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The hills closed in upon them, and became more precipitous. The stream made another bend, and they were in a ravine where the water flowed over a rocky bed between banks too steep to afford them secure foothold. The Susquehannock swung himself down into the shallow water, and motioned to his companion to do likewise. "Monakatocka smells fire," he whispered.
Landless, still upon his knee beside her, watched her with a beating heart, while the Susquehannock, leaning upon his gun, bent his darkly impassive looks upon them both. At length the latter said, "We must be far from here before the dogs behind us awake, and the Gold Hair cannot travel swiftly. Let us be going." "Madam," said Landless. She opened her eyes and he helped her to her feet.
All this time the figure had stalked along before Landless without speaking or turning its head, but now, the trees thinning, and they coming upon a field of wild flax that lay fair and white beneath the moon, it quitted the lazy stream, and turning upon Landless as he too stepped upon the bank, showed him the bronze countenance and the gigantic form of the Susquehannock to whom he had once done a kindness, and with whom he had fought on such a night as this, in such a moonlight space.
He had heard no sound, but there, within three feet of him, were the high features and the bold eyes of the Susquehannock. "Monakatocka has been to the great rock," he said in a guttural whisper. "The Algonquin dogs sleep sound, for they do not know that a Conestoga is on their trail. They have camped beneath the rock three days, and they will move on the morrow.
The Indian, leaning against a great sycamore whose branches trailed in the water, watched him attentively. "My brother is tired," he said at last. Landless shook his head. The Susquehannock paused, still with his eyes upon the other's face, and then went on, "We have searched and have found nothing. There have been five suns since the great rains blotted out the trail.
All the next day Nanking played ball and bandy with the Susquehannock boys, and taught them jack-stones and how to make a shuttlecock. They put eagle's feathers in his hair, and the old men adopted him into their tribe. On the third day the absent Indians returned with a stork. It was a white stork with a red bill and plenty of stork's neck, but short legs.
If he slept, it was a sleep from which the sound of a falling acorn, the sleepy stir of a partridge in the fern was sufficient to awaken him. Sometimes they rested by fires, for they heard the wolves through the darkness; upon the nights when this was necessary the Susquehannock sat with his gun across his knees, piercing the darkness in every direction with keen and restless eyes.
"That you and the Susquehannock sought for her and found her; that you fought for her bravely more than once; that after the Indian was slain you guided and protected her through the forest; that you have in all things borne yourself towards her faithfully and reverently, not injuring her by word, thought or deed. My daughter is very dear to me dearer than life, I am not ungrateful.
Having accomplished what he had set out to do without the loss of a man, Bacon probably would have started home, had he had provisions enough for the long march through the wilderness. As it was his men faced starvation. So he demanded supplies of food from the Occaneechee chief. Berkeley's friends later accused him of demanding also beaver taken from the Susquehannock fort.
A series of murders were committed on the frontier by Doegs and in retaliation the colonists mistakenly killed Indians who were not Doegs. By 1675, through a series of hot-headed misunderstandings the Susquehannock Indians became involved and they struck whenever and wherever they could.
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