Jake was sitting on a fallen tree, leaning forward with his elbows on his knees, and his chin in his hands, looking into the glowing embers, and apparently only half listening to the guttural conversation going on among the Indians about him.
He had spent so much time with the Seneca branch of the Iroquois, that he understood their tongue quite well. But, as he slowly puffed at his short clay pipe, his thoughts were far away.
Most likely he was recalling the incidents of the day, that were a source of mixed pleasure and pain to him.
"The overthrow of the rebels was complete," he muttered, his face lighting up with passion. "It'll be a good many years before Wyoming will get over this, and I've got even with a lot of them that hain't used me well. There's Parker, who called me a lazy loafer two years ago, because I wouldn't pay him a little money I had borrowed. Well, I settled up with him to-day, and he'll never call anybody else such a disrespectful name agin.
"Then there's Sam Williams, that I used to go out hunting with, and who was considered a pretty good chap by some folks. He used to lend me money, and never cared whether I paid him back or not; but he undertook to lecture me once on my dooty, and said, if I didn't go to work, I never would be anybody, I've got too much spirit to stand any such insults as that, and, when I come on him to-day, I settled with him."
Dreadful thoughts were these to find such expression, and the renegade was silent a minute, until it seemed as if Satan got still a stronger hold upon him.
"But there's one man close by that I would give a thousand prisoners for," he added, puffing spitefully at his pipe, "and it looks as if I'm going to have him. Providence does favor the truly good," added the miscreant. "I've got the whole party penned up in a hole, and if they get away from us it will be the biggest thing of the kind ever done in these parts.
"I want to get hold of that Gimp, that stole my gun and gave me such a kicking that I feel six inches taller than ever before, and have to be mighty careful about settin' down. He's a sort of giant, but if we lay hands on him there'll be mighty little of him left when we get through.
"There's Maggie Brainerd, the prettiest gal that ever left Connecticut and settled in the Wyoming Valley. I knowed her when she was a little one, and then she was so purty that people used to stop her in the road, to kiss and admire her.
"She always acted kind toward me, and I used to think she was kinder tender and loving, and I b'leve now I might have got her, if that half-brother of hers, Fred Godfrey, hadn't come along and set her agin me."