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Updated: July 3, 2025
In removing Beverley's clothes Long-Hair found Alice's locket hanging over the young man's heart. He tore it rudely off and grunted, glaring viciously, first at it, then at Beverley. He seemed to be mightily wrought upon. "White man damn thief," he growled deep in his throat; "stole from little girl!" He put the locket in his pouch and resumed his stupidly indifferent expression.
Most of the warriors, including all of the young bucks, demanded a torture entertainment as compensation for their exertions and the unexpected loss of their own prisoners; for it had been agreed that Beverley belonged exclusively to Long-Hair, who objected to anything which might deprive him of the great reward offered by Hamilton for the prisoner if brought to him alive.
The shifty moon-glimmer and the yellow glow of the lamp showed Hamilton to what an extent his devilish cruelty hurt her, and somehow it chilled him as if by reflection; but he could not forego another thrust. "He deserved hanging, and would have got it had he been brought to me alive. So after all, you should be satisfied. He escaped my vengeance and Long-Hair got his pay.
Most of the way led over flat prairies covered with water, and they therefore left no track by which they could be followed. Late in the forenoon Long-Hair killed a deer at the edge of a wood. Here they made a fire and cooked a supply which would last them for a day or two, and then on they went again. But we cannot follow them step by step.
Long-Hair was alive, even as a fat cat, perhaps; but not drunk, for in trying to swim with the rotund little dame jeanne under his arm he lost hold of it and it went to the bottom of the Wabash, where it may be lying at this moment patiently waiting for some one to fish it out of its bed deep in the sand and mud, and break the ancient wax from its neck!
As soon as he saw Alice he frowned and began to shake his head; but she only laughed, and imitating his hypocritical scowl, yet fringing it with a twinkle of merry lines and dimples, pointed a taper finger at him and exclaimed: "You bad, bad, man! why did you pretend to me that Lieutenant Beverley was dead? What sinister ecclesiastical motive prompted you to describe how Long-Hair scalped him?
I did not shoot at Long-Hair at all," he said, speaking slowly, "because the scoundrel was unarmed. He didn't have on even a knife, and he was havin' enough to do dodgin' the bullets that the rest of 'em were plumpin' at 'im without any compliments from me to bother 'im more."
Long-Hair unbound Beverley and stripped his clothes from his body down to the waist. Then the lines formed, the Indians in each row standing about as far apart as the width of the space in which the prisoner was to run. This arrangement gave them free use of their sticks and plenty of room for full swing of their lithe bodies.
Long-Hair took great pains, however, to dry Beverley's clothes and see that he had warm wraps and plenty to eat. Hamilton's large reward would not be forthcoming should the prisoner die, Beverley was good property, well worth careful attention. To be sure his scalp, in the worst event, would command a sufficient honorarium, but not the greatest.
But Long-Hair was barely gone over the horizon from the fort, as free and as villainous a savage as ever trod the earth, when a discovery made by Oncle Jazon caused Clark to hate himself for what he had done. The old scout picked up the scalp, which Long-Hair had flung at Hamilton, and examined it with odious curiosity.
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