“Simon Girty, even though your skin is the color of the despised paleface, you have renounced your people and become one of us. You are even more bloodthirsty and cruel than the bloodiest warrior that roams the primeval forest. What say you? Spit it out.”
“Burn him to the stake,” growled Girty.
“Good! It shall be done. Lift him and tie him, standing, with his back to a stout sapling. Here’s another hunk of rope.”
The captive, although somewhat recovered, made resistance when they raised him from the ground and dragged him to the sapling.
“Go ahead with your funny business, you onery coyotes!” he exclaimed. “I opine I know you all, in spite of your rigs; and when I promise to get even a plenty I certain mean it.”
Scoffing at him, they tied him fast, and then piled in a circle about his feet a mass of dry leaves and broken branches, taking care, however, that this combustible material did not touch him by a foot or more.
“We’ll toast him gently at first,” chuckled King Philip. “When a victim is too quickly burned at the stake it is a sad mistake, for it ends our fiendish joys all too soon. Apply the torch.”
Girty seized a burning stick of wood and touched it to the leaves near the prisoner’s feet. The fire blazed up and began creeping round the circle of combustible material. The heat of the flames reached the helpless boy’s face and hands, while the smoke filled his eyes and nostrils, making him choke and gasp. In a moment King Philip, Tecumpseh, Osceola, and Girty, the renegade, were dancing and whooping around Rod Grant, flourishing their tomahawks and knives.
From the midst of the enveloping mass of smoke and sparks came a harsh voice, vibrant with intense rage:
“Whoop it up, you skunks! You’d better carry the game through and finish me, for if you don’t I’ll make every one of you dance a different jig before long!”