WO or three days after they had moved from their last halting-place, when they were sitting at the fire one evening, and Abe had been telling a yarn of adventure, he said, when he had finished:—
"About the closest thing as I know was that adventure that Dick thar had. Dick, take off that thar wig of yourn."
The hunter put his hand to his head and lifted at once his cap, made of skin, and the hair beneath it, showing, to Frank's astonishment, a head without a vestige of hair, and presenting the appearance of a strange scar, mottled with a deep purple, as if it was the result of a terrible burn.
"You see I have been scalped," the hunter said. "I don't suppose you noticed it—few people do. You see, I never takes off my fur cap night or day, so that no one can see as I wears a wig."
"There's nought to be ashamed of in it," Abe said, "for it is as honourable a scalp as ever a man got. Do you tell the story, Dick."
"You know it as well as I do," the hunter replied, "and I ain't good at talking."
"Well, I will tell you it then," Abe said, "seeing that I knows almost as much about it as Dick does. The affair occurred the very year after what I have been telling you about. Dick was attached as hunter and scout to Fort Charles, which was, at that time, one of the furthest west of all our stations. There was fifty infantry and thirty cavalry there, and little enough too, for it war just on the edge of the Dacota country. The Dacotas are a powerful tribe, and are one of the most restless, troublesome lots I knows. Several strong parties of our troops have been surprised and cut to pieces by them; and as to settlements, no one but a born fool would dream of settling within reach of them.
"I never could quite make out why we wanted to put a fort down so close to them, seeing as there warn't a settlement to protect within a hundred and fifty miles; but I suppose the wiseacres at Washington had some sort of an idea that the redskins would be afraid to make excursions to the settlements with this fort in their rear, just as if they couldn't make a sweep of five hundred miles if they took it into their heads, and come back into their country on the other side.
"Just at that time there was no trouble with them; the hatchet was buried, and they used to come into the fort and sell skins and furs to the traders there for tobacco and beads. After that affair I was telling ye of, Rube and me, we went back for a spell to the settlement, and then took a fancy to hunt on another line, and, after knocking about for a time, found ourselves at Fort Charles. That was where we met Dick for the first time.
"The Commander of the fort was a chap named White, a captain; he had with him his wife and daughter. A worse kind of man for the commander of a frontier station you could hardly find. He was not a bad soldier, and was well liked by his men, and I have no doubt if he had been fighting agin other white men he would have done well enough; but he never seemed to have an idee what Injin nature was like, and weren't never likely to learn.