“Hark, you, Jack,—­Atkinson,—­Doe,—­Shanogenaw,—­Rattlesnake,—­or whatever you may be pleased to call yourself,” he cried, striking the muser on the shoulder, “are you mad, drunk, or asleep?  Get up, man, and tell me, since you will tell me nothing else, what the devil you are dreaming about?”

“Why, curse it,” said the other, starting up somewhat in anger, but draining, before he spoke, a deep draught from an earthen pitcher that stood on the table,—­“I was thinking, if you must know, about the youngster, and the dog’s death we have driven him to—­Christian work for Christian men, eh?”

“The fate of war!” exclaimed the renegade’s companion, with great composure; “we have won the battle, boy;—­the defeated must bear the consequences.”

“Ondoubtedly,” said Doe,—­“up to the rack, fodder or no fodder:  that’s the word; there’s no ’scaping them consequences; they must be taken as they come,—­gantelope, fire-roasting, and all.  But, I say, Dick—­saving your pardon for being familiar,” he added, “there’s the small matter to be thought on in the case,—­and that is, it was not Injuns, but rale right-down Christian men that brought the younker to the tug.  It’s a bad business for white men, and it makes me feel oncomfortable.”

“Pooh,” said the other, with an air of contemptuous commiseration, “you are growing sentimental.  This comes of listening to that confounded whimpering Telie.”

“No words agin the gal!” cried Doe, sternly; “you may say what you like of me, for I’m a rascal that desarves it; but I’ll stand no barking agin the gal.”

“Why, she’s a good girl and a pretty girl,—­too good and too pretty to have so crusty a father,—­and I have nothing against her, but her taking on so about the younker, and so playing the devil with the wits and good-looks of my own bargain.”

“A dear bargain she is like to prove to all of us,” said Doe, drowning his anger, or remorse, in another draught from the pitcher.  “She has cost us eleven men already:  it is well the bulk of the whelps was Wabash and Maumee dogs, or you would have seen her killed and scalped, for all of your guns and whisky,—­you would, there’s no two ways about it.  Howsomever, four of ’em was dogs of our own, and two of them was picked off by the Jibbenainosay.  I tell you what, Dick, I’m not the man to skear at a raw-head-and-bloody-bones; but I do think the coming of this here cursed Jibbenainosay among us, jist as we was nabbing the girl and sodger, was as much as to say there was no good could come of it; and so the Injuns thought too—­you saw how hard it was to bring ’em up to the scratch, when they found he had been knifing a feller right among ’em!  I do believe the crittur’s Old Nick himself!”

“So don’t I,” said the other; “for it is quite unnatural to suppose the devil would ever take part against his own children.”

“Perhaps,” said Doe, “you don’t believe in the crittur?”

“Good Jack, honest Jack,” replied his companion, “I am no such ass.”