When Deerslayer saw the chosen warriors step into the circle, with
their arms prepared for service, he felt some such relief as the
miserable sufferer, who has long endured the agonies of disease,
feels at the certain approach of death. Any trifling variance in
the aim of this formidable weapon would prove fatal; since, the
head being the target, or rather the point it was desired to graze
without injuring, an inch or two of difference in the line of
projection must at once determine the question of life or death.
In the torture by the rifle there was none of the latitude permitted
that appeared in the case of even Gessler's apple, a hair's breadth
being, in fact, the utmost limits that an expert marksman would
allow himself on an occasion like this. Victims were frequently
shot through the head by too eager or unskilful hands, and it
often occurred that, exasperated by the fortitude and taunts of the
prisoner, death was dealt intentionally in a moment of ungovernable
irritation. All this Deerslayer well knew, for it was in relating
the traditions of such scenes, as well as of the battles and victories
of their people, that the old men beguiled the long winter evenings
in their cabins.
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