But let it pass. It was but a repetition of a thousand
similar scenes enacted on the swiftly narrowing frontier, a fraction of
the price civilisation ever pays to savagery, inevitable as a nation's
expansion, as its progression.
It was eight of the clock when came that final warning whistle of
prairie owl. It was not yet ten when, silent as they had come,
unbelievably impassive when but an hour before they had been
irresponsible madmen, temporarily cruelty-surfeited, they resumed their
journey. Single file, each footstep of those who followed fair in the
print of the leader, a long, long line of ghostly, undulatory shadows,
forming the most treacherous deadly serpent that ever inhabited earth,
they moved eastward until they reached the bank of the swift little
river; then turned north, leaving the abandoned, desolated settlement,
the ruined cornfields, as tokens of their handiwork, as a message to
other predatory bands who might follow, as a challenge to the white man
who they knew would return. As passed the slow hours toward morning they
moved swiftly and more swiftly. The gliding walk became a dog trot,
almost a lope; their arms swung back and forth in unison, the pat, pat
of their moccasined feet was like the steady drip of eaves from a summer
rain, the rustle of their passing bodies against the dense vegetation a
soft accompaniment. Autochthonous as they had appeared they disappeared.
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