Part 9 (2/2)
He was thrown across a horse and brought back to the village What a chorus of triumph went up fro hi of wolfish ferocity in it But the Bannock only srimly
He is bound to a post,--a charred, bloodstained post to which others of his race have been bound before him The women and children taunt him, jeer at him, strike him even The warriors do not They will presently doa fire near by; others bring pieces of flint, spear points, jagged fragments of rock, and heat them in it The prisoner, dusty, torn, parched with thirst, and bleeding from many wounds, looks on with perfect indifference Snoqualazes at hily unconscious of his presence
By and by a band of hunters ride up fro of the trouble With the the tribe He rides up with his Cayuse co in a lively way The jest dies on his lips when he recognizes the Bannock who is tied to the stake Before he can even think of flight, he is dragged from his horse and bound,--his whilo his bitterest assailants
For it is war again, war to the death between the tribes, until, two centuries later, both shall alike be crushed by the white th the preparations are co around and taunting the captives, are brushed aside like soBannock who has just come in is put where he lance passes between thee to die bravely Snoqualives directions for the torture to begin
The Bannock is stripped The stone blades that have been in the fire are brought, all red and gloith heat, and pressed against his bare flesh It burns and hisses under the fiery torture, but the warrior only sneers
”It doesn't hurt; you can't hurt me You are fools You don't kno to torture”[4]
No refine a complaint from him It was in vain that they burned hiers, branded his cheek with the heated bowl of the pipe he had broken
”Try it again,” he said ly, while his flesh sreat deal better, for we make them cry out like little children”
More and rew the wrath of his torain and again weapons were lifted to slay him, but Snoqualmie put them back
”He can suffer limpse into the cold, merciless heart of the man Other and fiercer tortures were devised by the chief, who stood over hiiven, the bitterest pang inflicted on that burned and broken body At last it see, scorched,to the stake; only the lips still breathed defiance and the eyes glea upon one and another, he boasted of how he had slain their friends and relatives Many of his boasts were undoubtedly false, but they were very bitter
”It was by my arrow that you lost your eye,” he said to one; ”I scalped your father,” to another; and every taunt provoked counter-taunts accoth he looked at Snoqualured, that it was like so seen in a horrible dream
”I took your sister prisoner last winter; you never knew,--you thought she had wandered from home and was lost in a storue, and then we told her to go out in the snow and find food Ah-h-h! you should have seen her tears as she went out into the storm, and----”
The sentence was never finished While the last word lingered on his lips, his body sunk into a lifeless heap under a terrific blow, and Snoqualmie put back his blood-stained tomahawk into his belt
”Shall we kill the other?” de Bannock, who had been a stoical spectator of his cos A ferocious claestion of new torture; they thronged around the captive, the children struck him, the women abused him, spat upon him even, but not a muscle of his face quivered; he merely looked at them with stolid indifference
”Kill him, kill him!” ”Stretch him on red hot stones!” ”We will make _him_ cry!”
Snoqualmie hesitated He wished to save this man for another purpose, and yet the Indian blood-thirst was on him; chief and warrior alike were drunken with fury, mad with the lust of cruelty
As he hesitated, a white h the crowd Silence fell upon the throng; the cla of the warriors ceased
The personality of thisand coe nature Amid the silence, he ca motionless from the stake, then sorrowfully, reproachfully, at the circle of faces around An expression half of sullen shame, half of defiance, crossed lance fell upon it
”Friends,” said he, sadly, pointing at the dead, ”is this your peace with the Bannocks,--the peace you prayed the Great Spirit to bless, the peace that was to last forever?”
”The Bannocks sent back the peace-pipe by this man, and he broke it and cast the pieces in our teeth,” answered one, stubbornly
”And you slew hi why it was returned, and deht it? Now there will be war When you lie down to sleep at night, the surprise may be on you and massacre coone on the buffalo trail the tomahawk may fall on the women and children at home
Death will lurk for you in every thicket and creep round every encary because you have stained your hands in blood without cause”