For that matter, I was regarded as already ended when they tore my assailant from my body and shattered him to death with their hatchets and knives, pistoling him again and again while he still quivered in the long grass.
As for me, I appeared to be quite dead, and whether to bury me there or in some kinder spot, none could determine, while the dear maid I loved lay senseless in Black Betty's arms.
As it was afterwards told to me in the saddest days of my life, so I tell what now befell the rescued, the rescuers, and that scarcely palpitating body o' mine, the soul of which floated on the dark borderland of Death. For it came to happen that dawn, lurking behind the eastern hills, set dull signals of fire on every western peak, warning Mount and Renard that day was on their trail to bare it for all who chose to follow.
My senseless sweetheart they bore to the waiting chaise, and, my body still retaining some warmth, they bore that, too, because they dared not bury me before she had seen me dead with her own eyes.
All that day they rode west by north, climbing the vast divide, halting to lie perdu when their keen ears heard movements all unseen, pushing on to tear the path free while their axes rang out among the windfalls. Then, when the western sun sank beyond the Ohio into the sea of trees, the winds of the east filled their nostrils and the long divide had been passed at last.
That night my dear love opened her eyes, and the darkness that enchained her fell, so that she crept to my feet as I lay in a corner of the chaise and laid her head on my knees.
Whether she thought me alive or dead none knew. Betty had bared my body to the waist and washed it. For a corpse they do as much. Later, without hope, Mount brought a pannikinful of blue-balsam gum, pricked from the globules on the trunk, and when Betty had once more washed me, they filled the long gashes with the balsam and closed them decently, strip on strip, with the fine cambric shift which my sweetheart tore from her own body.
Later, when the moon was coming up, they carried me lying in a blanket, my sweetheart walking beside me, and her silken shoon in tatters till her feet bled at every step, but refused to go back to the chaise. That night they thought me surely dead and watched without sleep lest the rigidity of dissolution surprise me ere my limbs had been laid straight. But the morning found me as I was, and the first shadow of night revealed no change, nor was I dead on the next morning, nor on the next, nor yet the next.
A still Sabbath in the forest, passed amid the sad twilight of the trees, gave them hope; for I had opened my eyes, though I saw nothing. But that night Death sat at my right hand, and the next night Death cradled my head; and my dear love lay at my feet and looked Death steadily in the eyes.
The fever which loosened every muscle burned fiercely all night long, and my voice broke out from my body like a demon mocking within me. A few of the Lenape, roaming near, followed and shot at us towards dawn, driving us north into the forest, where the chaise was abandoned, the traces cut, and the horses loaded with corn.