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Seeing that the fallen figure remained quite motionless he stepped forward, drawing his knife as he came. He was a young brave, quick and eager in his movements, and came nimbly up the path to gain his coveted trophy, the paleface's scalp. Suddenly Joe sat up, raised his rifle quickly as thought, and fired point-blank at the Indian. But he missed.
Poor dog, Joe thought, he had been beaten until he was afraid to wag his tail at his old master. Joe's resentment blazed into fury, but he kept cool outwardly. Right before a crowd of Indians waiting for the council to begin, Joe planted himself in front of the Shawnee, barring his way. "Silvertip has the paleface's horse and dog," said Joe, in a loud voice.
And now when she looked into the eyes of this young giant, whose fate had rested on her all unwitting words, she resolved to save him. She had been a shy, shrinking creature, fearing to lift her eyes to a paleface's, but now they were raised clear and steadfast. As she stepped toward the captive and took his hand, her whole person radiated with conscious pride in her power.
The superstitious savages awaited fearfully another rifle shot; another lightning stroke, another visitation from the paleface's God. But Jim Girty, with a cunning born of his terrible fear, had recognized the ring of that rifle. He had felt the zip of a bullet which could just as readily have found his brain as Half King's.
In the days of long ago, when Wingenund's forefathers heard not the paleface's ax, they lived in love and happiness such as the young White Father dreams may come again. They waged no wars. A white dove sat in every wigwam. The lands were theirs and they were rich. The paleface came with his leaden death, his burning firewater, his ringing ax, and the glory of the redmen faded forever.
Tharupon, abandonin' menoos an' wonders of the table, he roominates a moment an' declar's that the steamboat now that pie is exclooded ought to get the nomination. "'The choo-choo boat, observes this intelligent savage, 'is the paleface's big medicine. "'You'll have a list of marvels, I says, 'to avalanche upon the people when you cuts the trail of your ancestral tribe ag'in?
He was taught to hide in the long grass like a snake, to shoot from coverts, to worm his way stealthily through the dense woods and to ambush the paleface's trail. Horrible cruelties, such as torturing white prisoners and burning them at the stake were never heard of before the war made upon the Indians by the whites. Comparatively little is known of the real character of the Indian of that time.
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