It did not come to him until that instant—­this man was Girnway.  In the flash of awful comprehension he dropped, a sickened and nerveless heap, beside the dead man, turning his head on the ground, and feeling for any sign of life at his heart.

Forward there, where the yells of the Indians had all but replaced the screams of frantic women—­butchered already perhaps, subjected to he knew not what infamy at the hands of savage or Saint—­was the yellow-haired, pink-faced girl he had loved and kept so long imaged in his heart; yet she might have escaped, she might still live—­she might even not have been in the party.

He sprang up and found himself facing a white-haired boy, who held a little crying girl by a tight grasp of her arm, and who eyed him aggressively.

“What did you hurt Prudence’s father for?  He was a good man.  Did you shoot him?”

He seized the boy roughly by the shoulder.

“Prudence—­Prudence—­where is she?”

“Here.”

He looked down at the little girl, who still cried.  Even in that glance he saw her mother’s prettiness, her pink and white daintiness, and the yellow shine of her hair.

“Her mother, then,—­quick!”

The boy pointed ahead.

“Up there—­she told me to take care of Prudence, and when the Indians came out she made me run back here to look for him.”  He pointed to the still figure on the ground before them.  And then, making a brave effort to keep back the tears: 

“If I had a gun I’d shoot some Indians;—­I’d shoot you, too—­you killed him.  When I grow up to be a man, I’ll have a gun and come here—­”

He had the child in his arms, and called to the boy: 

“Come, fast now!  Go as near as you can to where you left her.”

They ran forward through the gray smoke, stepping over and around bodies as they went.  When they reached the first of the women he would have stopped to search, but the boy led him on, pointing.  And then, half-way up the line, a little to the right of the road, at the edge of the cedars, his eye caught the glimpse of a great mass of yellow hair on the ground.  She seemed to have been only wounded, for, as he looked, she was up on her knees striving to stand.

He ran faster, leaving the boy behind now, but while he was still far off, he saw an Indian, knife in hand, run to her and strike her down.  Then before he had divined the intent, the savage had gathered the long hair into his left hand, made a swift circling of the knife with his right,—­and the thing was done before his eyes.  He screamed in terror as he ran, and now he was near enough to be heard.  The Indian at his cry arose and for one long second shook, almost in his face as he came running up, the long, shining, yellow hair with the gory patch at the end.  Before his staring eyes, the hair was twisting, writhing, and undulating,—­like a golden flame licking the bronzed arm that held it.  And then, as he reached the spot, the Indian, with a long yell of delight and a final flourish of his trophy, ran off to other prizes.