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Updated: July 3, 2025
Yet you take him prisoner and treat him with distinguished consideration. Hamilton offered a large sum for me taken alive, a smaller one for my scalp. Long-Hair saved me. You let Hamilton stand yonder in perfect safety while you shoot the Indian. Shame on you, Colonel Clark! shame on you, if you do it."
Something told him to do as Long-Hair ordered, so with scarcely a perceptible hesitation he scrambled down the bushy bank and slipped into the water, followed by Long-Hair, who seized him by one arm when he began to swim, and struck out with him into the boiling and tumbling current. Beverley had always thought himself a master swimmer, but Long-Hair showed him his mistake.
And a gallant sight they made as they rode gaily out; in their white robes, their long plaited hair flying, their best horses prancing under them and decorated with red streamers. Chief Grizzly Bear led. Chief Long-hair, now almost eighty years of age, was with another band. In this Chief Grizzly Bear band there rode a party of white beaver-hunters who were to spend the winter with the Crows.
Long-Hair himself, however, taunted him with accusations of unfaithfulness in carrying out some very inhuman contracts, and to add a terrible sting, volunteered the statement that poor Barlow's scalp had served his turn in the place of Beverley's. With conditions so hideous to contend against, Beverley, of course, had no possible means of succoring the condemned savage.
"Polecat! Little old greasy woman!" he snarled, "make good fire for warrior to dance by!" Kenton also received his full share of the kicks and verbal abuse, after which Long-Hair gave orders for fires to be built. Then he looked to his hurt arm and had the bone set and bandaged, never so much as wincing the while.
He'll never git my scalp, thet's sartin an' sure." Beverley and Kenton each likewise dropped an Indian; but the shots did not even check the rush. Long-Hair had planned to capture his prey, not kill it. Every savage had his orders to take the white men alive; Hamilton's larger reward depended on this.
A descendant of hers still treasures the locket, with its broken miniature and battered crest, which won Beverley's life from Long-Hair, the savage.
As Clark had said, the die was cast. Long-Hair, bound to a stake, the scalp still dangling at his side, grimly faced his executioners, who were eager to fire. He appeared to be proud of the fact that he was going to be killed. "One thing I can say of him," Helm remarked to Beverley; "he's the grandest specimen of the animal I might say the brute man that I ever saw, red, white or black.
No matter what deeds Long-Hair had committed that were evil beyond forgiveness, he had done for her the all-atoning thing. He had saved Beverley and sent him back to her. With a start and a chill of dread, she thought: "What if it is already too late!" But her nature could not hesitate. To feel the demand of an exigency was to act.
It was a long, cold struggle, and when at last they touched the sloping low bank on the other side, Long-Hair had fairly to lift his chilled and exhausted prisoner to the top. "Ugh, cold," he grunted, beginning to pound and rub Beverley's arms, legs and body. "Make warm, damn heap!" All this he did with his right hand, holding the tomahawk in his left.
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