don for being familiar," he added, "there's the small matter to
be thought on in the case,--and that is, it was not Injuns, but rale
right-down Christian men that brought the younker to the tug. It's a bad
business for white men, and it makes me feel oncomfortable."

"Pooh," said the other, with an air of contemptuous commiseration, "you
are growing sentimental. This comes of listening to that confounded
whimpering Telie."

"No words agin the gal!" cried Doe, sternly; "you may say what you like
of me, for I'm a rascal that desarves it; but I'll stand no barking agin
the gal."

"Why, she's a good girl and a pretty girl,--too good and too pretty to
have so crusty a father,--and I have nothing against her, but her taking
on so about the younker, and so playing the devil with the wits and
good-looks of my own bargain."

"A dear bargain she is like to prove to all of us," said Doe, drowning
his anger, or remorse, in another draught from the pitcher. "She has cost
us eleven men already: it is well the bulk of the whelps was Wabash and
Maumee dogs, or you would have seen her killed and scalped, for all of
your guns and whisky,--you would, there's no two ways about it.
Howsomever, four of 'em was dogs of our own, and two of them was picked
off by the Jibbenainosay. I tell you what, Dick, I'm not the man to skear
at a raw-head-and-bloody-bones; but I do think the coming of this here
cursed Jibbenainosay among us, jist as we was nabbing the girl and
sodger, was as much as to say there was no good could come of it; and so
the Injuns thought too--you saw how hard it was to bring 'em up to the
scratch, when they found he had been knifing a feller right among 'em! I
do believe the crittur's Old Nick himself!"

"So don't I," said the other; "for it is quite unnatural to suppose the
devil would ever take part against his own children."

"Perhaps," said Doe, "you don't believe in the crittur?"

"Good Jack, honest Jack," replied his companion, "I am no such ass."

"Them that don't believe in hell, will natterly go agin the devil,"
muttered the renegade, with strong signs of disapprobation; and then
added earnestly,--"Look you, Squire, you're a man that knows more of
things than me, and the likes of me. You saw that 'ere Injun, dead, in
the woods under the tree, where the five scouters had left him a living
man?"

"Ay," said the man of the turban; "but he had been wounded by the
horseman you so madly suffered to pass the ambush