e
bodies of the slain Indians should be tumbled into a gully, and hidden
from sight; a measure of such evident precaution as to need no
explanation. This was immediately done; but not before Ralph and the man
of peace had well rummaged the pouches of the dead, helping themselves
to such valuables and stores of provender and ammunition as they could
lay hands on; in addition to which, Nathan stripped from one a light
Indian hunting-shirt, from another a blanket, a woman's shawl, and a
medicine bag, from a third divers jingling bundles of brooches and
hawk-bells, together with a pouch containing vermilion and other paints,
the principal articles of savage toilet; which he made up into a bundle,
to be used for a purpose he did not conceal from his comrades. He then
seized upon the rifles of the dead (from among which Stackpole had
already singled out his own), and removing the locks, hid them away in
crannies of the cliffs, concealing the locks in other places;--a
disposition which he also made of the knives and tomahawks; remarking,
with great justice, that "if honest Christian men were to have no good of
the weapons, it was just as well murdering Injuns should be no better
off."

These things concluded, the dead covered over with boughs and brambles,
and nothing left in the vale to attract a passing and unobservant eye, he
gave the signal to resume the march, and with Roland and Captain Ralph,
stole from the field of battle.

CHAPTER XXVII.

The twilight was darkening in the west, when the three adventurers,
stealing through tangled thickets, and along lonely ridges, carefully
avoiding all frequented paths, looked out at last, from a distant hill,
upon the valley in which lay the village of the Black-Vulture. The ruddy
light of evening, bursting from clouds of crimson and purple, and
shooting down through gaps of the hills in cascades of fire, fell
brightly and sweetly on the little prairies, or natural meadow-lands;
which, dotted over with clumps of trees, and watered by a fairy river, a
tributary of the rapid Miami, winding along from side to side, now hiding
beneath the shadow of the hills, now glancing into light, gave an air of
tender beauty to the scene better befitting, as it might have seemed, the
retreat of the innocent and peaceful sons of Oberon, than the wild and
warlike children of the wilderness. Looking further up the vale, the eye
fell upon patches of ripening maize, waving along the river; and