This was a futile hope.
They paused about two miles and a half from the place where my boys were. With a vain effort at being heard, I gave vent to a loud shout. A burly Indian struck me heavily across the mouth to silence what he haply considered my bravado. "I was a white brave, and I knew that I must die." It was natural red-skin reasoning.
Then spitting in my face, he spoke briefly in their guttural tongue, and in a few moments more I had been stripped of all my clothing, and compelled to stand with my feet about twenty inches apart. Stakes were driven into the earth by the side of these, to which my legs were tightly lashed. Then, planting in the ground other stakes at a short distance, my arms were extended at full length, and bound to them. A cord around my neck was fastened to another stake in my rear. In addition to this, two sharpened stakes were planted directly under my arm-pits. It was thus rendered almost impossible for me, even to stir.
No sooner had this been effected, than the entertainment, for such they evidently considered it, commenced.
The Mahalas or squaws had been pointing splinters of grease-wood, about three inches in length. As the braves danced round me, whooping, yelling, or singing one of their wild war-songs, the squaws would strike the pointed splinters into my flesh and leave them sticking in it. After somewhat wearying of their share in this cheerful pandemonium, the braves would squat upon the earth and rest, while their squaws subjected me to more horrible torture than the mind of the white could conceive without personal experience. Human excrement was thrust in my face, and rubbed over my mouth. When they would pause awhile, it seemed as if they were only trying to invent some more disgusting and possibly more painful mode of torture.
"The braves would squat upon the earth and rest, while their squaws subjected me to more horrible tortures than the mind could conceive without personal experience."—Page 141.
But what is the use of prolonging such a recital?
This infernal orgy was kept up until night set in, when the climax of their devilish fury was capped by their taking burning brands from the fires which had been kindled, and igniting the splinters of grease-wood which they had thrust in my body.