Down he
tumbles, and I runs to 'im and finds my same old scalp a hangin'
to his belt. Well, I lifted off his hair with my knife, and untied
mine from the belt, and then I had both scalps, he! he! he! You
ask Simon Kenton when ye see 'im. He was along at the same time,
and they made 'im run the ga'ntlet and pretty nigh beat the life
out o' 'im. Ventrebleu!"
Beverley now recollected hearing Kenton tell the same grim story
by a camp-fire in the hills of Kentucky. Somehow it had caught a
new spirit in the French rendering, which linked it with the old
tales of adventure that he had read in his boyhood, and it
suddenly endeared Oncle Jazon to him. The rough old scrap of a man
and the powerful youth chatted together until sundown, smoking
their pipes, each feeling for what was best in the other, half
aware that in the future they would be tested together in the fire
of wild adventure. Every man is more or less a prophet at certain
points in his life.
Twilight and moonlight were blending softly when Beverley, on his
way back to the fort, departing from a direct course, went along
the river's side southward to have a few moments of reflective
strolling within reach of the water's pleasant murmur and the
town's indefinite evening stir. Rich sweetness, the gift of early
autumn, was on the air blowing softly out of a lilac west and
singing in the willow fringe that hung here and there over the
bank.
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