He had not time to see what happened after that blow. He did not
see Brokaw fall. A piercing interruption--a scream that startled every
drop of blood in his body--turned him toward the cage. Ten paces from
him, standing at the inner edge of that circle of astounded and
petrified men, was the Girl! At first he thought she was standing naked
there--naked under the staring eyes of the fiends about him. Her white
arms gleamed bare, her shoulders and breast were bare, her slim, satiny
body was naked to the waist, about which she had drawn tightly--as if in
a wild panic of haste--an old and ragged skirt! It was the Indian
woman's skirt. He caught the glitter of beads on it, and for a moment he
stared with the others, unable to move or cry out her name. And then a
breath of wind flung back her hair and he saw her face the colour of
marble. She was like a piece of glistening statuary, without a quiver of
life that his eyes could see, without a movement, without a breath. Only
her hair moved, stirred by the air, flooded by the sun, floating about
her shoulders and down her bare back in a lucent cloud of red and gold
fires--and out of this she was staring at the cage, stunned into that
lifeless and unbreathing posture of horror by what she saw.
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