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"Gentlemen," he said, "I shall expect you to take Amochol, dead or alive, before this command marches into the Chinisee Castle. How you are to accomplish this business is your own affair. I leave you full liberty, except," turning to Boyd, "you, sir, are not to encumber yourself again with any such force as you now have with you. Twenty men are too many for a swift and secret affair.
"And here, two miles above, is another town." "And you had better tell that to the General when he comes," remarked Boyd. And to me he said: "If we are to take Amochol at all, it will be this night or at dawn at the Chinisee Castle." "I am also of that opinion," said I. "I shall want twenty riflemen," he said. "If it can not be done with four, and my Indians, we need not attempt it."
I remember, just before sunset, that our small scout of ten were halted by a burnt log bridge over a sluggish inlet to a lake. The miry trail to the Chinisee Castle led over it, swung westward along the lake, rising to a steep bluff which was gashed with a number of deep and rocky ravines.
I ventured to remind him of the General's instructions that we find the Chinisee Castle and report at sunrise. "Damn it, I know it," he retorted impatiently, "but I have my own plans; and the General will bear me out when I fling Amochol's scalp at his feet." The Grey-Feather drew me aside and said in a low, earnest voice: "We are too many to surprise Amochol.
Loskiel, and that Sagamore in particular, we had missed half the game as it lies." He sat his saddle in silence for a while, looking at the unfinished log bridge and up at the bluffs opposite. "I feel confident that Butler is there," he said bluntly. "But what I wish to know is where this accursed Chinisee Castle stands.
Boyd, take four men, move rapidly just before midnight, find out where this castle stands, and report to me at sunrise." Boyd saluted, hesitated, then asked permission to speak. And when the General accorded it, he explained his plan to take Amochol at the Chinisee Castle, and that this matter would neither delay nor interfere with a prompt execution of his present orders.
And, "Dear, dear, dear," he murmured, mincing off again with all the air of a Wall Street beau ogling the pretty dames on Hanover Square. "Where is this damned Castle?" growled Boyd. "Chinisee, Chenussio, Genesee whatever it is called?
We followed the hard-travelled war-trail in single file; and Hanierri did not lose his way, but instead of taking, as he should have done, the unused path which led to the Chinisee Castle, he passed it and continued on. I protested most earnestly to Boyd; the Sagamore corroborated my opinion when summoned.
Here was marked the Chinisee Castle, near the confluence of Canaseraga Creek and the Chinisee River; and I showed the place to Boyd, who looked at it curiously. Mayaro, however, shook his crested head: "No, Loskiel," he said. "The Chinisee Castle stands now on the western shore. The Great Town should stand here!" placing his finger on an empty spot on the map.
Over this rock no Seneca could hope to track a cautious and hunted man. I walked sometimes, sometimes trotted; and so jogged on, bearing ever to the east and south, meaning to cross the Chinisee River north of the confluence, and pass clear around the head of the lake.
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