“To the woods?”

“The woman is in the woods.  She must have gone at the first alarm.  I cannot find her here.”

“Ask the captives.  They will know.”

“It is useless to ask them.  They will not speak now.  It is a code.  I am going to the woods.  Send what soldiers you can to search with me.”

“Shall I send Indians with you, too?”

“Not now.  They are useless now.  They could trail nothing.  Let me go.”

He followed like a father.  “You will come back?”

“Yes, I will come back.”

But I had three things to do before I was free to go to the woods.  To go to the woods where I would find the woman.

I searched for the Miami slave woman.  She was dead.  That cut my last hope of news.

I saw that Pemaou was still well bound, and I had him carried into a hut to await my orders.

I went to Pierre’s body.  Singing Arrow still wailed beside it, and cried out that it should not be moved.  I told her the soldiers would obey her orders, and carry it where she wished.

But there was a fourth matter.  I spoke to Dubisson, and my tongue was furry and cold.

“See that watch is kept on the bags of scalps for European hair.”

Then I went to the woods.

CHAPTER XXXI

THE UNDESERVED

There were birds in the woods, and soft breezes.  Squirrels chattered at me, and I saw flowers.  And sometimes I saw blood on trampled moss where fugitives had been before.

I called, and fired my arquebus.  I whistled, for that sound carried far.  Since that day the sound of a whistle is terrible to me.  It means despair.

Soldiers, grave-faced, respectful, followed me.

They were faint for food, and sore and sick from warfare, but they came with me without protest.  They gave me the deference we show a mourner in a house of death.  I turned to them in a rage.

“Make more noise.  Laugh.  Talk.  Be natural.  I command you.”

We divided the woods among us, like game-beaters in a thicket, and went over the ground foot by foot.  We found nothing.  The birds sang and the sun went higher.  Though the woods were pure and clean I could smell blood everywhere.  In time a man dropped from exhaustion.  At that I gave the word to go back to camp.

The camp itself was less terrible than the memories that had been with me as I walked through the unsullied woods.  The wounded were cared for and the dead buried.  The Indians were gathered around their separate fires, chanting, feeding, bragging, and sleeping.  The French had made a camp at one side, and they, too, were seeking comfort through food and sleep.  Life was progressing as if the mutilated dead had never been.

We had succeeded, Cadillac assured me.  All the Senecas were dead or captured and our total loss, French and savage, was only seventy-five men.  We had but few wounded, and the surgeon said they would recover.