“They are at the trees!” she cried. “White Chief’s knife shall not strip the captives’ skins off. Alaska’s head is hot now, and her wolves must drink of the white man’s blood.”
The last sentence was uttered while she bounded from the village, followed by the nine remaining wolves of her once invincible band.
“Strip the white louts!” commenced Jim Girty, furious with hellish anticipation, as he halted on one of the wooded hills crowned by a large concourse of women and children, whose whetted knives and repulsive faces told how eager they were to dye their hands in the captives’ blood.
To the waists our three friends were hurriedly stripped, and bound to as many trees.
The squaws had built several large fires, which lent a tragic coloring that is indescribable to the nocturnal scene, and it was with great difficulty on the part of Girty and the Prophet, that they could be restrained from rushing upon the prisoners in a body and hacking them to pieces. But the renegade threw a line of warriors between them and the trees, and impatiently awaited the completion of the stripping process.
“Now!” he shouted, with fiendish glee, springing forward at last with the saw-blade flashing above his head, “I will skin the Giant devil, and then the Shawnees can torture the red traitor, and the weakling!”
Hewitt regarded the renegade with a calm look, as he strode forward, hissing his triumph from between clenched teeth.
“I told you so, you giant white dog. Now for a square inch of your accursed hide.”
The ragged blade descended; it had touched Hewitt’s breast, and was red with his blood, when a shout greeted the renegade’s ears.