The half-breed did not hesitate on the outer circle of the combat, but picked his way among the corpses until he stood on the summit of the little knoll. Then he folded his arms and looked steadily down on the white man's inscrutable face.
Whatever might be Lafond's intellectual or moral deficiencies, lack of perspicacity was not among them. Through the red glory of this apparent victory, the most sweeping ever accomplished by the plains Indians, he saw clearly the imminence of final defeat. The dead man before him lay smiling, and Lafond perceived that he smiled because he saw his people arising to avenge him. The beat of the muster drum calling the avengers to the frontier now sounded in prophecy to his hearing, and the echoes of the last battle shot merged into the clang of an iron civilization, which was destined to push these exulting victors dispassionately aside. It was a striking picture of light and of shadow--this dark, savage figure silhouetted against the softened brightness of the sky, this bright-haired warrior lying bathed in the glorification of a Western night; the white man humiliated, defeated, slain, but seeing with closed eyes that at which he smiled with deep content; the savage, proud in success, triumphant, victor, but perceiving somehow, in the very evidences of his achievement, that which made him knit his brows. How little was this great victory against the background of the people whom it had outraged, and yet how mightily it would stir that people when once it became known!
Michaïl Lafond the savage stood before the body of Custer the fallen, for an hour, moving not one muscle all the time. At the end of the hour Michaïl Lafond the civilized turned slowly away, and walked thoughtfully toward the lodges on the other bank of the Little Big Horn River. The sight of a brave man, who had died as he lived, had reformed Lafond, but whether moralists would have approved of the reformation is to be doubted.
The night ran well along toward morning. The squaws, who had been plundering and mutilating the dead, had long since returned to hear the report of the warriors who had gone to attack Reno. The attack had failed, but the fight had been desperate and the losses on both sides heavy. Six of Custer's command, captured alive, were burned to death. At last, the entire camp, with the exception of the women sentinels, had gone to rest. Toward daybreak, even these became drowsy.