“If you’d stop killing long enough to question some of the Shawnees you might learn the truth.”
He shook his head slowly, and said:
“I stopped—just afore the killin’ at Baker’s Bottom. Kept my Injun alive all night. But he wouldn’t tell.”
I shuddered at the cold-bloodedness of him.
“You tortured him and perhaps he knew nothing to tell,” I said.
“If he didn’t know nothin’ it was hard luck for him,” he quietly agreed. “But I was sartain from things he had boasted that he was at the Knob that day. What you goin’ to do with this varmint?”
And he nodded toward the dead voyager.
“My business won’t allow me to take the time necessary to dig a grave where his friends can’t find him or wild animals dig him out. We’ll set him afloat again and hope he’ll journey far down the river before his friends find him. He was friendly to us——”
“Friendly——” interrupted the boy. “So was Cornstalk friendly!”
I removed the journey-cake from the grinning mouth and placed the rigid figure in the bottom of the canoe. Before I could push the craft into the current young Cousin grunted with satisfaction and pointed to two bullet-holes, close together, just back of the ear.