The Yellow Chief, who had strayed among them coming from afar, who had married the belle of their tribe—the beautiful daughter of their “medicine man”—who surpassed all of them in his hatred of the white race, and more than once had led them in a like murderous maraud against their hereditary enemies was the man after their heart, the type of a patriotic savage.
Now, more than ever, had he secured their esteem; now, as they saw him, with cruel, unsparing hand, deal out castigation to their pale-faced captives; a punishment so quaintly original, and so terribly painful, that they would not have believed in it, but for the cries of keen agony uttered by those who had to endure it.
To Cheyenne ears they were sounds so sweet and welcome, as to awake the intoxicated from their alcoholic slumbers, and call them up to become sharers in the spectacle. Drunk and sober alike danced over the ground, as if they had been so many demons exhibiting their saltatory skill upon the skull-paved, floors of Acheron.
Nor was their laughter restrained when they saw that the punishment, hitherto confined to their male captives, was about to be extended to the women. On the contrary, it but increased their fiendish glee. It would be a variety in the performance—a new sensation—to see how the latter should stand it.
And they did see; for several of the female slaves—some of them still young, others almost octogenarian “aunties”—were ruthlessly led up to the stake, to that martyrdom of water painful as fire itself!
Chapter Sixteen.
The White Women.
For more than two hours was the fiendish spectacle kept up—a tragedy of many acts; though, as yet, none of them ending in death.