When one's accusers are honest, their scorn hurts, hurts more than any other wound we are capable of receiving. Ambrose was of the type that rages against a hurt. At present, for all he was outwardly so pale and still, he was deafened and blinded by rage.
It was now full daylight. An extraordinary picture faced the watchers from the doorway—the ruined store in the background, the grotesque crew hanging to the fence palings.
Their ordinary rags were covered with layers of misfit clothing out of the store, while many of them wore several hats, and others had extra pairs of shoes hanging around their necks.
There was a great display of gaudy silk handkerchiefs. Pockets bulged with small articles of loot, and nearly every man lugged some particular treasure according to his fancy, whether it was an alarm clock or a glass pitcher or a bolt of red flannel.
The younger men, still susceptible to gallantry, mostly were burdened with crushed articles of feminine finery, gaily trimmed hats, red or blue shawls, fancy satin bodices, corsets with the strings dangling.
The faces, after a night of unbridled license, showed dull and slack in the daylight.
Myengeen, whom Ambrose had marked earlier as a leader of the mob, gripped his hand at the gate and cried out with hypocritical joy. Others crowded around, those who could not obtain his hands, stroking his sleeves and fawning upon him.
There was an ironical note in the demonstration. Ambrose observed that the majority of the Indians looked on indifferently. He smelted treachery in the air.
The mob, facing about, started to move in open order toward the river. Ambrose, as they opened up, caught sight of the two dead bodies. It afflicted him with a dull at the pit of the stomach—these were the first deaths by violence he had witnessed.
They still lay where they had fallen—the Indian sprawling in the middle of a black stain on the platform; Tole huddled on the bare earth of the quadrangle. Ambrose's heart sank at the thought of returning to Simon Grampierre with the gift of a dead son.