they who witnessed the whole thing. One of them, a leathery-faced
and grizzled old sinner, leered at him contemptuously and said in
queer French, with a curious accent caught from long use of
backwoods English:

"Listen how the boy brags! Ye might think, to hear Rene talk, that
he actually amounted to a big pile."

This personage was known to every soul in Vincennes as Oncle
Jazon, and when Oncle Jazon spoke the whole town felt bound to
listen.

"An' how well he shoots, too," he added with an intolerable wink;
"aimed at the door and hit the post. Certainly Long-Hair would
have been in great danger! O yes, he'd 'ave killed Long-Hair at
the first shot, wouldn't he though!"

Oncle Jazon had the air of a large man, but the stature of a small
one; in fact he was shriveled bodily to a degree which suggested
comparison with a sun-dried wisp of hickory bark; and when he
chuckled, as he was now doing, his mouth puckered itself until it
looked like a scar on his face. From cap to moccasins he had every
mark significant of a desperate character; and yet there was about
him something that instantly commanded the confidence of rough
men,--the look of self-sufficiency and superior capability always
to be found in connection with immense will power. His sixty years
of exposure, hardship, and danger seemed to have but toughened his
physique and strengthened his vitality. Out of his small hazel
eyes gleamed a light as keen as ice.