When they were out of hearing, I touched Anderson on the shoulder.
“Come,” said I, “now is our time.”
“That was neat, very,” he muttered, with a quiet little chuckle, rising and throwing off the underbrush like an ox climbing out of his August wallow.
“Straight ahead now for the creek,” I whispered, crossing the brook; but a sound from behind made me turn. There stood a huge savage, much astonished at the apparition of us.
His astonishment was our salvation. It delayed his signal yell. As his breath drew in for it and I sprang with my sword, the Englishman was upon him naked-handed. He forgot his stick; which indeed was well, for his two hands at the redskin’s throat best settled the matter of the signal. For a Quaker, whom I have heard to be peaceful folk, Anderson seemed to me a good deal in earnest. Big and supple though the savage was, he was choked in half a minute and his head knocked against a tree. Anderson let him drop, a limp carcass, upon the underbrush, and stood over him panting and clenching his fingers, ready to try a new hold.
I examined the painted mass.
“Not dead, quite!” said I. “But he’s as good as dead for an hour, I should say. I think perhaps we need not finish him.”
“Better finish him, and make sure,” urged Anderson, to my open astonishment. “He may stir up trouble for us later.”
But I was firm. I like, positively like, to kill my man in fair fight; but once down he’s safe from me, though he were the devil himself.
“No,” said I, “you shall not. Come on. If the poor rascal ever gets over that mauling, he’ll deserve to. That was neat, now. You are much wasted in Quakerdom, monsieur, when your English armies are needing good men.”