left to our leisure. I mean the interment of poor Vasquez. We buried him
in a grassy little flat; and I occupied my time hewing and fashioning
into the shape of a cross two pine logs, on the smoothed surface of
which I carved our friend's name. Then I returned to the stockade, where
old man Pine, a picturesque, tall figure in his fringed hunter's
buckskin, sat motionless before the cabin door. From that point of
vantage one could see a mile down the valley, and some distance
upstream; and one or the other of us occupied it constantly.

About three o'clock of the second day Pine remarked quietly:

"Thar they come!"

I was instantly by his side, and we strained our eyesight in an attempt
to count the shifting figures. Pine's vision was better and more
practised than mine.

"They are all thar," said he, "and they're driving extry hosses."

Ten minutes later the cavalcade stopped and the men dismounted wearily.
They were, as the old man had said, driving before them a half dozen
ponies, which Governor Boggs herded into the corral. Nobody said a word.
One or two stretched themselves. Johnny seized the cup and took a long
drink. Yank leaned his rifle against the wall. Old man Pine's keen,
fierce eye had been roving over every detail, though he, too, had kept
silent.

"Well, Old," he remarked, "I see you obeyed orders like a good sojer."

The boy grinned.

"Yes, dad," said he.

And then I saw what I had not noticed before: that at the belt of each
of the tall, silent young backwoodsmen hung one or more wet, heavy, red
and black soggy strips. The scalping had been no mere figure of speech!
Thank heaven! none of our own people were similarly decorated!

So horrified and revolted was I at this discovery that I hardly roused
myself to greet the men. I looked with aversion, and yet with a certain
fascination on the serene, clear features of these scalp takers. Yet,
since, in the days following, this aversion could not but wear away in
face of the simplicity and straightforwardness of the frontiersmen, I
had to acknowledge that the atrocious deed was more a product of custom
than of natural barbarity.

Old Pine, of course not at all affected, bustled about in the more
practical matter of getting coffee and cutting meat; and after a moment
I aroused myself to help him. The men lay about on the ground exhausted.
They drank the coffee and ate the meat, and so revived, little by
little, arrived at the point of narration.