"Well, I'm glad you are acquainted with Kenton," said Beverley.
"Where did you and he come together?"
Oncle Jazon chuckled reminiscently and scratched the skinless,
cicatrized spot where his scalp had once flourished.
"Oh, several places," he answered. "Ye see thet hair a hangin'
there on the wall?" He pointed at a dry wisp dangling under a peg
in a log barely visible by the bad light. "Well, thet's my scalp,
he! he! he!" He snickered as if the fact were a most enjoyable
joke. "Simon Kenton can tell ye about thet little affair! The
Indians thought I was dead, and they took my hair; but I wasn't
dead; I was just a givin' 'em a 'possum act. When they was gone I
got up from where I was a layin' and trotted off. My head was sore
and ventrebleu! but I was mad, he! he! he!"
All this time he spoke in French, and the English but poorly
paraphrases his odd turns of expression. His grimaces and grunts
cannot even be hinted.
It was a long story, as Beverley received it, told scrappily, but
with certain rude art. In the end Oncle Jazon said with unctuous
self-satisfaction:
"Accidents will happen. I got my chance at that damned Indian who
skinned my head, and I jes took a bead on 'im with my old rifle. I
can't shoot much, never could, but I happened to hit 'im square in
the lef' eye, what I shot at, and it was a hundred yards.
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