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He hated the people of the English colonies, because they were spreading over the land and driving away the game. He was cruel because it was the Ojibway nature to be cruel. He would have to fight Tandakora, but it was because conditions had made it necessary.
Robert and Tayoga saw their figures vanish among the bushes and heard the fall of their moccasins a little longer, and then the question of their own course presented itself to them. Should they go back to Rogers with a warning of the hostile flankers, or should they follow Tandakora and see what he meant?
It will not avail, if in our endeavor to escape the tomahawk of Tandakora, we freeze to death." The fire decided upon, they took all risks and went about the task with eagerness. Ordinary men could not have lighted it under such circumstances, but the three had uncommon skill upon which to draw.
The thickets were very still. All the small wild creatures, usually so numerous in them, had disappeared, and there was no wind. Tayoga saw that the imprints of the moccasins were growing firmer and clearer, and he knew that Tandakora and his men were but a short distance ahead. Then he stopped suddenly and he and Robert crouched low in the thicket.
The questing eyes of Tandakora and his warriors swept the waters as far as the night, surcharged with mists and vapors, would allow, but they did not see the two human figures, so near them and almost submerged in the lake. The sound of the swishing paddles moved southward, and the line of ghostly canoes melted again, one by one, into the darkness.
"The Owl has a prisoner whom I know," said Tandakora to Langlade. "Aye, a sprightly lad," replied the partisan. "I took him before the winter came, and I've been holding him at our village on Lake Ontario." "It was he who, with the Onondaga, Tayoga, and the hunter, Willet, whom we call the Great Bear, carried the letters from Corlear at New York to Onontio at Quebec.
When nothing was to be done, the Indian could do it with a perfection seldom attained by anybody else. Tandakora was sitting on a fallen log, looking at the mainland. As usual, he was bare to the waist, and painted frightfully. Not far away a Frenchman was sleeping on a cloak, and Robert was quite sure that it was De Courcelles. St. Luc himself was visible toward the center of the island.
"Tandakora will come about an hour before midnight," said the Onondaga, "because it will be very dark then and there will yet be plenty of time for his work. He will expect to find everybody asleep, save perhaps an English sentinel whom he can easily tomahawk in the darkness. He does not know that the old Seigneur lies dying, and that they watch by his bed."
The waters where his eyes searched were wholly in darkness, an unbroken black line of the sky meeting a heaving surface. He looked back and forth over the whole extent, a half dozen times, and found nothing to break the continuity. Hope that the warriors of Tandakora were not coming sprang up in his breast, but he put it down again.
Tandakora and his men had not yet come in sight, nor could he hear them. Doubtless they had lost his trail, when he leaped from one stone to another, and were now looking for it. His time to hide, if he were to have one, was at hand, and he meant to make the most of the chance.
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