their camp and took
away all the camp utensils and five hundred hides. The whites found the
broad track they made in coming in, but could not find where they had
gone out, each wily redskin then covering his own trail, and the whole
number apparently breaking up into several parties.

Sometimes the Indians not only plundered the hunting camps but killed
the hunters as well, and the hunters retaliated in kind. Often the white
men and red fought one another whenever they met, and displayed in their
conflicts all the cunning and merciless ferocity that made forest
warfare so dreadful. Terrible deeds of prowess were done by the mighty
men on either side. It was a war of stealth and cruelty, and ceaseless,
sleepless watchfulness. The contestants had sinewy frames and iron
wills, keen eyes and steady hands, hearts as bold as they were ruthless.
Their moccasined feet made no sound as they stole softly on the camp of
a sleeping enemy or crept to ambush him while he himself still-hunted or
waylaid the deer. A favorite stratagem was to imitate the call of game,
especially the gobble of the wild turkey, and thus to lure the would-be
hunter to his fate. If the deceit was guessed at, the caller was himself
stalked. The men grew wonderfully expert in detecting imitation. One old
hunter, Castleman by name, was in after years fond of describing how an
Indian nearly lured him to his death. It was in the dusk of the evening,
when he heard the cries of two great wood owls near him. Listening
attentively, he became convinced that all was not right. "The woo-woo
call and the woo-woo answer were not well timed and toned, and the
babel-chatter was a failure. More than this, they seemed to be on the
ground." Creeping cautiously up, and peering through the brush, he saw
something the height of a stump between two forked trees. It did not
look natural; he aimed, pulled trigger, and killed an Indian.

Each party of Indians or whites was ever on the watch to guard against
danger or to get the chance of taking vengeance for former wrongs. The
dark woods saw a myriad lonely fights where red warrior or white hunter
fell and no friend of the fallen ever knew his fate, where his sole
memorial was the scalp that hung in the smoky cabin or squalid wigwam of
the victor.

The rude and fragmentary annals of the frontier are filled with the
deeds of men, of whom Mansker can be taken as a type. He was a wonderful
marksman and woodsman, and was afterwards ma