“No, father,” he said to Winnebeg, “I cannot do it. I cannot cut that arm open—the very thought makes me sick here”—and he pointed to his heart. “I cannot do it.”
Although this involuntary homage to the rich, full, and moulded beauty of a limb which was but a sample of the perfection of the whole person, and which in a woman seldom attains its fullest harmony of proportion before the mature age which Mrs. Headley had attained, was not exactly that of the porter who, at an earlier period, solicited the famous Duchess of Gordon to permit him to light his pipe at her ladyship's brilliant eyes, it was certainly conceived in much of a similar spirit, and Mrs. Headley could scarce herself suppress a smile when she remarked the effect upon the Indian.
And yet this man had been one of the foremost in the attack, and at his waist, even then, dangled more scalps than had been taken by any other warrior during the day.
“Well,” said Mrs. Headley, on the Pottowatomie continuing resolute in his refusal to touch the wound—“somebody must do this act of charity, for the ball gives me much pain. Mr. McKenzie,” she added, with that sort of smile that may be attributed to a person seeking to assume an air of unconcern even when most disheartened—“you have long been accustomed to use the dissecting knife on the buffalo and the bear: do you not think that you could find the courage necessary for the occasion!”
“Most decidedly; I will make the attempt if you desire it,” returned the trader; “but I fear that my surgical apparatus is Very limited indeed. Von Voltenberg having been stripped, all his instruments have, doubtless, been plundered, so it is no use to look for aid there; and the only thing with which I can try my skill is a common but very sharp penknife.”
“Try whatever you please,” said Mrs. Headley; “only relieve me of this suffering; that which you may inflict cannot possibly be worse”—and unflinchingly extending her arm, she waited for him to begin.
For the first time in his life Mr. McKenzie felt nervous. There was a greater amount of courage required to cut into the delicate flesh, of a woman than even to kill a bear or a buffalo; but as he had promised, he summoned up his resolution and skill to the task.
The Pottowatomie, bedizened with scalps as he was, had remained to witness the cutting out of the ball; and nothing could surpass the expression of surprise that pervaded his features, as he keenly watched the almost immovability of Mrs. Headley from the moment that the blade of the penknife, dexterously enough handled, entered into the flesh and effected the incision necessary to enable the ball to be removed. When the operation was finished, and the ball produced, he started suddenly to his feet, and uttered a sharp exclamation, denoting approbation of her wonderful courage. He asked, as a favor, to retain the ball as a testimony of her heroism; when Mrs. Headley presented it to him with her own hand. And with this he departed, exulting as though he had taken a new scalp.
This incident, perhaps unimportant in itself, was not without some moment in the results to which it led. On the day following the fort was filled with Indians and their squaws not only endeavoring to assert their claims to individual prisoners, but infuriated at the losses, seeking a victim to the manes of their deceased relatives. Among others was an aged squaw, who had lost a favorite son in the battle, and who, having been told by a warrior that he had distinctly seen him killed by a shot from Mrs. Headley's rifle, repaired to the house of Mr. McKenzie, where she knew she then was, bent upon exciting the general sympathy of the warriors in her favor, and obtaining their assent that she should revenge his death upon the “white squaw.”
It happened, however, that the noble woman, feeling great relief from the abstraction of the ball from her left arm the preceding evening, and feeling secure in the pledge entered into by Winnebeg, and confirmed in a measure by his people, had fearlessly mounted her horse, which had been recovered for her, and ridden alone to the baggage wagons for the purpose of procuring some article which, at the moment, she much required. As she was returning, and when near the entrance to the fort, she was met by the vixen, furious with rage and disappointment at not having found her.