With Bolling in active supervision and Tom hanging greedily on the flanks of the crowd, we were hustled through the clearing, past the chapel and an intervening belt of woodland, into a second and much larger open space, crammed with bark lodges and huts.
"A big village," I gasped to Ta-wan-ne-ars as I dodged a blow at my head.
"'Tis the haunt of the Keepers," he replied. "See, there are Adirondacks and Shawendadies, as well as Cahnuagas. And those yonder are Hurons from north of the Lakes."
Bolling slashed him across the face with a strip of raw-hide.
"Keep your breath for the torture-stake, you Iroquois cur!"
Ta-wan-ne-ars laughed at him.
"Red Jack can only fight with a whip," he said. "But when Ta-wan-ne-ars holds a tomahawk he runs."
Bolling struck at him again, but the restless horde of our tormenters pried the ruffian away as some new group pushed to the front to have a look at the prisoners and deal a blow or two. The throng became so dense that individual castigation was impossible, and we were tossed along like chips in a whirlpool.
In the end we were hurled, head over heels, into a natural amphitheater on the far side of the village, where a background of dark pines walled in a wide surface of hard-beaten, grassless ground. Two stakes stood ready, side by side, in the center, and our captors tore off our tattered clothes and lashed us to these with whoops of joy.
So we stood, naked and bound, ankle, knee, thigh, chest and armpit, whilst the sun, setting behind the village, flooded the inferno with mellow light and an army of fiends, men, women and children, pranced around us. For myself, I was dazed and fearful, but Ta-wan-ne-ars again showed me the better road.