"High prices are offered for scalps on both sides." he observed,
with a grim smile, as if he felt the force of the inducement, at
the very time he wished to affect a superiority to earning money
by means that the ordinary feelings of those who aspire to be
civilized men repudiated, even while they were adopted. "It isn't
right, perhaps, to take gold for human blood; and yet, when mankind
is busy in killing one another, there can be no great harm in adding
a little bit of skin to the plunder. What's your sentiments, Hurry,
touching these p'ints?"
"That you've made a vast mistake, old man, in calling savage blood
human blood, at all. I think no more of a red-skin's scalp than
I do of a pair of wolf's ears; and would just as lief finger money
for the one as for the other. With white people 't is different,
for they've a nat'ral avarsion to being scalped; whereas your Indian
shaves his head in readiness for the knife, and leaves a lock of
hair by way of braggadocio, that one can lay hold of in the bargain."
"That's manly, however, and I felt from the first that we had only
to get you on our side, to have your heart and hand," returned
Tom, losing all his reserve, as he gained a renewed confidence in
the disposition of his companions.
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