"Did I? No, gentlemen, I took no tree just then, but I took to my heels
like sixty, and it was just as much as my old dog could do to keep up
with me. I run until the whoops of my red-skins grew fainter and fainter
behind me, and, clean out of wind, I ventured to look behind me, and
there came one single red whelp, puffing and blowing, not three hundred
yards in my rear. He had got on to a piece of bottom where the trees
were small and scarce. 'Now,' thinks I, 'old fellow, I'll have you.' So
I trotted off at a pace sufficient to let my follower gain on me, and
when he had got just about near enough I wheeled and fired, and down I
brought him, dead as a door-nail, at a hundred and twenty yards!"

"Then you skelp'd (scalped) him immediately?" said the backwoodsman.

"Very clear of it, gentlemen; for by the time I got my rifle loaded,
here came the other two red-skins, shouting and whooping close on me,
and away I broke again like a quarter-horse. I was now about five miles
from the settlement, and it was getting toward sunset. I ran till my
wind began to be pretty short, when I took a look back, and there they
came, snorting like mad buffaloes, one about two or three hundred yards
ahead of the other: so I acted possum again until the foremost Injin got
pretty well up, and I wheeled and fired at the very moment he was
'drawing a bead' on me: he fell head over stomach into the dirt, and up
came the last one!"

"So you laid for him, and--" gasped several.

"No," continued the "member," "I didn't lay for him, I hadn't time to
load, so I laid my _legs_ to ground and started again. I heard every
bound he made after me. I ran and ran until the fire flew out of my