split your wizen fer you! The idee of you a-coming to the post to git rum and then cutting up sech a shindy as this! Clar out with you afore I kick you so full of holes your own squaw won't know you! And you other redskins, you behave yourselves, or I'll cut loose, and thar will be some tall shooting and knifing going on, I'll warrant you!" And the speaker ended with a fist shaking that made the Indians retreat in all directions. They knew the man who spoke and knew he meant all that he said.

"Sam Barringford!" ejaculated Dave, joyfully, as he arose to his feet. "I'm mighty glad you came."

"I'm glad myself, Dave," returned the old hunter. "But tell me, what made him so sot ag'in you?"

"He got mad because I wouldn't drink with him."

"Did, hey? Wall, Turtle Foot always was a fool, and he's a heap wuss when he's in liquor." Sam Barringford looked over to where the Indian was extricating himself from the mud. "Mind what I told you!" he shouted. "Git right away from here! You can come back for your knife to-morrow. I'll leave it with Seth Crosby!" And not daring to remonstrate Turtle Foot limped down the trail away from the trading-post.

Sam Barringford was a typical hunter and trapper of that period, and well known throughout the whole of the Virginia valley, both to the whites and the red men. He was a man of fifty, tall, broad-shouldered, and with muscles of iron. His hair was long, as was his beard, and from under a shaggy pair of eyebrows peered a pair of black eyes as sharp as those of some wild beast. The look of his face was one of decision, yet not unpleasant, and his voice had a peculiar drawl to it that was whimsical in the extreme.

The hunter was dressed in buckskin, with a wide fringe to his leggings. On his feet he wore a pair of Indian moccasins, and on his head rested a coonskin cap with the tail falling over his back. Around his waist was a broad belt containing a hunting knife and a horn of powder, shot and ball, and across his back was slung a rifle which he had nicknamed Old Trusty, as good a piece of firearm as to be found anywhere.

"The Injuns are as foolish as some white folks when it comes to rum," was Barringford's comment, as he and Dave walked to where the horses were tied up. "They know it hurts 'em, and yet they won't leave it alone. Ain't here alone, are you?"

"No, Uncle Joe is inside the post. He left me to watch the horses. We are on our 

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