It
means despair.
Soldiers, grave-faced, respectful, followed me.
They were faint for food, and sore and sick from warfare, but they came
with me without protest. They gave me the deference we show a mourner
in a house of death. I turned to them in a rage.
"Make more noise. Laugh. Talk. Be natural. I command you."
We divided the woods among us, like game-beaters in a thicket, and went
over the ground foot by foot. We found nothing. The birds sang and
the sun went higher. Though the woods were pure and clean I could
smell blood everywhere. In time a man dropped from exhaustion. At
that I gave the word to go back to camp.
The camp itself was less terrible than the memories that had been with
me as I walked through the unsullied woods. The wounded were cared for
and the dead buried. The Indians were gathered around their separate
fires, chanting, feeding, bragging, and sleeping. The French had made
a camp at one side, and they, too, were seeking comfort through food
and sleep. Life was progressing as if the mutilated dead had never
been.
We had succeeded, Cadillac assured me. All the Senecas were dead or
captured and our total loss, French and savage, was only seventy-five
men.
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