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Updated: June 26, 2025
He was so delighted at Kenton's luck that he broke forth giggling and thereby drew against his own ribs a considerable improvement of Long-Hair's pedal applications. "Ventrebleu!" whined the old man, when the Indian had gone away again. "Holy Mary! Jee-ru-sa-lem! They's nary bone o' me left 'at's not splintered as fine as toothpickers! S'pose yer satisfied now, ain't ye, Si Kenton?
She had been accustomed to stirring scenes and sudden changes of conditions; but this was the first time that she had ever joined actively in a public movement of importance. Then, too, Long-Hair's picturesque and rudely dramatic reappearance affected her imagination with an indescribable force.
Like three lions at bay, the white men met the shock, and lion-like they fought in the midst of seventeen stalwart and determined savages. "Don't kill them, take them alive; throw them down and hold them!" was Long-Hair's order loudly shouted in the tongue of his tribe. Both Kenton and Jazon understood every word and knew the significance of such a command from the leader.
Nor was Beverley without fame among Long-Hair's followers, who had listened to the story of his fighting qualities, brought to Vincennes by the two survivors of the scouting party so cleverly defeated by him. "The liver-colored cowards," said Kenton, "are afeared of us in a shootin'-match; they know that a lot of 'em would have to die if they should undertake an open fight with us.
Food, medicines and clothing were surreptitiously borne across the river; a bed of grass was kept fresh under Long-Hair's back; his wound was regularly dressed; and finally his weapons a tomahawk, a knife, a strong bow and a quiver of arrows which he had hidden on the night of his bold theft, were brought to him.
Every man at the river house recognized and resented the enormity of Long-Hair's crime and each was, for the moment, ready to be his judge and his executioner. He had broken at once every rule of frontier etiquette and every bond of sympathy. Nor was Long-Hair ignorant of the danger involved in his daring enterprise.
That is to say, a type of inhumanity raised to the last power; but under his hideous atrocity of nature lay the indestructible sense of gratitude so fixed and perfect that it did its work almost automatically. It must be said, and it may or may not be to the white man's shame, that Beverley did not respond with absolute promptness and sincerity to Long-Hair's generosity.
Beverley, greatly handicapped by the fact that the fresh scalp of a white man hung at Long-Hair's belt, had exhausted every possible argument to avert or mitigate the sentence promptly spoken by the court martial of which Colonel Clark was the ruling spirit. He had succeeded barely to the extent of turning the mode of execution from tomahawking to shooting.
Again the elbow of Long-Hair's hurt arm pushed him toward the expectant rows of Indians, who flourished their clubs and uttered impatient grunts. This time he did not fall; but in trying to run he limped stiffly at first, his legs but slowly and imperfectly regaining their strength and suppleness from the action. Just before reaching the lines, however, he stopped short.
He separated the latest acquisition from the rest of the wisp and added, with a heinous chuckle: "This'n's Long-Hair's!" And so it was. Beverley knocked the ashes from his pipe and rose to go. "Wen they kicks yer Oncle Jazon's ribs," the old man added, "they'd jes' as well lay down an' give up, for he's goin' to salervate 'em."
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