The
rest in terror fled. The shouting Cenis pursued. They took a large
number of women and children as prisoners, most of whom they instantly
killed and scalped. Two mature girls they brought back with them to
subject to fiend-like torture. One of them had been cruelly scalped.
Faint and bleeding she could endure but little more. An Indian,
borrowing a pistol from a Frenchman, deliberately shot her through the
head, saying:

"Take that message to your nation. Tell them that ere long we will
serve them all in the same way."

The other maiden was reserved for all the horrors of demoniac torture
by the women and the girls. These were arranged in a circle. The poor
girl was led into the middle of them. They were all armed with strong
sticks sharply pointed. They then, with hideous yells, fell
tumultuously upon her, like hounds upon a hare. She soon dropped to the
ground beneath their blows. They thrust their sharp sticks into her
body. With sinewy arms these savage women beat her in the face, over
the head, upon every part of her frame until her body presented but a
mangled mass of blood. As she lay upon the ground scarcely breathing, a
burly Indian came forward, and with one blow of a club crushed in her
brain.

The next day there was another great celebration. Great honor was
conferred upon the French who had caused the victory. The Indian
warriors had done but little more than kill the women and children whom
they had taken prisoners, and scalp all the slain. After several
speeches were made by their orators, a procession was formed. Each
warrior had a bow and two arrows in his hand, and was accompanied by
one of his wives, who, like a servant or rather like the squire of the
knights of old, waved in her hands the gory scalps, revolting trophies
of her husband's chivalric achievements. The whole day was devoted to
barbarian feasting and carousing.

Hiens the next day held an amicable conference with M. Joutel and his
friends, to come to some agreement as to their future operations. "I am
not willing," he said, "to return to the French settlements. It would
inevitably cost me my head. But I am willing to divide all our property
equally between the two parties. Those who wish may accompany Joutel;
others may remain with me."

The division was made. M. Joutel, Father Douay, M. Cavalier, and his
nephew, young Cavalier, and three others, De Marle, Tessier and
Barthelmy, composed the party which was to return to the Fre