the door-yard and banking in front of it on the street. Behind all a
tragedy impended, nor can I think of it now without sickening.

The frightened Creoles in the street gave back against the fence, and
from behind them, issuing as a storm-cloud came the half of Williams'
company, yelling like madmen. Pushed and jostled ahead of them were four
Indians decked and feathered, the half-dried scalps dangling from their
belts, impassive, true to their creed despite the indignity of jolts and
jars and blows. On and on pressed the mob, gathering recruits at every
corner, and when they reached St. Xavier's before the fort half the
regiment was there. Others watched, too, from the stockade, and what
they saw made their knees smite together with fear. Here were four
bronzed statues in a row across the street, the space in front of them
clear that their partisans in the fort might look and consider. What was
passing in the savage mind no man might know. Not a lip trembled nor an
eye faltered when a backwoodsman, his memory aflame at sight of the
pitiful white scalps on their belts, thrust through the crowd to curse
them. Fletcher Blount, frenzied, snatched his tomahawk from his side.

"Sink, varmint!" he cried with a great oath. "By the etarnal! we'll pay
the H'ar Buyer in his own coin. Sound your drums!" he shouted at the
fort. "Call the garrison fer the show."

He had raised his arm and turned to strike when the savage put up his
hand, not in entreaty, but as one man demanding a right from another.
The cries, the curses, the murmurs even, were hushed. Throwing back his
head, arching his chest, the notes of a song rose in the heavy air.
Wild, strange notes they were, that struck vibrant chords in my own
quivering being, and the song was the death-song. Ay, and the life-song
of a soul which had come into the world even as mine own. And somewhere