172 THE HIVE OF THE BEE-HUNTER. 
ers, as if it were lightning, and they knew it; they 
dropped their oars, and silently returned to the shore. 
Mike waved his hand towards the little village of Louis- 
ville, and again pursued his way. 
The time consumed by the firing of Mike’s rifle, the 
pursuit, and the abandonment of it, required less time 
than we have taken to give the details ; and in that time, 
to the astonishment of the gaping crowd around Joe, 
they saw him rising with a bewildered air; a moment 
more—he recovered his senses and stood up—at his 
feet lay his scalp-lock ! 
The ball had cut it clear from his head; the cord 
around the root, in which were placed feathers and other 
ornaments, still held it together; the concussion had 
merely stunned its owner; farther—he had escaped all 
bodily harm! A cry of exultation rose at the last evi- 
dence of the skill of Mike Fink—the exhibition of a 
shot that established his claim, indisputably, to the emi- 
nence he ever afterwards held—that of the unrivalled 
marksman of all the flatboatmen of the western waters. 
Proud Joe had received many insults. He looked 
upon himself as a degraded, worthless being—and the 
ignominy heaped upon him he never, except by reply, 
resented ; but this last insult was like seizing the lion 
by the mane, or a Roman senator by the beard—it 
roused the slumbering demon within, and made him 
again thirst to resent his wrongs, with an intensity of 
emotion that can only be felt by an Indian. His eye 
