The squaws and warriors danced round the prisoners, and in passing before them, each, whether a man or woman, cut off a strip of flesh with long, sharp scalping knives. In making these wounds, the Comanches employed the utmost precaution to prevent the knives running too deep into the flesh, lest the victims should run the chance of dying at once, which would have unpleasantly modified the intention of the Indians, by depriving them of a sight from which they promised themselves so much pleasure.
The Apaches smiled on their torturers, and excited them still more by telling them that they did not know how to treat their prisoners; that their wounds were only so many mosquito stings; that the Apaches were far more skilful; and that the many Comanche prisoners they had made endured in their tribe much more atrocious sufferings.
The unfortunate men were in a pitiable state: their bodies were only one wound, from which the blood streamed. The Comanches grew excited and rage seized upon them, on hearing the insults of their enemies. A woman rushed all at once on one of the prisoners whose words were the bitterest, and with her sharp and curved talons tore out his eyes, which she swallowed on the spot, saying to him—
"Dog, you shall not see the sun again."
"You have torn out my eyes, but left me my tongue," the prisoner replied, with a smile rendered more hideous by the two empty and bleeding sockets. "'Twas I who devoured the quivering heart of your son, Running-water, when he entered my calli to steal horses. Do what you please, I am revenged beforehand!"
The woman, exasperated by this last insult, rushed upon him and buried her knife in his heart. The Apache burst into a hoarse laugh, which suddenly changed into the death rattle, and fell a corpse while uttering the words—
"I said truly that you do not know how to torture your prisoners—dogs, rabbits, thieves!"
The Comanches doubled their fury on the wretched victims, incessantly hacking and stabbing them, and though the majority were dead already, they did not leave off till they had destroyed all appearance of humanity. The scalps were then raised, and the victims thrown into the fire prepared for them.
The Comanches danced and howled round this fire until their voice and strength failed them, and they fell exhausted, in spite of the drums and chichikouis. The men and women, stretched on the ground pell-mell, soon fell asleep, in that strange state of intoxication produced by the odour of the blood shed during this atrocious butchery.
Valentine, despite the almost insurmountable disgust this scene had occasioned him, did not wish to retire, as he feared lest Black Cat might be massacred by the Comanches in a moment of mad fury. This precaution was not vain: several times, had he not resolutely interfered, the Apache chief would also have been sacrificed to the hatred of his enemies, who had attained a paroxysm of fury impossible to describe.