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Altsheler, Joseph A. (Joseph Alexander), 1862-1919

"The Scouts of the Valley"

You are far from your own land, a guest in our lodges,
and you cannot tell those who have won the victory how they shall
use it. Stand back!"
A loud laugh came from the Iroquois. The fierce old chiefs,
Hiokatoo and Sangerachte, and a dozen warriors thrust themselves
before Timmendiquas. The woman resumed her chant, and a hundred
throats pealed out with her the chorus:
Victory and glory Aieroski gives to his children The mighty Six
Nations, greatest of men.
She gave the signal anew. The ninth victim stood before her, and
then fell, cloven to the chin; then the tenth, and the eleventh,
and the twelfth, and the thirteenth, and the fourteenth, and the
fifteenth, and the sixteenth-sixteen bound men killed by one
woman in less than fifteen minutes. The four in that group who
were left had all the while been straining fearfully at their
bonds. Now they bad slipped or broken them, and, springing to
their feet, driven on by the mightiest of human impulses, they
dashed through the ring of Iroquois and into the forest. Two
were hunted down by the warriors and killed, but the other two,
Joseph Elliott and Lebbeus Hammond, escaped and lived to be old
men, feeling that life could never again hold for them anything
so dreadful as that scene at "The Bloody Rock.


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