Then I heard a sudden exclamation, and a voice calling out-- "Dead red-skin! Hurrah for Barney!" "Barney's bullet through him, by the holies!" cried another. "Hollo, old sky-blue! Come hyar and see what ye've done!" The rest of the hunters, along with the _ci-devant_ soldier, now rode forward to the copse. I moved slowly after. On coming up, I saw them dragging the body of an Indian into the open ground: a naked savage, like the other. He was dead, and they were preparing to scalp him. "Come now, Barney!" cried one of the men in a joking manner, "the har's your'n. Why don't ye off wid it, man?" "It's moine, dev yez say?" asked Barney, appealing to the speaker. "Sartinly; you killed him. It's your'n by right." "An' it is raaly worth fifty dollars?" "Good as wheat for that." "Would yez be so frindly, thin, as to cut it aff for me?" "Oh! sartinly, wid all the plizyer of life," replied the hunter, imitating Barney's accent, at the same time severing the scalp, and handing it to him. Barney took the hideous trophy, and I fancy that he did not feel very proud of it. Poor Celt! he may have been guilty of many a breach in the laws of garrison discipline, but it was evident that this was his first lesson in the letting of human blood. The hunters now dismounted, and commenced trampling the thicket through and through. The search was most minute, for there was still a mystery. An extra bow--that is to say, a third--had been found, with its quiver of arrows. Where was the owner? Could he have escaped from the thicket while the men were engaged around the fallen buffaloes? He might, though it was barely probable; but the hunters knew that these savages run more like wild animals, like hares, than human beings, and he might have escaped to the chapparal. "If that Injun has got clar," said Garey, "we've no time to lose in skinnin' them bufflers. Thar's plenty o' his tribe not twenty miles from hyar, I calc'late." "Look down among the willows there!" cried the voice of the chief; "close down to the water." There was a pool. It was turbid and trampled around the edges with buffalo tracks. On one side it was deep. Here willows dropped over and hung into the water. Several men pressed into this side, and commenced sounding the bottom with their lances and the butts of their rifles. Old Rube had come up among the rest, and was drawing the stopper of his powder-horn with his teeth, apparently with the intention of reloading. His small dark eyes were scintillating every way at once: above, around him, and into the water. A sudden thought seemed to enter his head. I saw him push back the plug, grasp the Irishman, who was nearest him, by the arm, and mutter, in a low and hurried voice, "Paddy! Barney! gi' us yur gun; quick, man, quick!" Barney, at this earnest solicitation, immediately surrendered his piece, taking the empty rifle that was thrust into his hand by the trapper.