During the first years, the adventurers and Redskins, drawn together by the feeling of a common danger, had several times banded to put an end to this ferocious enemy, bind him, and inflict the law of retaliation on him; but this man seemed to be protected by a charm, which enabled him to escape all the snares laid for him, and circumvent all the ambuscades formed on his road, It was impossible to catch him; his movements were so rapid and unexpected, that he often appeared at considerable distances from the spot where he was awaited, and where he had been seen shortly before. According to the Indians and adventurers, he was invulnerable; bullets and arrows rebounded from his chest; and soon, through the continual good fortune that accompanied all his enterprises, this man became a subject of universal terror on the prairie; his enemies, convinced that all they might attempt against him would prove useless, gave up a struggle which they regarded as waged against a superior power. The strangest legends were current about him; every one feared him as a maleficent spirit; the Indians named him Kiein-Stomann, or the White Scalper, and the Adventurers designated him among themselves by the epithet of Pitiless.
These two names, as we see, were justly given to this man, with whom murder and carnage seemed the supreme enjoyment, such pleasure did he find in feeling his victims quivering beneath his blood-red hand, and tearing the heart out of their bosom; hence his mere name, uttered in a whisper, filled the bravest with horror.
But who was this man? Whence did he come? What fearful catastrophe had cast him into the fearful mode of life he led?
No one could answer these questions. This individual was a horrifying enigma, which no person could solve.
Was he one of those monstrous organizations, which, beneath the envelope of man, contain a tiger's heart?
Or, else, a soul ulcerated by a frightful misfortune, all whose faculties are directed to one object, vengeance?
Both these hypotheses were equally possible; perhaps both were true.
Still, as every medal has its reverse, and man is not perfect in either good or evil, this individual had at times gleams, not of pity, but perhaps of fatigue, when blood mounted to his gorge, choked him, and rendered him a little less cruel, a little less implacable, almost human, in a word. But these moments were brief, these attacks, as he called them himself, very rare; nature regained the upper hand almost at once, and he became only the more terrible, because he had been so near growing compassionate.
This was all known about this individual at the moment when we brought him on the stage in so singular a fashion. The assistance he had given the monk was so contrary to all his habits, that he must have been suffering at the moment from one of his best attacks, to have consented not only to give such eager attention to one of his fellows, but also to waste so much time in listening to his lamentations and entreaties.
To finish the information we have to give about this person, we will add that no one knew whether he had a permanent abode; he was not known to have any woman to love, or any follower; he had ever been seen alone; and during the ten years he had roamed the desert in every direction, his countenance had undergone no change; he had ever the same appearance of old age and strength, the same long and white beard, and the same wrinkled face.