“Hang to him, Fletcher!” said a voice.

“Great God!” cried Fletcher, “it’s Davy.  What are ye up to now?”

“Let me go!” I cried, as soon as I had got my wind.  As luck would have it, I had run into a pair of daredevil young Kentuckians who had more than once tasted the severity of Clark’s discipline,—­Fletcher Blount and Jim Willis.  They fairly shook out of me what had happened, and then dropped me with a war-whoop and started for the prairie, I after them, crying out to them to beware of the run.  A man must indeed be fleet of foot to have escaped these young ruffians, and so it proved.  When I reached the hollow there were the two of them fighting with a man in the water, the ice jangling as they shifted their feet.

“What’s yere name?” said Fletcher, cuffing and kicking his prisoner until he cried out for mercy.

“Maisonville,” said the man, whereupon Fletcher gave a war-whoop and kicked him again.

“That’s no way to use a prisoner,” said I, hotly.

“Hold your mouth, Davy,” said Fletcher, “you didn’t ketch him.”

“You wouldn’t have had him but for me,” I retorted.

Fletcher’s answer was an oath.  They put Maisonville between them, ran him through the town up to the firing line, and there, to my horror, they tied him to a post and used him for a shield, despite his heart-rending yells.  In mortal fear that the poor man would be shot down, I was running away to find some one who might have influence over them when I met a lieutenant.  He came up and ordered them angrily to unbind Maisonville and bring him before the Colonel.  Fletcher laughed, whipped out his hunting knife, and cut the thongs; but he and Willis had scarce got twenty paces from the officer before they seized poor Maisonville by the hair and made shift to scalp him.  This was merely backwoods play, had Maisonville but known it.  Persuaded, however, that his last hour was come, he made a desperate effort to clear himself, whereupon Fletcher cut off a piece of his skin by mistake.  Maisonville, making sure that he had been scalped, stood groaning and clapping his hand to his head, while the two young rascals drew back and stared at each other.

“What’s to do now?” said Willis.

“Take our medicine, I reckon,” answered Fletcher, grimly.  And they seized the tottering man between them, and marched him straightway to the fire where Clark stood.

They had seen the Colonel angry before, but now they were fairly withered under his wrath.  And he could have given them no greater punishment, for he took them from the firing line, and sent them back to wait among the reserves until the morning.

“Nom de Dieu!” said Maisonville, wrathfully, as he watched them go, “they should hang.”

“The stuff that brought them here through ice and flood is apt to boil over, Captain,” remarked the Colonel, dryly.

“If you please, sir,” said I, “they did not mean to cut him, but he wriggled.”