Free Lord Grizzly, Second Edition by Frederick Manfred Page B

before the time of his capture by the Pawnees, before he had met her while with them. He told of how as a young man he’d run away from home in Pennsylvania, from the very Lancaster County where his gun, Old Bullthrower, had been made; told how he had gone to sea on a ship out of Philadelphia, how he had sailed before the mast over most of the globe, to the East Indies, to China, to the great Northwest south of Alaska, to the Scandinavian countries, even to Scotland the land of his fathers, and to such ports as Antwerp, London, Amsterdam, Marseilles, New Orleans, Boston.
    One day out on the seas of the Gulf of Mexico his ship was attacked and captured by the famous pirate Lafitte. He and his mates fought like men, but the pirates proved too much for them. Finally when only a half-dozen men were left, with the captain and first mate dead, Hugh and his comrades surrendered.
    Lafitte was quick in his justice. Either join up as pirates or walk the plank. Hugh and a man named Clint decided to join up. The rest walked the plank into a watery blue death. Hugh and Clint had to swear a horrible oath of allegiance to pirate Lafitte. From then on Hugh’s life was uncertain and bloody at most. Lafitte worked out of the Baratarian Coast south of New Orleans, and as a buccaneer Hugh had to help prey on Spanish shipping, had to help sell stolen goods through merchant contacts in New Orleans.
    Hugh shivered as he remembered some of it: poor food, long hours, devilishly brutal and lawless companions, scurvy, cholera, cruel bloodlettings. For two years Hugh suffered it.
    One day he had enough of it and refused to shoot down a captive. His companyero Clint refused too. Both were thrown in irons; were told that the next day it would be their turn to walk the plank.
    During the night, however, the two of them managed to slip out of their chains, escape the ship, and swim to shore.
    The land they found themselves in was the far free wild. They wandered through it, heading north, later northeast, hoping to come onto St. Louis. They lived off tree buds, green grass, mice, berries. Sometimes they even ate partly smoked snakemeat. And once they ate of flesh unmentionable.
    They managed to get safely through the land of the fierce Comanches. Then their luck ran out. A raiding party of Pawnees caught them around a fire in a gully. The Pawnees took them back to the tribal headquarters on the Platte River. The chief of the Pawnees questioned them at length; condemned them to be burnt at the stake.
    Tied to a tree, Hugh and Clint watched the preparations. A stake was driven into the earth; fagots were arranged around it; ceremonies were enacted; dances were danced.
    Clint was the first. He was led to the stake and tied securely. The chief pierced Clint with the first pitchpine splinter, then backed off to let his sadistic braves finish the job. Accompanied by Clint’s cries of pain and their own howls of triumph, the braves stuck Clint’s skin so full of splinters he looked like a shaggy badger. The fagots at Clint’s feet were lit and the final agony began. It didn’t last long. Flames swept up over Clint’s besplintered body, and with an awful scream in the midnight blackness, companyero Clint passed away into tomorrow.
    Hugh’s turn came then. Two scalplocked braves untied him from the tree; led him to the chief.
    Just as the chief got ready to stick Hugh with the first splinter of pitchpine, Hugh, desperate, bethought himself of something. Hugh reached inside his buckskin shirt; pulled out a thin package. He handed it over to the proud and haughty chief with an air of affection and respect. There was not a trace of fear in Hugh’s demeanor. Then he bowed a final farewell to life.
    The chief opened the package, found it to be vermilion, an article the Pawnees, as well as all plains’ savages, valued above all price. The chief started. He looked Hugh over carefully. Then, majestically, he stepped up to Hugh and