ors naked to the waist
and hideously painted were singing a war song, while they capered and
jumped to its unrhythmic tune. Suddenly one of them snatched something
from his girdle and waved it aloft in triumph. Henry knew that it was a
scalp, many of which he had seen, and he paid little attention, but the
Indian came closer, still singing and dancing, and waving his hideous
trophy.

The scalp flashed before Henry's eyes, and it displayed not the coarse
black locks of the savage, but hair long, fine and yellow like silk. He
knew that it was the scalp of a white girl, and a sudden, shuddering
horror seized him. It had belonged to one of his own kind, to the race
into which he had been born and with which he had passed his boyhood.
His heart filled with hatred of these Shawnees, but the warriors of his
own little tribe would take scalps, and if occasion came, the scalps of
white people, yes, of white women and white girls! He tried to dismiss
the thought or rather to crush it down, but it would not yield to his
will; always it rose up again.

He walked back to the edge of the encampment, where some of the warriors
were yet singing the war songs that with all of their monotony were so
weird and chilling. Twilight was over the forest, save in the west,
where a blood-red tint from the sunken sun lingered on trunk and bough,
and gleamed across the faces of the dancing warriors. In this lurid
light Henry suddenly saw them savage, inhuman, implacable. They were
truly creatures of the wilderness, the lust of blood was upon them, and
they would shed it for the pleasure of seeing it flow. Henry's primeval
world darkened as he looked upon them.

He was about to leave with Black Cloud and his friends when it occurred
to him to ask which way the war party was going and who were the
destined victims. He spoke to two or three warriors until he came to one
who understood the tongue of his little tribe.

The man waved his hand toward the south.

"Off there; far away," he said. "Beyond the great river."

Henry knew that in this case "great river" meant the Ohio and he was
somewhat surprised; it was still a long journey from the Ohio to the
land of the Cherokees, Chickasaws and Choctaws with whom the Northern
tribes sometimes fought, and he spoke of it to the warrior, but the man
shook his head, and said they were going against the white people; there
was a village of them in a sheltered valley beside a little river, they
had been t