"Come on, Paul," said Shif'less Sol."'Tain't wuth while fur us to resist.But don't you quit hopin', Paul.We've escaped from many a tight corner, an' mebbe we're goin' to do it ag'in.""Shut up!" said Braxton Wyatt savagely."If you say another word I'll gag you in a way that will make you squirm."Shif'less Sol looked him squarely in the eye.Solomon Hyde, who was not shiftless at all, had a dauntless soul, and he was not afraid now in the face of death preceded by long torture.
"I had a dog once, Braxton Wyatt," he said, "an' I reckon he wuz the meanest, ornierest cur that ever lived.He liked to live on dirt, the dirtier the place he could find the better; he'd rather steal his food than get it honestly; he wuz sech a coward that he wuz afeard o' a rabbit, but ef your back wuz turned to him he'd nip you in the ankle.But bad ez that dog wuz, Braxton, he wuz a gentleman 'longside o' you."Some of the Indians understood English, and Wyatt knew it.He snatched a pistol from his belt, and was about to strike Sol with the butt of it, but a tall figure suddenly appeared before him, and made a commanding gesture.The gesture said plainly: "Do not strike; put that pistol back!" Braxton Wyatt, whose soul was afraid within him, did not strike, and he put the pistol back.
It was Timmendiquas, the great White Lightning of the Wyandots, who with his little detachment had proved that day how mighty the Wyandot warriors were, full equals of Thayendanegea's Mohawks, the Keepers of the Western Gate.He was bare to the waist.One shoulder was streaked with blood from a slight wound, but his countenance was not on fire with passion for torture and slaughter like those of the others.
"There is no need to strike prisoners," he said in English.
"Their fate will be decided later."
Paul thought that he caught a look of pity from the eyes of the great Wyandot, and Shif'less Sol said:
"I'm sorry, Timmendiquas, since I had to be captured, that you didn't capture me yourself.I'm glad to say that you're a great warrior."Wyatt growled under his breath, but he was still afraid to speak out, although he knew that Timmendiquas was merely a distant and casual ally, and had little authority in that army.Yet he was overawed, and so were the Indians with him.
"We were merely taking the prisoners to Colonel Butler," he said.
"That is all."
Timmendiquas stared at him, and the renegade's face fell.But he and the Indians went on with the prisoners, and Timmendiquas looked after them until they were out of sight.
"I believe White Lightning was sorry that we'd been captured,"whispered Shif'less Sol.
"I think so, too," Paul whispered back.
They had no chance for further conversation, as they were driven rapidly now to that point of the battlefield which lay nearest to the fort, and here they were thrust into the midst of a gloomy company, fellow captives, all bound tightly, and many wounded.
No help, no treatment of any kind was offered for hurts.The Indians and renegades stood about and yelled with delight when the agony of some man's wound wrung from him a groan.The scene was hideous in every respect.The setting sun shone blood red over forest, field, and river.Far off burning houses still smoked like torches.But the mountain wall in the east, was growing dusky with the coming twilight.From the island, where they were massacring the fugitives in their vain hiding places, came the sound of shots and cries, but elsewhere the firing had ceased.All who could escape had done so already, and of the others, those who were dead were fortunate.
The sun sank like a red ball behind the mountains, and darkness swept down over the earth.Fires began to blaze up here and there, some for terrible purpose.The victorious Iroquois;stripped to the waist and painted in glaring colors, joined in a savage dance that would remain forever photographed on the eye of Paul Cotter.As they jumped to and fro, hundreds of them, waving aloft tomahawks and scalping knives, both of which dripped red, they sang their wild chant of war and triumph.White men, too, as savage as they, joined them.Paul shuddered again and again from head to foot at this sight of an orgy such as the mass of mankind escapes, even in dreams.
The darkness thickened, the dance grew wilder.It was like a carnival of demons, but it was to be incited to a yet wilder pitch.A singular figure, one of extraordinary ferocity, was suddenly projected into the midst of the whirling crowd, and a chant, shriller and fiercer, rose above all the others.The figure was that of Queen Esther, like some monstrous creature out of a dim past, her great tomahawk stained with blood, her eyes bloodshot, and stains upon her shoulders.Paul would have covered his eyes had his hands not been tied instead, he turned his head away.He could not bear to see more.But the horrible chant came to his ears, nevertheless, and it was reinforced presently by other sounds still more terrible.Fires sprang up in the forest, and cries came from these fires.The victorious army of "Indian" Butler was beginning to burn the prisoners alive.But at this point we must stop.The details of what happened around those fires that night are not for the ordinary reader.It suffices to say that the darkest deed ever done on the soil of what is now the United States was being enacted.
Shif'less Sol himself, iron of body and soul, was shaken.He could not close his ears, if he would, to the cries that came from the fires, but he shut his eyes to keep out the demon dance.
Nevertheless, he opened them again in a moment.The horrible fascination was too great.He saw Queen Esther still shaking her tomahawk, but as he looked she suddenly darted through the circle, warriors willingly giving way before her, and disappeared in the darkness.The scalp dance went on, but it had lost some of its fire and vigor.
Shif'less Sol felt relieved.
