Joseph was this who, standing in the leaping
firelight, high among the red warriors about him, was lashing them to
frenzy with his resounding words. No interpreter crouched with the
little party at the point; none was needed to tell them that he was
preaching of battle, blood, and vengeance. From time to time the wail
of women could be heard, wild as the scream of the panther, and, as one
sign led to another, it dawned upon Geordie and the veteran trooper by
his side that some brave of the band had recently been done to death by
foul means or treachery, that now the tribe was being roused to a pitch
of fury, to a mad thirst for vengeance; and even before the red orator
had finished his harangue the war-drum began its fevered throb, the
warriors, brandishing knife, club, hatchet, or gun, sprang half
stripped into the swift-moving circle, and with shrill yells and weird
contortions started the shuffling, squirming, snake-like evolutions of
the war-dance. Faster, wilder went the drumbeats; fiercer, madder went
the dance; and, unable to resist the impulse, Graham and Connell,
secure in the belief that the Indians were utterly engrossed, crept
cautiously onward and outward, with the corporal at their back,
determined to see what they could of this savage and appalling
ceremony.

Half-way to the scene had they crept when the shrill wailing of the
squaws gave way to shriller screams, to almost maniac laughter. The
orator had ceased his incantations. The wild drummers stopped their
pounding. The warriors, as though with one accord, clustered about the
fire in fascination, and for the moment all save the squaws were
stilled, and the crouching watchers, quarter of a mile away, looked
blankly into each other's faces for explanation. "What on earth are
they up to now?" whispered Connell.

The answer came within the minute: a sound sweeter to savage ears than
love-lay of the maidens, than war-song of the braves, than even the
wild, triumphant chorus of the scalp-dance; a sound that suddenly rose
for a moment above the clamor of the squaws, and then was answered and
overwhelmed and drowned in mad, exultant, even fiendish, yells of
delight--it was the scream of a strong man in awful agony.

"My God!" cried the corporal. "They've got some poor devil there,
torturing, burning him to death!"

"To the horses! Come on, Con!" was the instant answer. And the three
went bounding back along the bank, pursued and spurred by the savage
sho