ies--each had a distinct one--of how the fugitive
escaped. They were wild looking fellows, most of them somewhat
intoxicated, all profusely liberal with their stock of picturesque
profanity. They represented the roughest element of the well-nigh
lawless post.

"I'm positive that he's wounded," said one. "Jacques and I shot at him
together, so that our pistols sounded just as if only one had been
fired--bang! that way--and he leaped sideways for all the world like a
bird with a broken leg. I thought he'd fall; but ve! he ran faster'n
ever, and all at once he was gone; just disappeared."

"Well, to-morrow we'll get him," said another. "You and I and Jacques,
we'll take up his trail, the thief, and follow him till we find him. He
can't get off so easy."

"I don't know so well about that," said another; "it's Long-Hair, you
must remember, and Long-Hair is no common buck that just anybody can
find asleep. You know what Long-Hair is. Nobody's ever got even with
'im yet. That's so, ain't it? Just ask Oncle Jazon, if you don't
believe it!"

The next morning Long-Hair was tracked to the edge. He had been
wounded, but whether seriously or not could only be conjectured. A
sprinkle of blood, here and there quite a dash of it, reddened the
grass and clumps of weeds he had run through, and ended close to the
water into which it looked as if he had plunged with a view to baffling
pursuit. Indeed pursuit was baffled. No further trace could be found,
by which to follow the cunning fugitive. Some of the men consoled
themselves by saying, without believing, that Long-Hair was probably
lying drowned at the bottom of the river.

"Pas du tout," observed Oncle Jazon, his short pipe askew far over in
the corner of his mouth, "not a bit of it is that Indian drowned. He's
jes' as live as a fat cat this minute, and as drunk as the devil. He'll
get some o' yer scalps yet after he's guzzled all that brandy and slep'
a week."

It finally transpired that Oncle Jazon was partly right and partly
wrong. Long-Hair was alive, even as a fat cat, perhaps; but not drunk,
for in trying to swim with the rotund little dame jeanne under his arm
he lost hold of it and it went to the bottom of the Wabash, where it
may be lying at this moment patiently waiting for some one to fish it
out of its bed deep in the sand and mud, and break the ancient wax from
its neck!

Rene de Ronville, after the chase of Long-Hair had been given over,
went to tell Father Ber