“If I war, I wish I may be shot,” said Ralph:  “it warn’t a mile back on the ridge, whar the Injuns snapped me; ’causa how, I jist bang’d away at a deer, and jist then up jumps the rascals on me, afo’ I had loaded old speechifier; and so they nabb’d me!  And so, sodger, h’yar’s the way of it all:  You see, d’you see, as soon as Tom Bruce comes to, so as to be able to hold the hoss himself—­”

“What,” said Roland, “was he not mortally wounded?”

“He ar’n’t much hurt to speak on, for all of his looking so much like coffin-meat at the first jump:  it war a kind of narvousness come over him that men feels when they gets the thwack of a bullet among the narves.  And so, you see, d’you see, says I, ’Tom Bruce, do you stick to the critter, and he’ll holp you out of the skrimmage;’ and, says I, ’I’ll take the back-track, and foller atter madam.’  And, says he, says he—­But, ’tarnal death to me, let’s scalp these h’yar dead villians, and do the talking atter!  Did you see the licking I gin this here feller?  It war a reggular fair knock-down-and-drag-out, and I licked him!  Thar’s all sorts of ways of killing Injuns; but, I reckon, I’m the only gentleman in all Kentuck as ever took a scalp in the way of natur’!  Hurrah for Kentuck! and hurrah for Ralph Stackpole, for he ar’ a screamer!”

The violation of the dead bodies was a mode of crowning their victory which Roland would have gladly dispensed with; but such forbearance, opposed to all border ideas of manly spirit and propriety, found no advocate in the captain of horse-thieves, and none, we are sorry to say, even in the conscientious Nathan; who, having bathed his peaceful sword too deep in blood to boggle longer at trifles, seemed mightily inclined to try his own hand at the exercise.  But this addition to the catalogue of his backslidings was spared him, Roaring Ralph falling to work with an energy of spirit and rapidity of execution, which showed he needed no assistance, and left no room for competition.—­Such is the practice of the border, and such it has been ever since the mortal feud, never destined to be really ended but with the annihilation, or civilisation, of the American race, first began between the savage and the white intruder.  It was, and is, essentially a measure of retaliation, compelled, if not justified, by the ferocious example of the red man.  Brutality ever begets brutality; and magnanimity of arms can be only exercised in the case of a magnanimous foe.  With such, the wildest and fiercest rover of the frontier becomes a generous and even humane enemy.

The Virginian was yet young in the war of the wilderness:  and turning in disgust from a scene he could not prevent, he made his way to the fire, where the haunch of venison, sending forth a savoury steam through the whole valley, was yet roasting on the rude Indian spit,—­a spectacle which (we record it with shame) quite banished from his mind not only all thoughts of Ralph’s barbarism, but even the sublime military ardour awakened