Red stripes — Reading Notes

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In Category - Adventure Picaresque Fiction

Authors: Pendexter, Hugh, 1875-1940 Digital Source: Project Gutenberg Gutenberg Release Year: 2022 First Publication Year: Not confirmed

Key Word: Short stories; Indians of North America -- Fiction; Frontier and pioneer life -- Middle West -- Fiction Target Reader: Readers of public-domain and historical texts

Book Edition: Project Gutenberg digital edition Book Language: en

Edition facts

Words 9,121

Reading time 40 min

Text sections 1

The catalog record for Red stripes — Reading Notes provides practical reading context through 9,121 words, 40 min estimated reading time, and 1 detected text section.

The text analysis averages about 14.8 words per sentence, while the detected sections provide another way to judge how the source is divided.

Project Gutenberg metadata also associates the work with “Short stories,” connecting these edition facts with the source record’s subject description.

Source: Project Gutenberg record #68942

In Hugh Pendexter's 1926 short story, a Virginian captive among Wyandots must prove his identity by the absence of a red stripe on his back, a test that recurs as he navigates a frontier where trust is measured in paint and scars.

Editorial Edition Score 4.4/5

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Description quality20 pts
Title & short description10 pts
Source metadata20 pts
Text length15 pts
Chapters / structure15 pts
EPUB file integrity20 pts

Total of 100 points, scaled to a 2.5-5.0 range. Editions with an empty description or a missing EPUB file are not scored.

Edition quality

File: pg68942

Read the Text

or Wyandot men to tarry in. The white man’s medicine was about the little opening. It had saved him from the smoke and the coals, even as he had claimed that it would. He had died painlessly and had cheated his captors. He was a very wise old man, and his ghost even now was laughing at them. Around red camp-fires he would be spoken of with great respect.

The camp was moved two miles to a creek.[2] The men were gloomy and dispirited. A strong medicine had worked against success on this path. Once the men decided Little Beaver’s medicine was responsible his following would fall off. None sensed this more quickly than the chief himself. Like his men he was in a gloomy state of mind when he took to his blankets. With his belt of rawhide around his waist Knight slept by snatches. Each time he woke up he was overwhelmed by his awful plight. It was so inexorable; so inescapable. The darkness was thinning when the first warrior rolled out and threw dry fuel on the fire. Knight’s appearance plainly revealed his state of mind. Unlike Bryant he could not make-believe.

[Footnote 2: Salt Creek, Jackson County.]

His guards rose and unfastened the thongs running from their waists to the prisoner’s waist. His feet were untied and he was helped to stand. The men were courteous, even gentle, but now he knew all this was deliberately planned to increase his suffering. He held out his hands for one of the men to unfasten. The Indians had no fear that he could escape; and did he try his disappointment would be their joy. One of his guards released the thong and Knight rubbed his hands and wrists smartly. As he did this he looked for a possible avenue of escape.

The Indians’ guns were resting against a pole which was supported by two crotched sticks. If he attempted to run in that direction he would find but few between him and the timber, as almost all the men were around the kettle. But pursuit would be made by the warriors near the guns, which they could snatch up and use with deadly effect before he could reach cover. Had it been broad daylight he might have elected to attempt that course, and to count it success if he was shot off his feet. He had supposed all hope had left him. Now the gloomy woods, just beyond the fire, invited him to make it a race. If he took this direction he must win his way through and around the bulk of the warriors. But if he reached the growth they either would pursue him unarmed, or else lose time in running back across the opening to get guns.

He thought it out and made his decision inside a few seconds of deliberation. The very idea of attempting to do something gave him physical strength. He advanced toward the kettles. Little Beaver followed and overtook him as he halted as if waiting for his breakfast. The chief patted him on the shoulder. Knight met the smoldering gaze and smiled and nodded his head. The Indians averted their gaze to hide their amusement. The white man was believing them to be friendly. With a final pat Little Beaver dropped his hand to his side. Knight’s hard fist, starting from his hip, came up with terrific force under the chief’s chin and fairly lifted him off his feet. Then with a leap, and a jump to one side, and a left-handed smash in the face of a man he could not dodge, he was bursting through the fringe of bushes and plunging into the gloomy woods.

The complete surprize of it all dazed the warriors some seconds. Then they followed their first impulse, to run down and recapture their man. As they took the woods, whooping and howling, and armed only with their knives and axes, Knight fought against panic and even slowed his gait to prevent a collision with the faintly outlined trees. One of the warriors yelled for the men to secure their guns. Some ran back to do this. It was too dark for those pressing the chase to pick up the trail, and quite to his amazement Knight found himself on the bank of the creek. The infuriated yells and howls suddenly ceased and Knight at once imagined the foe were all but upon him. Still he practised enough self-control to slip into the icy waters of the creek and noiselessly make his way to the opposite bank.

Continue Reading →

The story opens with a Virginian captive being led by Wyandots down the Big Sandy and up the Ohio, his body bound and bruised. The leader wears no face paint but a single red stripe down his spine—a mark that becomes a recurring test of allegiance. Pendexter builds tension through physical detail: the rawhide thong around the prisoner's waist, the cord around his neck, the briers scratching from head to waist. The narrative moves swiftly between the captive's internal resentment and the external dangers of the border, where a man's back can betray him.

The Red Stripe as a Marker of Identity

The red stripe is not merely a decoration; it is a badge of belonging. The Wyandot leader and his men all wear it, while the captive does not. Later, when the escaped Virginian meets strangers in the woods, the first question is whether a man bears that stripe. Kinsty, a seasoned frontiersman, insists on lifting a man's hunting-shirt to check his back before trusting him. The stripe becomes a shorthand for loyalty—or its absence. Pendexter uses this physical mark to externalize the internal question of who is friend and who is foe. The reader, like the characters, learns to scan backs for that telltale line.

Movement Between Stations and Shores

The story is structured around a series of crossings: from the station on the Big Sandy to the Indian shore, then back across the Ohio to the Kentucky side. Each crossing raises the stakes. The captive is dragged through water, forest, and camp, always in motion. Even after escape, the characters debate whether to push on to Massie's Station or stay put. Pendexter uses the river as a boundary between safety and danger, but also as a space where identities are tested. The constant movement—by canoe, on foot, through brush—mirrors the unsettled nature of frontier life, where no place is secure for long.

Voice and Dialogue as Evidence of Character

Pendexter distinguishes his characters through speech patterns. Abner Bryant speaks in a monotonous voice, recounting his capture with flat resignation: “We was took by surprize while setting traps.” The stranger Daniels uses a brisk, good-natured tone: “Beats all natur’ how every one you meet you sort of think may be that skunk Greeby.” Kinsty’s dialogue is clipped and wary: “Wish I knew more ’bout him.” These vocal differences create a layered soundscape where a man’s trustworthiness is gauged not only by his back but by his words. The Virginian’s own voice shifts from arrogant confidence to exhausted fear, marking his education in border survival.

Recurring Details of Physical Hardship

The excerpts are filled with small, brutal specifics: the captive sleeps with a rawhide thong around his waist, tied to warriors on either side; he is hauled through bushes, scratched and bruised; he eats a turkey leg raw because he cannot wait. Later, Knight is described as “half starved,” his hide “barked and scratched most tarnal.” These details accumulate to create a world where the body is constantly under assault—by weather, by captors, by hunger. Pendexter does not romanticize the frontier; he emphasizes the physical cost of survival. The fire-hole, covered with branches and dirt, with only small air vents, becomes a symbol of the precarious, hidden existence these characters lead.

Readers should attend to the way Pendexter uses the red stripe as a visual and thematic anchor, and to how the story’s structure—a series of crossings and tests—mirrors the uncertainty of frontier alliances. The excerpts offer only a portion of the narrative; the full story likely deepens these patterns of suspicion and movement. Approach the text as a study in how identity is read on the body, and how quickly trust can shift in a world where a painted line can mean the difference between life and death.

That rainy afternoon, I kept thinking about the Wyandot test—how a scarred back could hold an identity hostage. Pendexter’s frontier felt so tactile, all paint and suspicion. Then, almost by accident, I pulled down a newer book and found the same unease, dressed in different anxieties: Tomorrow's tangle — Inside the Classic. The rain hadn’t stopped, and both stories seemed to speak in the same quiet, wary tone.