The retreat
had become a rout and then a massacre. The savages raged up and
down in the greatest killing they had known since Braddock's
defeat. The lodges of the Iroquois would be full of the scalps
of white men.
All the five felt the full horror of the scene, but it made its
deepest impress, perhaps, upon Paul. He had taken part in border
battles before, but this was the first great defeat. He was not
blind to the valor and good qualities of the Indian and his claim
upon the wilderness, but he saw the incredible cruelties that he
could commit, and he felt a horror of those who used him as an
ally, a horror that he could never dismiss from his mind as long
as he lived.
"Look!" he exclaimed, "look at that!"
A man of seventy and a boy of fourteen were running for the
forest. They might have been grandfather and grandson.
Undoubtedly they had fought in the Battalion of the Very Old and
the Very Young, and now, when everything else was lost, they were
seeking to save their lives in the friendly shelter of the woods.
But they were pursued by two groups of Iroquois, four warriors in
one, and three in the other, and the Indians were gaining fast.
"I reckon we ought to save them," said Shif'less Sol.
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