But besides that there was a sort of nobility about
him; his recklessness, his desire to die, lifting his
little arms against an army of strong and reckless
men, his proud and defiant courage, that made me
feel at once that he was above me, stronger, somehow
better, than I. Still, he was a boy and I was a boy
the only boys in the camp ; and my heart went out,
strong and true, towards him. The work of destruc
tion was now too complete. There was not found
another living thing nothing but two or three
Indians that had been shot and shot, and yet seemed
determined never to die, that lay in the bloody snow
down towards the rim of the river. Naked nearly,
they were, and only skeletons, with the longest and
blackest hair tangled and tossed, and blown in strips
and strings, or in clouds out on the white and the
blood-red snow, or down their tawny backs, or over
their hairy breasts, about their dusky forms, fierce
and uiiconquered, with the bloodless lips set close,
and blue, and cold, and firm, like steel.
The dead lay around us, piled up in places, limbs twisted with limbs in the wrestle with death; a mother embracing her boy here; an arm thrown around a neck there ; as if these wild people could love as well as die.
