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Clinton desired me to take a few riflemen and push forward; and the ladies except the fat one begged so prettily to go with us that he consented. So we took two empty batteaux and a canoe and came on in advance, with no effort whatever." "That was a rash business!" I said, controlling my anger. "The river woods along the Ouleout swarm with Seneca scouts. Didn't you understand that?"
I cast a cold glance at him, where he stood in the distance leaning against a huge walnut tree and apparently keeping watch across the Ouleout. The Grey-Feather was watching there, too, and I had no doubt that his wary eyes were fixed as often on the Wyandotte as on the wooded shore across the stream.
But the General's chief concern and curiosity was for Boyd and the eight riflemen who had come through from the Ouleout as the first advanced guard of that impatiently awaited Otsego army; and I heard Boyd telling him very gaily that they were bringing more than two hundred batteaux, loaded with provisions.
The six o'clock gun awoke the camp and found me already at the General's tent, awaiting permission to see him. He seemed surprised that Clinton had allowed any ladies to accompany the Otsego army, but it was evident that the happiness and relief he experienced at learning that Clinton was on the Ouleout had put him into a most excellent humour.
And I was well aware that with these Indians the success of any enterprise depended entirely upon their opinion of me, upon my personal influence with them. Dawn was breaking before the Sagamore turned his head toward me. I gave the signal to halt. "The Ouleout," whispered Tahoontowhee in my ear. "Here is its confluence with the Susquehanna."
The Mohican, on guard by the Susquehanna, was watching me; and as soon as the Red Wings had started on his return, and was well across the Ouleout, I signalled the Sagamore to come to me, leaving the Mole and Tahoontowhee by the Susquehanna. "Blood-brother of mine," I said as he came up, "I ask counsel of a wiser head and a broader experience than my own. What is to be done with this Wyandotte?"
And presently I heard the Sagamore politely mention the Ouleout by its Iroquois name, Aulyoulet, which means "a voice that continues"; and while I sent the Night-Hawk down to the water to try for a crossing, Mohican and Oneida conversed very amiably, the topic being our enemies, and how it was that on the Ouleout and in Pennsylvania they had so often spared the people of that state and had directed their full fury toward New York.
Of course I knew that we were likely to run across scouts or scalping parties of the enemy almost anywhere between the outlet to Otsego Lake and Tioga Point, yet somehow had not expected to encounter them until we had at least reached the Ouleout.
One after another unrolled his blanket and dropped where he stood. The Mohican came quietly toward me and sat down to watch the Susquehanna, his rifle across his knees. As for me, I dared not sit, much less lie flat, for fear sleep would overpower me. So I leaned against a rock, resting heavily on my rifle, and strained my sleepy eyes toward the invisible Ouleout.
Just within the lines there was a group of people from which a fiddle sounded; and I saw Boyd and Lana turn thither; and we followed them. Coming up to see who was making such scare-crow music, Lana said in a low voice to us: "It's an old, old man more than a hundred years old, he tells us who has lived on the Ouleout undisturbed among the Indians until yesterday, when we burnt the village.
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