But in the interval the scene had shifted from the open
savanna to a thinly set grove of oaks with the stream brawling through
the midst.
To the biggest of the trees I was tightly bound; and a little way apart
a fire, newly kindled, smoked and blazed up fitfully. By the light of
the fire a good score of the Cherokees were gathering deadfalls and dry
branches to heap beside me; and from the camp below, the Indian lodges
of which were in plain view beyond the intervening horse meadow, other
savages were hurrying to join the wood carriers.
So far as these hasting preliminaries applied to me, their meaning was
not difficult to read. I was to be burned at the stake in proper savage
fashion. But Richard Jennifer--what had become of him? A sound, half
sigh, half groan, told me where to look. Hard by, bound to a tree as I
was, and so near that with a free hand I could have touched him, was my
poor lad.
"Dick!" I cried.
He turned his head as the close-drawn thongs permitted and gave me a
smile as loving-tender as a woman's.
"Aye, Jack; they have us hard and fast this time. I have been praying
you'd never come alive enough to feel the fire."
"We were taken together?" So much I dared ask.
"In the same onset. 'Twas but a question of clock ticks in that
back-to-back business. But they paid scot and lot," this with an inching
nod toward a row of naked bodies propped sitting against a fallen tree;
nine of them in all, one with its severed head between its knees, and
three others showing the gaping hacks and hewings of the great
broadsword.
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