These came swarming down the ravine, and in another moment began crawling noisily about us, chattering with our surly captors, or scowling into our faces with savage eyes boding no good.

It would be unjust were I to write that these fellows were a brutal lot, as such words would be void of that truth I seek to convey.

I lived to learn that many among them had the stuff of which true men are made; yet, nevertheless, they were savages, scarcely touched by the virtues or vices of civilization, a people nursing within their memory a great wrong, and inflamed by the fierce passions of battle.

Gazing about on the stiffening forms of their stricken warriors, all alike exhibited in eyes and gestures how eagerly they longed for the hour of vengeance, when implacable hate might have full vent in the unutterable agony of their victims.

I gazed up into their scowling, distorted faces, imagining a final moment of reckoning was at hand; yet some authority, either of chief or tribal custom, restrained their pitiless hatred, reserving us for longer, more intense suffering.
But the wild thirst for blood was mirrored in those fierce eyes glaring down into mine, and echoed in the shrill cries with which they marked us yet alive for their barbaric ingenuity to practise upon at leisure.
Even as I observed this, realizing from my knowledge of Indian nature that our ultimate fate would be infinitely worse than merciful death in battle, I could not remain blind to the wide difference between these naked warriors and those other savages with whom my wandering border life had made me familiar.