As soon as Girty had made known the sad disaster that had befallen his party, there was one universal yell of rage, accompanied by violent demonstrations of grief and anger--such as beating their bodies, stamping fiercely on the ground, and brandishing their tomahawks over their heads with terrific gestures. They then proceeded to dance around Younker and Reynolds, uttering horrid yells, accompanied with kicks and blows; after which, a consultation was held between Girty and Wild-cat, wherein it was agreed to take them to Piqua, a Shawanoe settlement on the Miami, and there have them put to the tortures. Accordingly, without further delay, they unbound their prisoners, with the exception of their hands, and forced them to set forward at a fast pace--treating them, meanwhile, in the most brutal manner. Oshasqua, however, took good care there should be no violence done to Rosetta; for he kept her closely by his side; and occasionally, when he saw her little limbs growing weary, raised and bore her forward, for a considerable distance, in his arms. It was a strange, but by no means unpleasing sight, to behold that dark, bloodstained warrior--whose very nature was cruel and ferocious, and who probably had never before loved or sought to protect aught bearing the human form--now exhibiting such tender regard for a weak, trembling prisoner, placed in his hands for a speedy sacrifice. It was withal an affecting sight, to Younker and Reynolds, who looked upon it with moistened eyes, and felt it in the force of a revelation from Heaven, that He, who sees the sparrow fall, was even now moving through the wilderness, and teaching one lesson of mercy at least to the most obdurate heart of the savage race. To the renegade, however, this conduct of Oshasqua was far from being agreeable; for so much did he delight in cruelty, and so bitterly did he hate all his race--particularly now, after having been foiled by them so lately--that he would a thousand times rather have heard the dying groans of the child, and seen her in the last agonies of death, than in the warrior's arms. At length he advanced to the side of the Indian, and said in the Shawanoe dialect, with a sneer: "Is Oshasqua a squaw, that he should turn nurse?"