"Then you skelp'd (scalped) him immediately?" said the backwoodsman.

"Very clear of it, gentlemen; for by the time I got my rifle loaded,
here came the other two red-skins, shouting and whooping close on me,
and away I broke again like a quarter-horse. I was now about five miles
from the settlement, and it was getting toward sunset. I ran till my
wind began to be pretty short, when I took a look back, and there they
came, snorting like mad buffaloes, one about two or three hundred yards
ahead of the other: so I acted possum again until the foremost Injin got
pretty well up, and I wheeled and fired at the very moment he was
'drawing a bead' on me: he fell head over stomach into the dirt, and up
came the last one!"

"So you laid for him, and--" gasped several.

"No," continued the "member," "I didn't lay for him, I hadn't time to
load, so I laid my _legs_ to ground and started again. I heard every
bound he made after me. I ran and ran until the fire flew out of my
eyes, and the old dog's tongue hung out of his mouth a quarter of a yard
long!"

"Phe-e-e-e-w!" whistled somebody.

"Fact, gentlemen. Well, what I was to do I didn't know: rifle empty, no
big trees about, and a murdering red Indian not three hundred yards in
my rear; and what was worse, just then it occurred to me that I was not
a great ways from a big creek (now called Mill Creek), and there I
should be pinned at last.

"Just at this juncture, I struck my toe against a root, and down I
tumbled, and my old dog over me. Before I could scrabble up--"

"The Indian fired!" gasped the old woodsman.

"He did, gentlemen, and I felt the ball strike me under the shoulder;
but that didn't seem to put any embargo upon my locomotion, for as soon
as I got up I took off again, quite freshened by my fall! I heard the
red-skin close behind me coming booming on, and every minute I expected
to have his tomahawk dashed into my head or shoulders.

"Something kind of cool began to trickle down my legs into my boots--"

"Blood, eh? for the shot the varmint gin you," said the old woodsman, in
a great state of excitement.

"I thought so," said the Senator; "but what do you think it was?"

Not being blood, we were all puzzled to know what the blazes it could
be; when Riley observed,--

"I suppose you had--"

"Melted the deer-fat which I had stuck in the breast of my
hunting-shirt, and the grease was running down my leg until my feet got
so greasy that my heavy boots fl