It clubbed down. There was a groan; and
as we rounded a bluff at a pace that brought the air cutting in our
faces, I saw the old man's body lying motionless on the snow.
If this was the beginning, what was the end?
Godefroy vowed that the man was only an Indian, and his death was no
sin.
"The wolves would 'a' picked his bones soon anyway. He wore a score o'
scalps at his belt. Pah, an we could get furs without any Indians, I'd
see all their skulls go!" snapped the trader.
"If killing's no murder, whose turn comes next?" asked Jack.
And that gave Godefroy pause.
CHAPTER XVII
A BOOTLESS SACRIFICE
For what I now tell I offer no excuse. I would but record what
savagery meant. Then may you who are descended from the New World
pioneers know that your lineage is from men as heroic as those
crusaders who rescued our Saviour's grave from the pagans; for
crusaders of Old World and New carried the sword of destruction in one
hand, but in the other, a cross that was light in darkness. Then may
you, my lady-fingered sentimentalist, who go to bed of a winter night
with a warming-pan and champion the rights of the savage from your soft
place among cushions, realize what a fine hero your redman was, and
realize, too, what were the powers that the white-man crushed!
For what I do not tell I offer no excuse.
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