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.
But I fell back. I could not. I could not. Three hundred lives for one life. I could spill my own blood for her, but not theirs.