ring, dead eyes, so fronting me that I had left only a
narrow space through which to peer. Within that small opening I saw
murder done until I closed my eyes in shuddering horror, crazed by my own
sense of helplessness, and feeling the awful fate that must already have
befallen her I loved. God knows I had then no faintest wish to live; nor
did I dream that I should see the sun go down that day. Death was upon
every side of me, in its most dreadful forms; and every cry that reached
my ears, every sight that met my eyes, only added to the frightful
reality of my own helplessness. The inert weight of the horse stifled me
so that I drew my short breath almost in sobs; nor did I dare venture
upon the slightest attempt at release, hemmed about as I was by merciless
fiends now hideously drunk with slaughter. Once I heard a man plead for
mercy, shrieking the words forth as if his intensity of agony had robbed
him of all manliness; I saw a young woman fall headlong, the haft of a
tomahawk cleaving open her head, as a brawny red arm gripped her by the
throat; a child, with long yellow hair, and face distorted by terror, ran
past my narrow outlook, a naked savage grasping after her scarcely a foot
behind. I heard her wild scream of despair and his shout of triumph as
he struck her down. Then I lost consciousness, overwhelmed by the
multiplying horrors of that field of blood.

It is hard to tell how long I lay there, or by what miracle of God's
great mercy I had escaped death and mutilation. It was still day, the
sun was high in the heaven, and the heat almost intolerable, beating down
upon the dry and glittering sand. I could distinguish no sound near at
hand, not even a moan of any kind. The human forms about me were
stiffening in death; nor did any skulking Indian figures appear in sight.

From away to the northward I could hear the echo of distant yelling; and
as I lay there, every faculty alert, I became more and more convinced
that the savages who had attacked us had withdrawn, and that I alone of
all that fated company was preserved, through some strange dispensation
of Providence, for what might prove a more terrible fate than any on that
stricken field. With this thought there was suddenly born within me a
fresh desire for life, a mad thirsting after revenge on those red demons
whose merciless work I had been compelled to see. Yet if I hoped to
preserve my life, I must have water and air; a single hour longer i