t's nothing compared to what some of us old settlers have
seen and been through with, without even winking, as one may say. Within
the last few year, I've seen a brother and a son shot by the infernal
red-skins--have lost I don't know how many companions in the same
way--been shot at fifty times myself, and captured several; and yet you
see here I am, hale and hearty, and just as eager, with Betsey's
permission, to talk to the varmints now as I war ten year ago."

"But do you not weary of this fatiguing and dangerous mode of life?"
inquired the other.

"Weary, stranger? Lord bless ye! you're but a young hunter to ax such a
question as that. Weary, friend? Why I war born to it--nursed to it--had
a rifle for a plaything; and the first thing I can remember
particularly, war shooting a painter;[2] and it's become as nateral and
necessary as breathing; and when I get so I can't follow the one, I want
to quit the other. Weary on't, indeed! Why, thar's more real
satisfaction in sarcumventing and scalping one o' there red heathen,
than in all the amusement you could scare up in a thick-peopled,
peaceable settlement in a life time."

"By the way," said the other, "pray tell me how you chanced to be so
opportune in saving my life?"

"Why, you must know, I war just crossing through the wood back here
about a mile, on my way home from the Licks, when I came across the
trail of two Indians, whom I 'spected war arter no good; and as Betsey
war itching for something to do, I kind o' kept on the same way, and
happened round on the other side o' this ridge, just as the red varmints
fired. I saw you fall, but could'nt see them, on account o' the hill;
but as I knowed they'd be for showing themselves soon, I got Betsey into
a comfortable position, and waited as patiently as I could, until the
ugly face of that rascal yonder showed clar; when I told her to speak to
him, which she did in rale backwood's dialect, and he died a answering
her. I then hurried round on the skirt of the wood, loading Betsey as I
went; but finding the other varmint had got off, I hastened to you and
found you senseless: the rest you know."

By this time the two had reached nearly to the foot of the hill, and
within a hundred yards of the cabin. Here they were joined by a tall,
lank, lantern-jawed, awkward young man, some twenty years of age, with
small, dark eyes, a long, peaked nose, and flaxen hair that floated down
over his ungainly shoulders, like weeping