“It’s a sad tale,” said the settler gruffly and with a darkening brow, “and brings bitter thoughts with it; but as the liquor has cheered me up a bit, I don’t much mind if I do tell you how I skivered the varmint.  Indeed,” he pursued savagely, “that always gives me a pleasure to think of, for I owed them a desperate grudge—­the bloody red skins and imps of hell.  I was on my way to Detroit, to see the spot once more where my poor boy Phil lay rottin’, and one dark night (for I only ventured to move at night,) I came slick upon two Ingins as was lying fast asleep before their fire in a deep ravine.  The one nearest to me had his face unkivered, and I knew the varmint for the tall dark Delaweer chief as made one of the party after poor Phil and me, a sight that made me thirst for the blood of the heathens as a child for mother’s milk.  Well, how do you suppose I managed them.  I calculate you’d never guess.  Why, I stole as quiet as a fox until I got jist atween them, and then holdin’ a cocked pistol to each breast, I called out in a thunderin’ voice that made the woods ring agin Kit-chimocomon, which you know, as you’ve been in the wars, signifies long knife or Yankee.  You’d a laugh’d fit to split your sides I guess, to see the stupid stare of the devils, as startin’ out of their sleep, they saw a pistol within three inches of each of’em.  ‘Ugh,’ says they, as if they did’nt know well whether to take it as a joke or not.  ’Yes, ‘ugh’ and be damn’d to you,’ say’s I:  you may go and ‘ugh’ in hell next—­and with that snap went the triggers, and into their curst carcasses went the balls.  The one I killed outright but t’other the Delaweer chief, was by a sudden shift only slightly wounded, and he sprung on his feet and out with his knife.  But I had a knife too, and all a disappinted father’s rage to boot, so at it we’ went closin’ and strikin’ with our knives like two fierce fiends of the forest.  It was noble sport sure-Ly.  At last the Delaweer fell over the bleedin’ body of his warrior and I top of him.  As he fell the knife dropt from his hand and he could’nt reach it no how, while I still gripped mine fast.  ‘Ugh,’ he muttered agin, as if askin’ to know what I meant to do next.  ‘Ugh,’ and be damn’d to you once more, say’s I—­and the pint of my long knife was soon buried in his black heart.  Then, when I see them both dead I eat my own meal at their fire, for I was tarnation hungry, and while I was eatin’ a thought came across me that it would be good fun to make smoked meat of the varmint, so when I had tucked it in purty considerably, what with hominy and dried bear’s meat, moistened with a little Wabash I found in the Delaweer chief’s canteen, I set to and regularly quartered them.  The trunks I left behind, but the limbs I packed up in the blankets that had been used to kiver them, I reckon; and with them slung across my shoulders, like a saddle bag across a horse, I made tracks through the swamps and the prairies for this here hut, which