leaped away, jabbered and laughed, and returned to the attack. While
he was occupied with those in front of him, others slipped up behind him,
jabbed him in the back, or violently twitched the hair on his neck. Tears
of pain and rage stood in Paul's eyes, and he wheeled about, only to have
the jeering throng wheel with him and continue their torture. At last he
caught one of them a half blow, and she reeled and fell. The others
shouted uproariously, and the warriors standing by joined in their mirth.

One of the hags finally struck Paul a resounding smack in the face, and as
he turned to pursue her another from behind seized a wisp of hair and
tried to tear it out by the roots. Paul whirled in a frenzy, and so
quickly that she could not escape him. He seized her withered old throat
in both his hands, and then and there he would have choked her to death,
but the warriors interfered, and pulled his hands loose. But they also
drove the old women away, and Paul was let alone for the time. As he stood
on one side, gasping as much with anger as with pain, Braxton Wyatt, who
had not been persecuted at all, came to him again with ironic words and
derisive gesture.

"It was just as I told you, Paul," he said. "I gave you good advice. If
you had taken it, they would have spared you. What you have just got is
only a taste to what you may suffer."

Paul felt a dreadful inclination to shudder, but he managed to control
himself.

"I'd rather die under the torture than do what you have done, you
renegade!" he said.

This was the first time since they crossed the Ohio that he had replied to
Braxton, but even now he would say no more, and Wyatt, following his
custom, shrugged his shoulders and walked away. Then all, mingled in one
great throng, went forward to the village. Paul saw an irregular
collection of buffalo-skin and deer-skin tepees, and a few pole wigwams,
with some rudely cultivated fields of maize about them. A fine brook
flowed through the village, and the site, on the whole, was well chosen,
well watered, and sheltered by the little hills from cold winds. It was
too far away from those hills to be reached by a marksman in ambush, and
all about hung signs of plenty--drying venison and buffalo meat, and skins
of many kinds.

When they came within the circle of huts and tents, Paul was again
regarded by many curious eyes, and there might have been more attempts to
persecute him, but the chief, Red Eagle, kept them off.