No help, no treatment of any kind was offered for hurts. The
Indians and renegades stood about and yelled with delight when
the agony of some man's wound wrung from him a groan. The scene
was hideous in every respect. The setting sun shone blood red
over forest, field, and river. Far off burning houses still
smoked like torches. But the mountain wall in the east, was
growing dusky with the coming twilight. From the island, where
they were massacring the fugitives in their vain hiding places,
came the sound of shots and cries, but elsewhere the firing had
ceased. All who could escape had done so already, and of the
others, those who were dead were fortunate.
The sun sank like a red ball behind the mountains, and darkness
swept down over the earth. Fires began to blaze up here and
there, some for terrible purpose. The victorious Iroquois;
stripped to the waist and painted in glaring colors, joined in a
savage dance that would remain forever photographed on the eye of
Paul Cotter. As they jumped to and fro, hundreds of them, waving
aloft tomahawks and scalping knives, both of which dripped red,
they sang their wild chant of war and triumph. White men, too,
as savage as they, joined them.
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