Red Belt, the Tuscarora — page 12: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

1 RED BELT, THE TUSCARORA. defiance,’ and the young warrior drew his form up, and clutched his rifle in a tighter grip. “You are right again, my red brother! "Tis the war-whoep of the Mingo, telling us he braves us! Well, well; we'll stand with him yet, frce to face, foot to foot, when the time comes. But, we'll not answer his cry; the Mingo knows old Sampson, the Lean Wolf, and he knows Red Belt, the Tuscarora! "Twill be a bad day for him when Whistling Dick covers the heart of the Wild Hawk; for then there'll be mourning and wailing in the lodges on the Scioto. But—’ He suddenly paused. The hunter’s hand had been earessing the large dog, which now rubbed against his master’s side; and on the coarse, heavy collar of undressed deer-skin around the noble animal's neck, the old man had felt the rattle and rumple of wampum, “We've tidings of our white brother, the Leaping Deer,” he said, in a low voice. “We'll make a light and see what he says.” .As he spoke he proceeded to fire a piece of tow with flint and steel, and heaped on it a bundle of dried fagots. Red Belt instantly staked his blanket so as to .circumseribe the ~ light, which was now flashing on the lonely spit. The beams of that light revealed, first, a powerful dog of the bloodhound species, his huge, intelligent eyes beaming al- most humanly into the flaring fire. Above him, towered the tall, lanky, yet sinewy form of Sampson Lowe, the frontiers man. Opposite stood the young warrior, Red Belt—tall, graceful, and muscular in form—serious, sad, and handeomam in face. The old hunter was dressed in the proverbial backwoods style of those days: hunting-shirt, leggins and moccasins. His head was covered with a cap of fox-skin, to which the tail was dependent, and hanging over his broad shoulders. Areund his neck were slung a bullet-pouch and powder-horn. In a belt of untanned deer-skin drawn around his waist, was stuck a broad-bladed hatchict, and a long, keen knife with a handle of buck-horn, bid in a deer-skin sheath. There was a place in the belt also for the pistol, which the old hunter was now Sampsen Lowe must have becn sixty years old or more; for his long hair—albeit of vizevexs grewia—and weeping comicboo ein <~ ee _