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.
I nodded, took food, and went alone to eat. I sat there a long time. Cadillac came toward me once as if to speak, but looked at me and turned away.
At last I had made up my mind, and I went to the hut where I had left Pemaou. It had taken time to fight down my longing for even combat with him, but I knew that I must not risk that, for I needed to keep my life for a time. So I would try for speech with him first, and then he should die. And since he must die helpless, he must die as painlessly as possible. Physical revenge had become abominable to me. It was inadequate.
I entered the hut. Pemaou's figure lay, face downward, on the floor. It had a rigidity that did not come from the thongs that bound it. I turned it over. The Indian's throat was cut. Life had flowed out of the red, horrible opening.
I think that I cursed at the dead man. Corpse that he was, he had tricked me again, for I had hoped, against reason, to force information from him. Death had not dignified his wolfish face. He had died, as he had lived, a snarling animal, whose sagacity was that of the brute. And I had lost with him this time, as I had lost before, by taking thought, and so losing time. An animal does not hesitate, and he is a fool who deliberates in dealing with him. I tasted desolation as I stood there.
A moccasin stepped behind me. "I killed him," said Singing Arrow's voice.