The Two Victims.
If ever a spectacle of hell let loose was vouchsafed to mortal eye, assuredly it must have borne a strong family likeness to that presented by the Indian village, as Vipan and the three chiefs stepped gravely outside the teepe to see what was going on.
A wild, roaring, yelling crowd came surging into the open space where stood the council-lodge. Bucks and squaws, children and dogs, all mingled together in a motley mass, whooping, laughing, chattering and grinning. A sea of wild excited faces, the crowd poured onward, gathering as it rolled. Then the cause of all this excitement became discernible. In the front of the throng, in the centre of a group of yelling squaws, hustled, beaten, kicked, dragged along by the bloodthirsty harpies, were two white men. Their arms were tightly bound behind their backs, but their feet were tied so as to enable them to make short steps. They had been stripped naked, and their bodies, already lacerated with many a weal, and bruised from the switches and clubs of their tormentors, were plentifully besmeared with their own blood.
“Wagh, Golden Face!” exclaimed Sitting Bull, with grim humour. “Our squaws seem to handle your countrymen very tenderly.”
The adventurer made no reply. Even he felt his heart sicken within him at the thought of the hideous fate these two wretched men were about to undergo. Yet drawn by an uncontrollable impulse, he found himself moving beside the three Indians, who were strolling leisurely in the direction taken by the crowd. Not that his red friends manifested any interest in the proceedings. The torture of helpless prisoners was sport for boys and squaws, and unworthy of the attention of great chiefs or warriors of renown. Still, with the characteristic weakness of their race to witness anything unusual, they followed the crowd.
As the latter thundered along the open space, the inmates of the clustering groups of teepes on either side poured forth to swell its ranks. Young bucks would dart out in front, and execute a series of leaps in the air, uttering shrill whoops, and even the river was dotted with bull-boats, as the inhabitants of the villages on the opposite bank crowded over in hundreds to see the fun. Knives were flourished in the prisoners’ faces, kicks and slaps were their portion at every step; indeed, it almost seemed that the ill-usage of the infuriated mob would mercifully end their sufferings before they should reach the terrible stake. Something of this seemed to strike their tormentors themselves, for all of a sudden a compact band of young bucks charged into the mass, drove back the yelling squaws, and seizing the two unhappy wretches, dragged them forward at a smart run.
Just outside the village was a clear space. Here a couple of stout posts, eight or nine feet high, had been driven into the ground about a dozen yards apart.
And now Vipan had an opportunity of estimating the strength of the band or bands into whose midst he had so involuntarily penetrated. Far along the river-banks on either side, extending a distance of five or six miles, the tall lodges stood in lines and clusters among the thin belt of timber which lined the stream. These and the village behind him, roughly reckoning, he estimated to represent some four or five thousand warriors. Overhead the great mountains shot up their craggy heads, blasted into a score of fantastic shapes, frowning down upon the barbarous scene like grim tutelaries of destruction.
The two miserable men were backed against the posts and firmly secured, their arms being drawn up high above their heads and stretched to the utmost. Powerless to move a limb, they were ready for the torturers.
Suddenly a piercing cry for help burst from one of them. In it Vipan recognised his own name.