"Who finished it?"
"We all had a hand in it, I reckon."
"It's an all-fired shame. As soon as—where's Oonamoo?" he abruptly demanded, looking around him.
"Gone off in the woods for scalps."
"Didn't lose his?"
"No; although he come mighty nigh losing his head."
"It's an all-fired shame," resumed O'Hara. "As soon as he got inside the fort there with Lew, I streaked it for the settlement to get the boys. I told you to hurry, but after you got to the clearin', I wanted you to wait so that I could jine in the fun, and pitch in promiscuously. Why didn't you do it?"
"Matters were mixed up a little too much to allow us to wait," replied Lewis Dernor.
"S'pose they was, but I'm mad and want to lick somebody. Won't you fight, Lew?"
The latter merely smiled, and the party moved on, O'Hara being forced to bottle his wrath, as he could find no one upon whom to expend it. Occasionally, however, he and the brothers Smith had a war of words, but it amounted to nothing, being attended by no real ill-feeling upon either side.