"I choose to remain," she said coldly.
"I choose that you shall not."
He waved his hand in unmistakable signal of release to the watchful False Faces and their followers. A yell of satisfaction swelled from their hungry throats, and they dashed forward. Indeed, so violent was their reaction from the restraint just imposed upon them that in the first mad rush a number of the younger men were carried beyond control of the evil priests and commenced to butcher the Senecas outright with knife and tomahawk.
Marjory shrank back and covered her eyes with her hands as a feather-tufted warrior ran up to Ta-wan-ne-ars and dangled a freshly severed scalp in his face.
"'Twill be difficult for me to control them at all in a few moments," observed Murray.
"Oh, you vile coward!" exclaimed Marjory, her own courage now regained. "I am steeped in shame whenever I remember that I have in my veins blood that is akin to yours."
"You are unreasonable, my mistress," he remonstrated. "I am giving the young man a chance for his life."
He addressed me directly.
"You will bear me out, Master Ormerod, that I warned you life on the frontier was not pretty. We who deal with savages must employ measures designed to strike their imaginations. We can not be overdainty. We——"
He looked up in amazement, as a mantle of silence enveloped the Council-Place for the second time.