No regiment in the Continental army had a prouder record. But the men of that corps were drawn mostly from those free-limbed, free-thinking, powerful, headlong, and sometimes ruthless backwoodsmen who carried law into regions where none but Nature’s had ever before existed. And the law they carried was their own.

It was a reproach to us that we scalped our red enemies. No officer in the corps could prevent these men from answering an Indian’s insult with another of the same kind. And there remained always men in that command who took their scalps as carelessly as they clipped a catamount of ears and pads.

As for my special detail, I understood perfectly that I could no more prevent my Indians from scalping enemies of their own race than I could whistle a wolf-pack up wind.