To feel the demand of an exigency was to act.

She snatched a wrap from its peg on the wall and ran as fast as she could to the fort.

People who met her flying along wondered, staring after her, what could be urging her so that she saw nobody, checked herself for nothing, ran splashing through the puddles in the street, gazing ahead of her, as if pursuing some flying object from which she dared not turn her eyes.
And there was, indeed, a call for her utmost power of flight, if she would be of any assistance to Long-Hair, who even then stood bound to a stake in the fort's area, while a platoon of riflemen, those unerring shots from Kentucky and Virginia, were ready to make a target of him at a range of but twenty yards.
Beverley, greatly handicapped by the fact that the fresh scalp of a white man hung at Long-Hair's belt, had exhausted every possible argument to avert or mitigate the sentence promptly spoken by the court martial of which Colonel Clark was the ruling spirit.

He had succeeded barely to the extent of turning the mode of execution from tomahawking to shooting.

All the officers in the fort approved killing the prisoner, and it was difficult for Colonel Clark to prevent the men from making outrageous assaults upon him, so exasperated were they at sight of the scalp.
Oncle Jazon proved to be one of the most refractory among those who demanded tomahawking and scalping as the only treatment due Long-Hair.
The repulsive savage stood up before them stolid, resolute, defiant, proudly flaunting the badge which testified to his horrible efficiency as an emissary of Hamilton's.