g the prisoners to Colonel Butler," he said. "That
is all."

Timmendiquas stared at him, and the renegade's face fell. But he and the
Indians went on with the prisoners, and Timmendiquas looked after them
until they were out of sight.

"I believe White Lightning was sorry that we'd been captured," whispered
Shif'less Sol.

"I think so, too," Paul whispered back.

They had no chance for further conversation, as they were driven rapidly
now to that point of the battlefield which lay nearest to the fort,
and here they were thrust into the midst of a gloomy company, fellow
captives, all bound tightly, and many wounded. No help, no treatment of
any kind was offered for hurts. The Indians and renegades stood about
and yelled with delight when the agony of some man's wound wrung from
him a groan. The scene was hideous in every respect. The setting sun
shone blood red over forest, field, and river. Far off burning houses
still smoked like torches. But the mountain wall in the east, was
growing dusky with the coming twilight. From the island, where they were
massacring the fugitives in their vain hiding places, came the sound
of shots and cries, but elsewhere the firing had ceased. All who could
escape had done so already, and of the others, those who were dead were
fortunate.

The sun sank like a red ball behind the mountains, and darkness swept
down over the earth. Fires began to blaze up here and there, some for
terrible purpose. The victorious Iroquois; stripped to the waist and
painted in glaring colors, joined in a savage dance that would remain
forever photographed on the eye of Paul Cotter. As they jumped to and
fro, hundreds of them, waving aloft tomahawks and scalping knives, both
of which dripped red, they sang their wild chant of war and triumph.
White men, too, as savage as they, joined them. Paul shuddered again
and again from head to foot at this sight of an orgy such as the mass of
mankind escapes, even in dreams.

The darkness thickened, the dance grew wilder. It was like a carnival
of demons, but it was to be incited to a yet wilder pitch. A singular
figure, one of extraordinary ferocity, was suddenly projected into the
midst of the whirling crowd, and a chant, shriller and fiercer, rose
above all the others. The figure was that of Queen Esther, like some
monstrous creature out of a dim past, her great tomahawk stained with
blood, her eyes bloodshot, and stains upon her shoulders. Paul would
have covere