18. The Wrists Bound with the Red Thread

Once the English were at war with some fierce tribes of India, called the Hillsmen. The English knew they were very brave, and noticed after every battle the bravest chiefs who were killed were found with a red thread bound around their wrists, as a mark of greatest honor. One day some English soldiers, following the enemy, were marching along a narrow valley, far in the hill-country, when suddenly they came to a place where the valley was divided by a great pointed boulder. The main regiment kept to the right. A sergeant and eleven men took the left, thinking they could easily pass around the boulder and meet their companions beyond it. But in a moment the sergeant found that the boulder was an arm of the left cañon of the valley, and that they had marched into a deep gorge with no outlet except the way they came. As they looked up at the great walls they spied a number of Hillsmen who, from their hiding-places, began showering spears upon them. Just at that moment the officer in command of the other soldiers saw the danger of these men and gave the order for them to retreat. In some strange way they mistook the signal for a command to charge. At once they charged on a run up the slope, cheering as they ran. But as they were eleven against seventy, some of them were killed by spears, others were hurled backward over the precipice, and three only got to the top and fought hand to hand with the foe. When the fighting was finished two Hillsmen lay dead for every Englishman. Later in the day the English relief party arrived and gathered up their dead comrades, and they found, bound around both wrists of every one, the red thread! The Hillsmen had given to their foes the honor reserved for their own heroes.—Adapted from “How to Tell Stories to Children,” by Sara Cone Bryant.