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"The Ojibway does not dream that he himself is being watched," said the Onondaga, "and now I think we would better eat a little food from our knapsacks and wait until the dark night that is promised has fully come." Tayoga's report was wholly true. Tandakora and twenty fierce warriors lay in the thicket, waiting to fall upon those who might follow the trail of St. Luc.
I don't dare care much about 'em either. Now we'll rest and see what other visitors come to admire." Tayoga sat down again. Their packs were put in a neat heap near the three, Robert's and Willet's swords, and Tayoga's bow and arrows in their case resting on the top. Robert threw more wood on the fire, and contentedly watched the great, glowing circle of light extend its circumference.
Robert shivered a little. Tayoga's tone was cool and matter of fact, but his comrades knew that he was in deadly earnest. At the appointed time he and Tandakora would fight their quarrel out, fight it to the death. In the last analysis Tayoga was an Indian, strong in Indian customs and beliefs.
He knew that if he protested again the young Philadelphians would chaff him without mercy, and he knew at heart also that Tayoga's statement about him was true. He remembered with pride his defeat of St. Luc in the great test of words in the vale of Onondaga. But Wilton's mind quickly turned to another subject.
He did not forget to be grateful for it. A long association with Tayoga had taught him to remember these things. It might be true that he was being guarded by good spirits. The white man's religion and the red man's differed only in name. His God and Tayoga's Manitou were the same, and the spirits of the Onondaga were the same as his angels of divine power and mercy.
You'll find there in a closet clothes for both of you, Tayoga's of his own kind, that Caterina has preserved carefully, and at six o'clock come in to supper, which to-day iss to be our chief meal. I would not have Benjamin Hardy to come all the way from New York and say that I failed to set for him as good a meal as he would set for me if I were his guest in his city.
Tayoga's words were so earnest and sententious, his manner so much that of a prophet, that Robert, in spite of himself, believed in the great impending danger that would come in the dark, and the hair on the back of his neck lifted a little. Yet the day was still great and shining, the forest tinted gold with the flowing sunlight, and the pure fresh air blowing into the cave.
It was a large moose, but to Robert, although an experienced hunter, it loomed up at the moment like an elephant. He had staked so much upon securing the game, and the issue was so important that his heart beat hard with excitement. The wind was still in his favor, and, creeping as near as he dared, he fitted an arrow to Tayoga's bow and pulled the string.
Tayoga's spirits were abroad again, filling the air in the dusk, their favorite time, and he rejoiced, until he suddenly heard once more that faint note of warning, buried under the volume of the other, but nevertheless there. Alone, driven in upon himself for so many months, he was a creature of mysticism that night. What he imagined he believed, and, obedient to the warning, he drew back.
Tayoga's calculation was correct. The entire day passed while the rear guard retreated slowly, and all the aspects of the forest were peaceful. They saw no pursuing brown figures and they heard no war cry, nor the call of one band to another. Yet Robert felt that the night would bring a hostile appearance of some kind or other.
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