omahawking
to shooting. All the officers in the fort approved killing the
prisoner, and it was difficult for Colonel Clark to prevent the men
from making outrageous assaults upon him, so exasperated were they at
sight of the scalp.

Oncle Jazon proved to be one of the most refractory among those who
demanded tomahawking and scalping as the only treatment due Long-Hair.
The repulsive savage stood up before them stolid, resolute, defiant,
proudly flaunting the badge which testified to his horrible efficiency
as an emissary of Hamilton's. It had been left in his belt by Clark's
order, as the best justification of his doom.

"L' me hack 'is damned head," Oncle Jazon pleaded. "I jes' hankers to
chop a hole inter it. An' besides I want 'is scelp to hang up wi' mine
an' that'n o' the Injun what scelped me. He kicked me in the ribs, the
stinkin' varmint."

Beverley pleaded eloquently and well, but even the genial Major Helm
laughed at his sentiment of gratitude to a savage who at best but
relented at the last moment, for Alice's sake, and concluded not to
sell him to Hamilton. It is due to the British commander to record here
that he most positively and with what appeared to be high sincerity,
denied the charge of having offered rewards for the taking of human
scalps. He declared that his purposes and practices were humane, and
that while he did use the Indians as military allies, his orders to
them were that they must forego cruel modes of warfare and refrain from
savage outrage upon prisoners. Certainly the weight of contemporary
testimony seems overwhelmingly against him, but we enter his denial.
Long-Hair himself, however, taunted him with accusations of
unfaithfulness in carrying out some very inhuman contracts, and to add
a terrible sting, volunteered the statement that poor Barlow's scalp
had served his turn in the place of Beverley's.

With conditions so hideous to contend against, Beverley, of course, had
no possible means of succoring the condemned savage.

"Him a kickin' yer ribs clean inter ye, an' a makin' ye run the
ga'ntlet, an' here ye air a tryin' to save 'is life!" whined Oncle
Jazon, "W'y man, I thought ye hed some senterments! Dast 'is Injin
liver, I kin feel them kicks what he guv me till yit. Ventrebleu! que
diable voulez-vous?"

Clark simply pushed Beverley's pleadings aside as not worth a moment's
consideration. He easily felt the fine bit of gratitude at the bottom
of it all; but there was too m