The trail was but a short distance away, and
the moon was bright. The fierce Indian chant swelled, and
presently the most .singular figure that either had ever seen
came into view.
The figure was that of an Indian woman, but lighter in color than
most of her kind. She was middle-aged, tall, heavily built, and
arrayed in a strange mixture of civilized and barbaric finery,
deerskin leggins and moccasins gorgeously ornamented with heads,
a red dress of European cloth with a red shawl over it, and her
head bare except for bright feathers, thrust in her long black
hair, which hung loosely down her back. She held in one hand a
large sharp tomahawk, which she swung fiercely in time to her
song. Her face had the rapt, terrible expression of one who had
taken some fiery and powerful drug, and she looked neither to
right nor to left as she strode on, chanting a song of blood, and
swinging the keen blade.
Henry and Shif'less Sol shuddered. They had looked upon terrible
human figures, but nothing so frightful as this, a woman with the
strength of a man and twice his rage and cruelty. There was
something weird and awful in the look of that set, savage face,
and the tone of that Indian chant.
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