ank of the Red, but the remnant
tried to reach the fort across the plain. Calling me, Grant, now utterly
distracted, directed his efforts to this quarter. I with difficulty
captured my horse and galloped off to join the warden. Our riders were
circling round something not far from the fort walls and Grant was
tearing over the prairie, commanding them to retire. It seems, when
Governor Semple discovered the strength of our forces, he sent some of
his men back to Fort Douglas for a field-piece. Poor Semple with his
European ideas of Indian warfare! The _Bois-Brules_ did not wait for
that field-piece. The messengers had trundled it out only a short
distance from the gateway, when they met the fugitives flying back with
news of the massacre. Under protection of the cannon, the men made a
plucky retreat to the fort, though the _Bois-Brules_ harassed them to
the very walls. This disappearance--or rather extermination--of the
enemy, as well as the presence of the field-gun, which was a new terror
to the Indians, gave Grant his opportunity. He at once rounded the men
up and led them off to Frog Plains, on the other side of the swamp. Here
we encamped for the night, and were subsequently joined by the first
division of _Bois-Brules_.

CHAPTER XXIII

THE IROQUOIS PLAYS HIS LAST CARD

The _Bois-Brules_ and Indian marauders, who gathered to our camp, were
drunk with the most intoxicating of all stimulants--human blood. This
flush of victory excited the redskins' vanity to a boastful frenzy.
There was wild talk of wiping the pale-face out of existence; and if a
weaker man than Grant had been at the head of the forces, not a white in
the settlement would have escaped massacre. In spite of the bitterness
to which the slaughter at Seven Oaks gave rise, I think all fair-minded
people have acknowledged that the settlers owed their lives to the
warden's efforts.

That night pandemonium itself could not have presented a more hideous
scene than our encampment. The lust of blood is abhorrent enough in
civilized races, but in Indian tribes, whose unrestrained, hard life
abnormally develops the instincts of the tiger, it is a thing that may
not be portrayed. Let us not, with the depreciatory hypocrisy,
characteristic of our age, befool ourselves into any belief that
barbaric practices were more humane than customs which are the flower of
civilized centuries. Let us be truthful. Scientific cruelty may do its
worst with intricate ar