maments; but the blood-thirst of the Indian
assumed the ghastly earnest of victors drinking the warm life-blood of
dying enemies and of torturers laving hands in a stream yet hot from
pulsing hearts.

Decked out in red-stained trophies with scalps dangling from their
waists, the natives darted about like blood-whetted beasts; and the
half-breeds were little better, except that they thirsted more for booty
than life. There was loud vaunting over the triumph, the ignorant rabble
imagining their warriors heroes of a great battle, instead of the
murderous plunderers they were. Pierre, the rhymester, according to his
wont, broke out in jubilant celebration of the half-breeds' feat:[A]

Ho-ho! List you now to a tale of truth
Which I, Pierre, the rhymester, proudly sing,
Of the _Bois-Brules_, whose deeds dismay
The hearts of the soldiers serving the king!

Swift o'er the plain rode our warriors brave
To meet the gay voyageurs come from the sea.
Out came the bold band that had pillaged our land,
And we taught them the plain is the home of the free.

We were passing along to the landing-place,
Three hostile whites we bound on the trail.
The enemy came with a shout of acclaim,
We flung back their taunts with the shriek of a gale.

"They have come to attack us," our people cry.
Our cohorts spread out in a crescent horn,
Their path we bar in a steel scimitar,
And their empty threats we flout with scorn.

They halt in the face of a dauntless foe,
They spit out their venom of baffled rage!
Honor, our breath to the very death!
So we proffer them peace, or a battle-gage.

The governor shouts to his soldiers, "Draw!"
'Tis the enemy strikes the first, fateful blow!
Our men break from line, for the battle-wine
Of a fighting race has a fiery glow.

The governor thought himself mighty in power.
The shock of his strength--Ha-ha!--should be known
From the land of the sea to the prairie free
And all free men should be overthrown![B]

But naked and dead on the plain lies he,
Where the carrion hawk, and the sly coyote
Greedily feast on the great and the least,
Without respect for a lord of note.

The governor thought himself mighty in power.
He thought to enslave the _Bois-Brules_,
"Ha-ha," laughed the hawk. Ho-ho! Let him mock.
"Plain rangers ride f