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And as the avengers came down into the plain Kaskisoon chanted in a low monotone: Our fathers come! Come from out of the valley. Guide us for to-day we fight, And the winds whisper of death! And those who heard did not laugh. Father George crossed himself, and muttered something that might have been a prayer. For in this hour Kaskisoon's God was very near.
Perhaps in the hearts of these two, of all those gathered in this hour of vengeance, there ran deepest the thirst for blood. With Kaskisoon it was the dormant instinct of centuries of forebears, roused now into fierce desire. With Jean it was necessity.
The forest people were three quarters of a mile from this open when they came upon the trail of the lone caribou hunter. Where he had stood and looked up at them the snow was beaten down; from that spot his back-trail began first in a cautious, crouching retreat that changed swiftly into the long running steps of a man in haste. Like a dog, Kaskisoon hovered over the warm trail.
There came a long clear cry from the half-breed, a shout from Adare, a screaming, animal-like response from Kaskisoon, and at those three signals the forest people fell behind rocks, bits of shrub, and upon their faces. In that same breath the crash of rifles in the open drowned the sound of those beyond the wall of the Nest. From thirty rifles a hail of bullets swept through the windows.
And Kaskisoon's lips were as silent as the great flakes of snow that began to fall about them now in a mantle so thick that it covered their shoulders in the space of two hundred yards. When the timber thinned out Kaskisoon picked his way with the caution of a lynx. At the edge of the clearing they crouched side by side behind a low windfall, and peered over the top.
Once, twice six times, as fast as he could pump the empty cartridges out of his gun and fresh ones into the chamber. With the sixth came again the thunderous roar of the Cree's single-loader. "Pa, Kaskisoon!" cried Jean then. The last of Thoreau's men had darted back into the house. Three of their number they had carried in their arms. A fourth stumbled and fell across the threshold. "Pa!
Great God, they shall roast over fires!" He hurried toward the men who were already chopping at spruce timber. Philip looked about for Jean. He had disappeared. A hundred yards ahead of them he had caught up with Kaskisoon, and side by side the Indian and the half-breed were speeding now over the man-trail.
They were within the circle of light before Jean or his companions had moved, and at their head was Kaskisoon, the Cree: tall, slender as a spruce sapling, and with eyes that went searchingly from face to face with the uneasy glitter of an ermine's. They fell upon Jean, and with a satisfied "Ugh!" and a hunch of his shoulders he turned to his followers. There were seven.
Not once did he stop for rest until, hours later, they reached the summit of a ridge, and he pointed far off into the plain below. They could see the smoke rising up from the Devil's Nest. A breath like a great sigh swept through the band. And now, silently, there slipped away behind a rock Kaskisoon and his Indians.
First, on his right, was Jean and his men, and two hundred yards beyond him the master of Adare, concealed in a clump of thick spruce, Kaskisoon and his braves had taken the windfalls on the left. As yet not a man had revealed himself to Thoreau and his band. But the dogs had scented them, and they stood watchfully in front of the long log building, barking and whining.
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