The cleanliness which characterized the normal
Indian was absent in them; their scant buckskin dress was bedraggled
and stained. They were still drunk with rum and the lust for blood.
Murder gleamed from the glance of their eyes.
"Jake, come over here," said Girty to his renegade friend. "Ain't
she a prize?"
Girty and Deering stood before the poor, stricken girl, and gloated
over her fair beauty. She stood as when first transfixed by the
horror from which she had been fleeing. Her pale face was lowered,
her hands clenched tightly in the folds of her skirt.
Never before had two such coarse, cruel fiends as Deering and Girty
encumbered the earth. Even on the border, where the best men were
bad, they were the worst. Deering was yet drunk, but Girty had
recovered somewhat from the effects of the rum he had absorbed. The
former rolled his big eyes and nodded his shaggy head. He was
passing judgment, from his point of view, on the fine points of the
girl.
"She cer'aintly is," he declared with a grin. "She's a little
beauty. Beats any I ever seen!"
Jim Girty stroked his sharp chin with dirty fingers. His yellow
eyes, his burnt saffron skin, his hooked nose, his thin lips--all
his evil face seemed to shine with an evil triumph. To look at him
was painful. To have him gaze at her was enough to drive any woman
mad.
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