The scene in front of the settlement was horrid and soul-sickening in the extreme. The Shawnees during the preceding night had succeeded in removing a number of their dead companions, but over a dozen still remained scattered over the clearing and around the closed breach. In front could be seen three Indians stretched upon the earth, stark and stiff, their hands closed with a deadly clutch around their rifles, and their fixed glazing eyes staring at the blue sky above them. The disfigurement of their faces was rendered more ghastly by war paint daubed upon them. The blood had mixed with this until it was impossible to distinguish them, and, as the wound of each was in the face, some idea may perhaps be formed of their appearance. Others lay doubled and knotted in heaps just as when they died, and a couple were stretched face downward upon a stump, their arms dangling over. The greatest number were stretched before the breach. There they lay in every imaginable position; some as if quietly sleeping and others twisted and bent into inconceivable distortions, and scattered over the clearing were coagulated pools of blood, dark and murky on the hard earth, and bright and glistening on the logs where the sun could reach it. It was near the middle of the afternoon, when most of the men were engaged in the funeral ceremonies of the dead, and while Kingman and Moffat were keeping watch in the northern block-house that a curious, yet characteristic circumstance took place. Moffat had seated himself for a time, while Kingman was still gazing intently through one of the loop-holes. The hunter watched him a few moments and then remarked, “It seems to me, George, that something has taken your eye out there. What is it? Does one of the Shawnee’s top knots strike your fancy?” “No; but I tell you, I ain’t satisfied yet by any means that the Injins are out of the wood.” “What’s up? Seen one? Shouldn’t wonder if there was two or three there; but I’ll bet my life that there ain’t no more.” “There is something moving in the bushes yonder, certain. Just take a look. It is close to that tree where you shot your first Shawnee.” Moffat arose and did as requested. He answered in a moment. “There is somebody there, sure enough, but I can’t make him out.” “Shall I not fire, and teach him better manners?” “No. You would only scare the women, and it ain’t certain by no means that there’s an Injin there, and I make it a point never fire at a venture.” “Indian it isn’t, sure enough,” replied Kingman, excitedly. As they both looked, they saw a white man dressed in the costume of a hunter step cautiously forth and approach one of the bodies. He stooped and looked at it a moment, and then catching the head in his left hand, jerked out his knife and had the scalp off in a moment. This he repeated until there were several bleeding trophies suspended at the girdle around his waist. “That is cool,” remarked Kingman. “What business has he to do that?”