XIV
ALONG THE GREAT TRAILI stirred to wakefulness when the first pink light of morning was in the eastern skies. A pungent whiff of wood-smoke filled my nostrils, and I turned over to watch Corlaer frying bacon and maize cakes—only to lose my appetite at the spectacle of Ta-wan-ne-ars stretching scalps on little hoops of withes to dry by the fire.
He went about it in a very business-like way, yet he indulged in an amiable grin over my look of interested aversion.
"What does my brother find that is so horrible in a scalp?" he inquired, extending a particularly gory one for my inspection. "'Tis no more than the crown of a man's head—and that man an enemy."
"I like not the idea of mutilating a body," I retorted. "If you have slain a man, 'tis sufficient. Why, you might as well cut off hi
