ls."

"What do you mean by stockade walls?" asks one of the listeners.

"Why, walls made out of logs standing upright. It was only a hut, you
see; no laths, nor plaster, nor any such nonsense. Well, Joe knew by
what he heard that old man Brown was inside, firing from the door at the
Indians; didn't know where the other two were,--killed, may be,--and so
Joe gets up on his knees and looks through a crevice of the stockade
wall, and sees the chief crawling stealthily around the hut to get in at
the only window and attack the old man! A loaded gun--double barrel--was
hanging on the wall right near Joe. What did he do but take it, put the
muzzle through the chink, and let go at the fellow; discharged both
barrels clean at him. 'You will, will you?' he yelled out, as the Indian
fell; and I declare, if the other Indians weren't so scared and
mystified by the sudden voice, and the chief killed, out of the very
walls, as it seemed to them, that they turned and scampered. Joe rushed
out to old man Brown, and there he was, with his two partners, at the
door, not one of the three scratched, and the chief was lying there by
the stockade wall, just as he fell.

"Joe didn't care to go near him, for by this time he began to feel
rather weak in the joints. But the most wonderful part of all is to come
yet. That Indian chief was only wounded, after all. They thought he was
killed; and while the three men and Joe were in the hut, planning what
they should do next,--for they were sure the redskins would come back in
greater force to get the body of their chief,--I declare if that old
Indian didn't up and go about his business. Brown and Joe and all of
them searched the forest well, that day and the next, but they never
found him. Joe had made his mark though, and he was in more than one
scrimmage with the Indians after that."

"It's a shame to kill Indians!" at last exclaims one of Ben's
awe-stricken listeners. "My father says they've been imposed upon and
abused by the white folks. He says we ought to teach them instead of
killing them."

"That's so," says another of the trio, nodding emphatically. "My father
says so too."

"Oh, does he?" returns Ben Buster, in mild wrath, "who doesn't? But this
was a fair fight. What are you going to do when they're doin' the
killing, eh? Open your book and hear them a spelling lesson? Guess not.
Ask 'em questions in 'rithmetic when they're helping themselves to your
scalp? Oh, of course."

All