at the ford, and was
obliged to stop from loss of blood and faintness. What so natural as to
suppose the younker fell upon him (we saw the tracks of the whole party
where the body lay), and slashed him in your devil's style, to take
advantage of the superstitious fear of the Indians?"

"There's nothing like being a lawyer, sartain!" grumbled Doe.
"But the warrior right among us, there at the ruin?--you seed him
yourself,--marked right in the thick of us! I reckon you won't say
the sodger, that we had there trapped up fast in the cabin, put the
cross on that Injun too?"

"Nothing more likely," said the sceptic;--"a stratagem a bold man might
easily execute in the dark."

"Well, Squire," said Doe, waxing impatient, "you may jist as well work it
out according to law that this same sodger younker, that never seed
Kentucky afore in his life, has been butchering Shawnees there, ay, and
in this d--d town too, for ten years agone. Ay, Dick, it's true, jist as
I tell you: there has been a dozen or more Injun warriors struck and
scalped in our very wigwams here, in the dead of the night, and nothing,
in the morning, but the mark of the Jibbenainosay to tell who was the
butcher. There's not a cussed warrior of them all that doesn't go to his
bed at night in fear; for none knows when the Jibbenainosay,--the Howl of
the Shawnees,--may be upon him. You must know, there was some bloody
piece of business done in times past (Injuns is the boys for them
things!)--the murdering of a knot of innocent people--by some of the
tribe, with the old villain Wenonga at the head of 'em. Ever since that,
the Jibbenainosay has been murdering among them; and they hold that it's
a judgment on the tribe, as ondoubtedly it is. And now, you see, that's
jist the reason why the old chief has turned such a vagabond; for the
tribe is rifled at him, because of his bringing such a devil on them, and
they won't follow him to battle no more, except some sich riff-raff,
vagabond rascals as them we picked up for this here rascality, no how.
And so, you see, it has a sort of set the old feller mad: he thinks of
nothing but the Jibbenainosay,--(that is, when he's sober, though, cuss
him, I believe it's all one when he's drunk, too.)--of hunting him up and
killing him, for he's jist a feller to fight the devil, there's no two
ways about it. It was because I told him we was going to the woods on
Salt, where the crittur abounds, and where he might get wind of him, tha