistaking whence they came, went to
Beverley's side and kicked him again and again.

Oncle Jazon heard the loud blows, and considered the incident a
remarkably good joke.

"He, he, he!" he snickered, as soon as Long-Hair walked away again. "I
does the talkin' an' somebody else gits the thumpin'! He, he, he! I
always was devilish lucky. Them kicks was good solid jolts, wasn't
they, Lieutenant? Sounded like they was. He, he, he!"

Beverley gave no heed to Oncle Jazon's exasperating pleasantry; but
Kenton, sorely chafing under the pressure of his bonds, could not
refrain from making retort in kind.

"I'd give ye one poundin' that ye'd remember, Emile Jazon, if I could
get to ye, ye old twisted-face, peeled-headed, crooked-mouthed,
aggravatin' scamp!" he exclaimed, not thinking how high his naturally
strong voice was lifted. "I can stand any fool but a damn fool!"

Long-Hair heard the concluding epithet and understood its meaning.
Moreover, he thought himself the target at which it was so
energetically launched. Wherefore he promptly turned back and gave
Kenton a kicking that made his body resound not unlike a drum.

And here it was that Oncle Jazon overreached himself. He was so
delight