He had the child in his arms, and called to the boy:
“Come, fast now! Go as near as you can to where you left her.”
They ran forward through the gray smoke, stepping over and around bodies as they went. When they reached the first of the women he would have stopped to search, but the boy led him on, pointing. And then, half-way up the line, a little to the right of the road, at the edge of the cedars, his eye caught the glimpse of a great mass of yellow hair on the ground. She seemed to have been only wounded, for, as he looked, she was up on her knees striving to stand.
He ran faster, leaving the boy behind now, but while he was still far off, he saw an Indian, knife in hand, run to her and strike her down. Then before he had divined the intent, the savage had gathered the long hair into his left hand, made a swift circling of the knife with his right,—and the thing was done before his eyes. He screamed in terror as he ran, and now he was near enough to be heard. The Indian at his cry arose and for one long second shook, almost in his face as he came running up, the long, shining, yellow hair with the gory patch at the end. Before his staring eyes, the hair was twisting, writhing, and undulating,—like a golden flame licking the bronzed arm that held it. And then, as he reached the spot, the Indian, with a long yell of delight and a final flourish of his trophy, ran off to other prizes.
He stood a moment, breathless and faint, looking with fearful eyes down at the little, limp, still figure at his feet. One slender, bare arm was flung out as if she had grasped at the whole big earth in her last agony.
The spell of fear was broken by the boy, who came trotting up. He had given way to his tears now, and was crying loudly from fright. Joel made him take the little girl and sit under a cedar out of sight of the spot.
Chapter XVIII.
In the Dark of the Aftermath
He was never able to recall the events of that day, or of the months following, in anything like their proper sequence. The effort to do so brought a pain shooting through his head. Up to the moment when the yellow hair had waved in his face, everything had kept a ghastly distinctness. He remembered each instant and each emotion. After that all was dark confusion, with only here and there a detached, inconsequent memory of appalling vividness.
He could remember that he had buried her on the other side of the hill where a gnarled cedar grew at the foot of a ledge of sandstone, using a spade that an Indian had brought him from the deserted camp. By her side he had found the scattered contents of the little bundle she had carried,—a small Bible, a locket, a worn gold bracelet, and a picture of herself as he had known her, a half-faded daguerreotype set in a gilt oval, in a square rubber case that shut with a snap. The little limp-backed Bible had lain flung open on the ground in the midst of the other trinkets. He remembered picking these things up and retying them in the blue silk handkerchief, and then he had twice driven away an Indian who, finding no other life, came up to kill the two children huddled at the foot of the cedar.
He recalled that he had at some time passed the two wagons; one of them was full of children, some crying, some strangely quiet and observant. The other contained the wounded men whom Lee and the two drivers had dispatched where they lay.