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Updated: June 1, 2025
He reached out blindly as he fell, his hand closing about the deserted knife-hilt. The two crashed down together upon the floor, the force of the fall driving the blade home to the gambler's heart. Hampton staggered blindly to his feet, looking down on the motionless body.
But nevertheless, something bright moved in it perhaps the sheen of that lone light in an upper window reflected on a knife-hilt or a button something that moved in time to a man's breathing. If there was a certainty in the world it was that somebody who had no right to be there was lurking in that shadow, and he was presumably up to mischief.
He stood up, to hold both knife and papers close to the light in the roof. It needed no great stretch of imagination to suggest a likeness between the woman of the photograph and the other, of the golden knife-hilt. And nobody, looking at him then, would have dared suggest he lacked imagination.
And if ever his hand itched for the knife-hilt, his finger for the trigger, his cheek for the rifle-butt, his nostrils for the smell of the cooking-fires, his soul for the wild mountain passes, the mad gallop, the stealthy stalk he would live on cold water until the Old Adam were drowned.
I knew they had caught me lying on Slavin, with my hand grasping the knife-hilt, and, someway, I couldn't think of anything just then but how to get out of there into the open. I 've seen vigilantes turn loose before, and knew what was likely to happen!" "Sure. Recognize anybody in that first bunch?" "Big Jim, the bartender, was the only one I knew; he had a bung-starter in his hand."
As he did so, his eye fell upon Kark, who had laid hold of Thorwald's companion and was talking rapidly in his ear. The new-comer was not an amiable-looking man. Above his gigantic body was a lowering face that showed a capacity for slyness or viciousness, whichever better served his turn. As Kark talked to him, his brow grew blacker and he plucked savagely at his knife-hilt.
A sudden and terrible misgiving assailed me. I swallowed, and then said slowly: "Two scalps were taken late last night by Murphy and Elerson. And the scalps were not of the Mohawk. Not Oneida, nor Onondaga, nor Cayuga. Mayaro!" I gasped. "So help me God, those scalps are never Seneca!" "Erie!" he exclaimed with a mixture of rage and horror. And I saw his sinewy hand quivering on his knife-hilt.
Both he and the younger man, who was in fact a mere boy not yet seventeen, but tall, muscular, sinewy, stringy, one might say, of build, were dressed alike in loose hunting-shirts of buckskin, heavily fringed, less for the sake of ornament than the handiness of a selection of thongs always ready to be detached for use; for the same reason the deerskin leggings, reaching to the thighs over the knee-breeches and long stockings of that day, were also furnished with these substantial fringes; shot-pouch and powder-horn were suspended from a leather belt, and on the other side a knife-hilt gleamed close to the body.
Without attempting to alter the malice of his expression, he nevertheless dropped his hand from his knife-hilt, and straightened his figure to the grandiose attitude of the Indian orator. "This man speaks crooked words. I know the language of the saganash.
With prompt discretion, the woodsman dropped his hold and stepped back to the top of the island, suddenly grown doubtful of his own wisdom. Drawing himself just clear of the torrent, the bear crouched panting for several minutes, exhausted from the tremendous struggle; and the man, on the top of the rock, waited with his hand upon his knife-hilt to see what would come of his reckless act.
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