ither go to the wilderness nor launch his canoe above a
whirlpool unless he is prepared to run the rapids. This New World had
never been won from darkness if men had hung back from fear of spilt
blood.

'Twas but a moment's work for the braves to deck out in war-gear.
Faces were blackened with red streaks typifying wounds; bodies clad in
caribou skins or ermine-pelts white as the snow to be crossed; quivers
of barbed and poisonous arrows hanging over their backs in otter and
beaver skins; powder in buffalo-horns for those who had muskets;
shields of toughened hide on one arm, and such a number of scalp-locks
fringing every seam as told their own story of murderous foray. While
the land still smoked under morning frost and the stars yet pricked
through the gray darkness, the warriors were far afield coasting the
snow-billows as on tireless wings. Up the swelling drifts water-waved
by wind like a rolling sea, down cliffs crumbling over with snowy
cornices, across the icy marshes swept glare by the gales, the braves
pressed relentlessly on. Godefroy, Jack Battle, and I would have hung
to the rear and slipped away if we could; but the fate of an old man
was warning enough. Muttering against the braves for embroiling
themselves in war without cause, he fell away from the marauders as if
to leave. Le Borgne's foxy eye saw the move. Turning, he rushed at
the old man with a hiss of air through his teeth like a whistling
arrow. His musket swung up. 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