ed
among the living.

All the loathsome and filthy side of war seemed concentrated around the
barn-yard, where sleepy, unshaven, half-dressed soldiers were burning
the under-clothes of a man who had died of the black measles; while a
great, brawny fellow, naked to the waist and smeared from hair to ankles
with blood, butchered sheep, so that the army might eat that day.

The thick stench of the burning clothing, the odor of blood, the piteous
bleating of the doomed creatures sickened me; and I made my way out of
the barn and down to the river, where I stripped and waded out to wash
me and my clothes.

A Caughnawaga soldier gave me a bit of soap; and I spent the morning
there. By noon the fierce heat of the sun had dried my clothes; by two
o'clock our small scout of four left the Stanwix and Johnstown road and
struck out through the unbroken wilderness for German Flatts.

XIX

THE HOME TRAIL

For eleven days we lay at German Flatts, Colonel Visscher begging us to
aid in the defence of that threatened village until the women and
children could be conveyed to Johnstown. But Sir John Johnson remained
before Stanwix, and McCraw's riders gave the village wide berth, and on
the 18th of August we set out for Varicks'.

Warned by our extreme outposts, we bore to the south, forced miles out
of our course to avoid the Oneida country, where a terrific little war
was raging. For the Senecas, Cayugas, a few Mohawks, and McCraw's
renegade Tories, furious at the neutral and pacific attitude of the
Oneidas towards our people, had suddenly fallen upon them, tooth and
nail, vowing that the Oneida nation should perish from the earth for
their treason to the Long House.

We skirted the doomed region cautiously, touching here and there the
fringe of massacre and fire, often scenting smoke, sometimes hearing a
distant shot. Once we encountered an Oneida runner, painted blue and
white, and naked save for the loin-cloth, who told us of the civil war
that was already rending the Long House; and I then understood more
fully what Magdalen Brant had done for our cause, and how far-reaching
had been the effects of her appearance at the False-Faces' council-fire.

The Oneida appeared to be disheartened. He sullenly admitted to us that
the Cayugas had scattered his people and laid their village in ashes; he
cursed McCraw fiercely and promised a dreadful retaliation on any
renegade captured. He also described the fate of the Oriskany pri