"The woo-woo call and the woo-woo answer were not well timed and toned, and the babel-chatter was a failure.

More than this, they seemed to be on the ground." Creeping cautiously up, and peering through the brush, he saw something the height of a stump between two forked trees.

It did not look natural; he aimed, pulled trigger, and killed an Indian.
Each party of Indians or whites was ever on the watch to guard against danger or to get the chance of taking vengeance for former wrongs.

The dark woods saw a myriad lonely fights where red warrior or white hunter fell and no friend of the fallen ever knew his fate, where his sole memorial was the scalp that hung in the smoky cabin or squalid wigwam of the victor.
The rude and fragmentary annals of the frontier are filled with the deeds of men, of whom Mansker can be taken as a type.

He was a wonderful marksman and woodsman, and was afterwards made a colonel of the frontier militia, though, being of German descent, he spoke only broken English.[25] Like most of the hunters he became specially proud of his rifle, calling it "Nancy"; for they were very apt to know each his favorite weapon by some homely or endearing nickname.