I mastered that feeling; and, friend Cap, what is
almost as good, I mastered my rival in as fair a shooting-match as was
ever witnessed in a garrison; he with his piece, and I with Killdeer,
and before the General in person too!" Here Pathfinder stopped to laugh,
his triumph still glittering in his eyes and glowing on his sunburnt and
browned cheek. "Well, the next conflict with the devil was the hardest
of them all; and that was when I came suddenly upon a camp of six
Mingos asleep in the woods, with their guns and horns piled in away that
enabled me to get possession of them without waking a miscreant of them
all. What an opportunity that would have been for the Sarpent, who would
have despatched them, one after another, with his knife, and had their
six scalps at his girdle, in about the time it takes me to tell you the
story. Oh, he's a valiant warrior, that Chingachgook, and as honest as
he's brave, and as good as he's honest!"

"And what may _you_ have done in this matter, Master Pathfinder?"
demanded Cap, who began to be interested in the result; "it seems to me
you had made either a very lucky, or a very unlucky landfall."

"'Twas lucky, and 'twas unlucky, if you can understand that. 'Twas
unlucky, for it proved a desperate trial; and yet 'twas lucky, all
things considered, in the ind. I did not touch a hair of their heads,
for a white man has no nat'ral gifts to take scalps; nor did I even make
sure of one of their rifles. I distrusted myself, knowing that a Mingo
is no favorite in my own eyes."

"As for the scalps, I think you were right enough, my worthy friend; but
as for the armament and the stores, they would have been condemned by
any prize-court in Christendom."

"That they would, that they would; but then the Mingos would have gone
clear, seeing that a white man can no more attack an unarmed than a
sleeping inimy. No, no, I did myself, and my color, and my religion
too, greater justice. I waited till their nap was over, and they well
on their war-path again; and, by ambushing them here and flanking
them there, I peppered the blackguards intrinsically like" (Pathfinder
occasionally caught a fine word from his associates, and used it a
little vaguely), "that only one ever got back to his village, and he
came into his wigwam limping. Luckily, as it turned out, the great
Delaware had only halted to jerk some venison, and was following on my
trail; and when he got up he had five of the scoundrels' scalps