Two more Indians came from the underbrush, carrying an iron kettle. A third had a patchwork quilt draped over his shoulder. Behind them, led by an Indian, was the horse we had heard. Mounted on it was a girl with long hair—long black hair. It hung below her knees, like a black veil. She was unbound, for we saw her push back the hair from her eyes.

Somewhere out of sight we heard a rasping female voice complaining steadily, and knew the voice to be that of the Widow McNeil.

The red men with the kettle and bedquilt, the one leading the horse and the others who had come with them paused beneath our tree: then moved slowly onward, talking and laughing.

More Indians came running up from the direction of the fort. They were empty-handed, except for their muskets. They stopped for a moment at the wreckage of the mirror: then broke away and hurried after those who surrounded the girl on the horse. That girl, we knew, must be Jennie McCrae—the one Cap Huff had described to us with caressing movements of his hands.

“Lie still!” I whispered to Doc. There were so many of them that I was in constant fear they would see us, encircle the tree and shoot us down.

“Lie still yourself,” Doc whispered back.

The second group of Indians came up with the girl on horseback. The horse stopped. There they all were, foreshortened figures—actors on a stage—while we lay looking down upon them as though stretched on the uppermost bench of a theatre’s highest balcony.

What happened then was unreal, like an unbelievable episode from a blood-and-thunder melodrama. The Indians shouted and waved their arms. Their tones were angry. What they were angry about, God only knows.

So quickly that my first feeling was merely one of surprise, the noisiest Indian slapped the lock of his musket to jolt powder into the pan, jerked the muzzle against Jennie’s breast and fired. The horse reared; Jennie fell forward on its neck, her hands thrust stiffly out. Her hair covered her. It tumbled down over her rigid, outstretched arms. It dragged on the ground. I heard myself saying, “Get it out from under his hoofs!”

The Indian who did it snatched at Jennie’s hair and pulled her from the horse as though she were a sack of meal. She landed on her face. Another Indian shot her in the back.

The one who had first fired whipped his knife from his breast, where it hung by a string, and slashed the point across the back of Jennie’s skull. Then he put his foot against her shoulder and dragged at her hair as one drags up a handful of grass. Again he slashed her—two slashes: above each ear; then leaned down, thrust his fingers into the first cut he had made, and pulled. Her whole scalp tore off, like a cap.