After a while, the oldest Shawnee regarded Mary and then spoke briefly to the youngest Frenchman, who in turn approached her. He tilted his head and stared down at his boots as if they would speak for him. Mary also directed her eyes downward.

Finally he looked at her and tried to tell her that earlier too many prisoners had been slowing them down, that other whites were probably in pursuit of the raiding party by now, that it had been necessary to kill some of the captives.

He threw out his arm as if to gather up, to embrace the taut scalps on their hoops. “Absolument nécessaire,” he said. As if he were speaking to one who could not hear, he raised his voice. “ABSOLUMENT NÉCESSAIRE!”

Mary’s gaze was still fixed on his boots, so she did not see him turn toward the oldest Shawnee and shake his head.

Since the party was diminished, it moved more quickly the next morning.

Mary now took the short steps she had been made to understand she should take. The simple repetition, the quick laying down of one foot and then the other would help her inure herself to thought and feeling. Walk, walk. One foot, the other.

Don’t think, she thought. Don’t think, don’t think; do not think. Be part of this whole; let it rush forward, let it rush you forward, be part of the sky and the ground and of the inevitable progress of this raiding party. But do not think.

With his hand, one of the Shawnee brought the column to a stop.

Mary was aware of trees here and there and then a break and more trees and breaks and then the sound of water.

A Shawnee said, “Monongahela.” The Falling-In-Banks.

“Monongahela,” one of the Frenchmen said. “ Et Allegheny.”

“Mon Dieu,” another Frenchman sighed. He leaned toward his compatriot.

“Duquesne,” a Shawnee said.

In a makeshift shelter just outside Fort Duquesne, candlelight bobbled and spilled into the woods and onto the poison ivy; the light made the curls of the shagbark hickory throw shadows. The candles leaked their yellowy wax onto the crude table at which a Shawnee stirred carnelian paint and appraised it and again stirred it.

Mary and Daniel had been brought to the lean-to, and they stood together and watched. Finally, the Shawnee appeared satisfied with the results of his stir-rings; he picked up a rag and beckoned to Mary. His gesture was an odd, jerking, snapping motion of his wrist and hand. She moved forward.

She had withdrawn her energy from the consuming fire of hurt and anger. Let him tell her what to do, let him do as he wished, let him do anything; it didn’t matter if he touched her, let it be a blow, let it be anything: let it be death.