Although Coacoochee had not understood all that had just been read to him, he comprehended that by a white man's law, an Indian might be whipped like a slave or a dog, and his blood boiled hotly at the mere thought of such an outrage. Still he replied to Salano's last question with dignity and a forced composure.
"The Iste-chatte has not been told of this law. It is a new one to him, and he has had no time to learn it. It was not put into the treaty. Coacoochee is the son of a chief. If you lift a hand against him, you lift it against the whole Seminole nation. If you strike him, the land will run red with white men's blood. If you kill him, his spirit will cry for vengeance, and no place can hide you from the fury of his warriors. They will not eat nor drink nor sleep till they have found you out, and torn the cowardly heart from your body."
"Oh come!" interrupted Salano, with an oath, "that will do. We don't want to hear any more from you. This Injun is evidently a dangerous character, gentlemen, and as a Justice of the Peace I shall deal with him according to the law. We'll whip him first, and if that isn't enough, we'll hang him afterwards."
The three men who accompanied Salano were his boon companions, and were equally ready with himself to perform any deed of cruelty or wickedness. They regarded an Indian as fair game, to be hunted and even killed wherever found. Nothing would please them better than a declaration of war against the Seminoles, and they were determined to leave nothing undone to hasten so desirable an event. To whip an Indian under cover of the law was rare sport, and the prospect of hanging him afterwards filled them with a brutal joy. So they readily obeyed the commands of their leader, and after fastening their horses by the roadside, they threw a slip-noose over Coacoochee's head, and drawing it close about his neck, led him a short distance within a grove of trees, to one of which they made fast the loose end of the rope. He was thus allowed to step a couple of paces in each direction. Ripping his tunic from the neck downward with a knife, they stripped it from his back, and all was in readiness for their devilish deed. Their rifles had been left hanging to their saddles, but each man had brought a raw-hide riding-whip with him, and these they now proposed to apply to the bare back of their silent and unresisting victim.
"Ten cuts apiece, gentlemen!" cried Salano, with a ferocious laugh. "That'll make the thirty-nine allowed by law, and one over for good measure. I take great credit to myself for the idea of making the prisoner fast by the neck only, and that with a slip-noose. He's got plenty of room to dance, and if he looses his footing and hangs himself, why, that'll be his lookout and not ours. At any rate, it will be a good riddance of the varmint, and will relieve us from further responsibility in the matter. I claim the first cut at him; so stand back and give me room."
As the others moved back a few paces, the chief ruffian stepped up to the young Indian, and laying the raw hide across the bared shoulders as though to measure the width of the blow he was about to inflict, he lifted it high above his head, saying as he did so:
"You'll cut my heart out, will you, Injun? We'll see now who is going to do the cutting."
Then with a vicious hiss, the raw hide swept down with the full force of the arm that wielded it.
There was no outcry and no movement on the part of the Indian, only his flesh shrunk and quivered beneath the cruel blow, which left a livid stripe across his shoulders.
That blow was to be paid for with hundreds of innocent lives, and millions of dollars. It was to be felt throughout the length and breadth of the land, and was to be atoned by rivers of blood. In a single instant its fearful magic transformed the young Indian who received it, from a quiet, peace-loving youth, with a generous, affectionate nature, into a savage warrior, relentless and pitiless. It gave to the Seminoles a leader whose very name should become a terror to their enemies, and it precipitated one of the cruellest and most stubbornly contested Indian wars ever waged on American soil.