The Seer frowned.
"Brave men only weep with tears of blood," he said.
Black-deer fell back a step to make room for the widows, who stood motionless and gloomy behind him; they then advanced.
"We are ready," they said, "if our father will permit us, we will bewail our husbands as they deserve."
"Do so," he answered; "the Master of Life sees it, and he will smile on your grief."
Then, a strange scene occurred, which only Indian stoicism could endure without shuddering with horror; these women, arming themselves with knives, cut off several joints of their fingers without uttering a complaint; then, not contented with this sacrifice, they began scarring their faces, arms, and bosoms, so that the blood soon ran down their whole bodies, and they became horrible to look upon. The seer excited and encouraged them by his remarks to give their husbands this proof of their regret, and their exaltation soon attained such a pitch of delirium, that they would eventually have killed themselves, had not the sorcerer checked them. Their companions then approached, took away their weapons, and dragged them off. When they had finally left the spot, the sorcerer addressed the warriors standing motionless and attentive before him—
"The blood shed by the Apache warriors has been ransomed by the Comanche squaws," he said; "the ground is saturated with it; grief can now give way to joy, and my brothers enter their village with heads erect, for the Master of Life is satisfied."
Then taking from the hands of the hachesto the totem which the latter had been waving round his head, he stationed himself on the right hand of Black-deer, and entered the village with the warriors, amid the deafening shouts of the crowd, and to the sound of the instruments which had recommenced their infernal charivari.
The procession marched straight to the great square where the scalp dance was to take place. Loyal Heart and his comrades desired most eagerly to escape this ceremony; but it would have been a great insult to the Indians to do so, and they were compelled to follow the warriors, whether they liked it or not. On passing before the hunter's rancho, they noticed that all the windows were hermetically closed. Doña Jesuita, not at all desirous to witness the cruel sight, had shut herself up; but No Eusebio, whose nerves were probably harder, was standing in the doorway, carelessly smoking his cigarette, and watching the procession defile, which, by Loyal Heart's orders, he had preceded by a few moments, in order to reassure Doña Jesuita as to the result of the engagement.
When the whole tribe had assembled on the square, the scalp dance commenced. In our previous works we have had occasion to describe this ceremony, so we will say nothing of it here, except that, contrary to the other dances, it is performed by the squaws, and that on this occasion it was Black-deer's newly-married wife who led the dance, in her quality of squaw of the Chief who had commanded the expedition.