So long as daylight lasted we moved with some regularity in spite of the rough ground.  Then, knowing we were drawing nearer the Senecas, we began to slip from tree to tree.  The Indians did this like phantoms, and the French troops imitated.  Three hundred men went through the forest, and sometimes a twig cracked.  There was no other sound.  We went for some time.  We heard owls hoot around us, and knew they might be watch cries.  Still we went on.  We went till I felt the ground rise steadily under my groping feet.  The Seneca stronghold was on an eminence.  I gave the signal to drop where we were and wait for day.

We melted into the shadows, and lay rigid while the stars looked down.  The savage next me slept.  His war club lay by his side and I felt of it in the dark.  It was made of a deer’s horn, shaped like a cutlass; it had a large ball at the end.  The ball was heavy and jagged, and would crush a skull.

There were hundreds of such clubs.  In a few hours they would be in use.  And the woman was in camp.

My right arm was free from the sling and I dug my hands together.  I could feel the blood running in my palms, and I checked myself.  If I injured my hands how could I save the woman?

But nothing could save the woman.

I had given commands to spare all whites and to torture no one.  But Pierre was right.  I was a fool to have pretended, even to myself, that I thought the savages listened.

A fool can do harm enough, but a cowardly, soft-hearted man is the most dangerous of knaves.  I might have killed Pemaou when I threw the spear at him; I might have killed him the night before my wedding in the Pottawatamie camp.  I had withheld my hand because it was disagreeable to me to kill.  And now the woman’s life was to pay the forfeit of my lax softness.  I rolled in my agony, and bit the ground till my mouth was full of leaf mould.

A planet swung from one tree-top to the next.  What lay behind it?  She would know soon.  But I could not follow her where she was going.  I should live.  I knew that.  When Death is courted he will not strike.  I had seen that in battle.

That first morning when she had come to me with the sunrise,—­when she had drifted to me, bound and singing,—­I had called to her to have no fear, that no harm should come to her.  And she had trusted me.

She had a little hollow in her brown throat where I had watched the breath flutter.  I had never touched it.

I could thank God for her, for one thing.  She had refused my kiss.

I saw the planet again, tipping another tree-top.  I understood its remoteness; in my agony I was part of it.  What were men, countries, empires!  I felt the insignificance of life, of suffering.  What did it matter if these Indians died!  Why should we not all die?  I crawled to my knees.  I would give the signal to retreat.  I would give it now.  Let the massacre come.