I moved slowly after. On coming up, I saw them
dragging the body of an Indian into the open ground: a naked savage,
like the other. He was dead, and they were preparing to scalp him.

"Come now, Barney!" cried one of the men in a joking manner, "the har's
your'n. Why don't ye off wid it, man?"

"It's moine, dev yez say?" asked Barney, appealing to the speaker.

"Sartinly; you killed him. It's your'n by right."

"An' it is raaly worth fifty dollars?"

"Good as wheat for that."

"Would yez be so frindly, thin, as to cut it aff for me?"

"Oh! sartinly, wid all the plizyer of life," replied the hunter,
imitating Barney's accent, at the same time severing the scalp, and
handing it to him.

Barney took the hideous trophy, and I fancy that he did not feel very
proud of it. Poor Celt! he may have been guilty of many a breach in the
laws of garrison discipline, but it was evident that this was his first
lesson in the letting of human blood.

The hunters now dismounted, and commenced trampling the thicket through
and through. The search was most minute, for there was still a mystery.
An extra bow--that is to say, a third--had been found, with its quiver
of arrows. Where was the owner? Could he have escaped from the thicket
while the men were engaged around the fallen buffaloes? He might,
though it was barely probable; but the hunters knew that these savages
run more like wild animals, like hares, than human beings, and he might
have escaped to the chapparal.

"If that Injun has got clar," said Garey, "we've no time to lose in
skinnin' them bufflers. Thar's plenty o' his tribe not twenty miles
from hyar, I calc'late."

"Look down among the willows there!" cried the voice of the chief;
"close down to the water."

There was a pool. It was turbid and trampled around the edges with
buffalo tracks. On one side it was deep. Here willows dropped over and
hung into the water. Several men pressed into this side, and commenced
sounding the bottom with their lances and the butts of their rifles.

Old Rube had come up among the rest, and was drawing the stopper of his
powder-horn with his teeth, apparently with the intention of reloading.
His small dark eyes were scintillating every way at once: above, around
him, and into the water.

A sudden thought seemed to enter his head. I saw him push back the
plug, grasp the Irishman, who was nearest him, by the arm, and mutter,
in a low and hurried voice, "Paddy! Barn