Look at him--look at
that scalp! I'd have him killed if I dropped dead for it the next
instant."
Beverley shuddered. The argument was horribly convincing, and yet,
somehow, the desire to save Long-Hair overbore everything else in
his mind. He could not cease his efforts; it seemed to him as if
he were pleading for Alice herself. Captain Farnsworth, strange to
say, was the only man in the fort who leaned to Beverley's side;
but he was reticent, doubtless feeling that his position as a
British prisoner gave him no right to speak, especially when every
lip around him was muttering something about "infamous scalp-
buyers and Indian partisans," with whom he was prominently counted
by the speakers.
As Clark had said, the die was cast. Long-Hair, bound to a stake,
the scalp still dangling at his side, grimly faced his
executioners, who were eager to fire. He appeared to be proud of
the fact that he was going to be killed.
"One thing I can say of him," Helm remarked to Beverley; "he's the
grandest specimen of the animal--I might say the brute--man that
I ever saw, red, white or black. Just look at his body and limbs!
Those muscles are perfectly marvelous."
"He saved my life, and I must stand here and see him murdered,"
the young man replied with intense bitterness. It was all that he
could think, all that he could say.
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