The young Indian rose to his feet, and going directly up to his little preserver, shook him with gentle earnestness by the hand, evincing in the simple act and the look attending it the utmost thankfulness of heart, mixed with respect and admiration. Then he went to the log, against which still leaned a loaded rifle, and was picking it up when Burl, suspecting treachery, sprung forward to frustrate the hostile design. But too quick for him, the young savage gathering up the weapon and wielding it in his right-hand, discharged it into the air. Then, with grave composure, as though he had not noticed the movement of alarm, he surrendered the empty rifle to his victor, in token of his entire submission; though, as he did so, he pointed to Bushie, his captive but the hour before, thus signifying that he wished to be regarded as the prisoner of his little preserver. Without seeming to know what he was doing, Burl took the rifle and, resting it on the ground, stood motionless for many moments, staring fixedly at the young Indian with a look of unqualified astonishment and unmitigated bewilderment, as if his senses had told him something that had given the lie to his leading and abiding conviction--that eternal truth embodied in the words, "Dar's reason in all things." Burlman Rennuls was in a fog; the Fighting Nigger was in a fog; in a fog was the entire man of Big Black Burl. Chapter XII. HOW BIG BLACK BURL AND GRUMBO FIGURED AFTER THE FIGHT. Now, it had always been the Fighting Nigger's belief--creed, so to speak--that Indians, though possessed (by some strange chance or mischance) of the power of speech, with a few other faculties in common with colored people and the rest of mankind, had, nevertheless, neither souls nor human feelings. According to his view, they were a sort of featherless biped-beast--an almost hairless orang-outang, with short arms and long legs, having an unquenchable thirst for human blood; whom, therefore, it was the duty of every Christian body--black, yellow, and white--to shoot down and scalp wherever they were to be found on top of the earth. But the creed he had so long adhered to, fought for, and gloried in had now on a sudden been knocked, picked, and crumpled up into a cocked hat by this young barbarian, whose conduct in the nobleness of soul it had displayed was utterly unlike any thing he had ever witnessed, heard of, or dreamed of, in this race. Big Black Burl took off his bear-skin war-cap, for the first time since quitting home, and with the back of his sweaty hand wiped his sweaty brow, put the cap on again, and from under its shaggy shadow took another look at the fog.