w, but we must calculate that for the rest of the
journey we are going to be hunted; and if we don't want our scalps
taken, not to talk of all these women and children, we have got to look
out pretty spry. I reckon we can beat them off in anything like a fair
fight--that is, provided we have got time to get ready before they are
on us, and it depends on us whether we do have time or not."

[Illustration]

CHAPTER XI.

HOW DICK LOST HIS SCALP.

TWO or three days after they had moved from their last halting-place,
when they were sitting at the fire one evening, and Abe had been telling
a yarn of adventure, he said, when he had finished:--

"About the closest thing as I know was that adventure that Dick thar
had. Dick, take off that thar wig of yourn."

The hunter put his hand to his head and lifted at once his cap, made of
skin, and the hair beneath it, showing, to Frank's astonishment, a head
without a vestige of hair, and presenting the appearance of a strange
scar, mottled with a deep purple, as if it was the result of a terrible
burn.

"You see I have been scalped," the hunter said. "I don't suppose you
noticed it--few people do. You see, I never takes off my fur cap night
or day, so that no one can see as I wears a wig."

"There's nought to be ashamed of in it," Abe said, "for it is as
honourable a scalp as ever a man got. Do you tell the story, Dick."

"You know it as well as I do," the hunter replied, "and I ain't good at
talking."

"Well, I will tell you it then," Abe said, "seeing that I knows almost
as much about it as Dick does. The affair occurred the very year after
what I have been telling you about. Dick was attached as hunter and
scout to Fort Charles, which was, at that time, one of the furthest west
of all our stations. There was fifty infantry and thirty cavalry there,
and little enough too, for it war just on the edge of the Dacota
country. The Dacotas are a powerful tribe, and are one of the most
restless, troublesome lots I knows. Several strong parties of our troops
have been surprised and cut to pieces by them; and as to settlements, no
one but a born fool would dream of settling within reach of them.

"I never could quite make out why we wanted to put a fort down so close
to them, seeing as there warn't a settlement to protect within a hundred
and fifty miles; but I suppose the wiseacres at Washington had some sort
of an idea that the redskins would be afraid to make excursion