THE HAIR BUYER TRAPPED

To lie the night on adamant, pierced by the needles of the frost; to
awake shivering and famished, until the meaning of an inch of ice on the
backwater comes to your mind,--these are not calculated to put a man into
an equable mood to listen to oratory. Nevertheless there was a kind of
oratory to fit the case. To picture the misery of these men is well-nigh
impossible. They stood sluggishly in groups, dazed by suffering, and
their faces were drawn and their eyes ringed, their beards and hair
matted. And many found it in their hearts to curse Clark and that
government for which he fought.

When the red fire of the sun glowed through the bare branches that
morning, it seemed as if the campaign had spent itself like an arrow
which drops at the foot of the mark. Could life and interest and
enthusiasm be infused again in such as these? I have ceased to marvel
how it was done. A man no less haggard than the rest, but with a
compelling force in his eyes, pointed with a blade to the hills across
the river. They must get to them, he said, and their troubles would be
ended. He said more, and they cheered him. These are the bare facts.
He picked a man here, and another there, and these went silently to a
grim duty behind the regiment.

"If any try to go back, shoot them down!" he cried.

Then with a gun-butt he shattered the ice and was the first to leap into
the water under it. They followed, some with a cheer that was most
pitiful of all. They followed him blindly, as men go to torture, but
they followed him, and the splashing and crushing of the ice were sounds
to freeze my body. I was put in a canoe. In my day I have beheld great