Part 10

I saw that Ta-wan-ne-ars had concentrated his attention upon this spot, where the exit of the trail was indicated by a ragged fringe of undergrowth. We looked for so long, without anything happening, that my eyeballs ached. But at last there was a movement like the miniature upheaval which is caused by an ant in breaking ground. Boughs quivered, and a figure appeared in the open. 'Twas Corlaer. He glanced around him and strode on. In a moment he had passed the clearing and disappeared in the forest.

Ta-wan-ne-ars hitched forward and peered through the loop-hole with tense muscles. And again there was a wait which seemed endless. My eyelids blinked from the strain of watching.

The desolation and loneliness of the wilderness were so complete that it seemed inconceivable another human being could be within view. And whilst this thought occupied my mind a dark figure crawled on hands and knees from the mouth of the trail.

The newcomer feared a trap. His ear sought the ground. His eye studied the sky above him. He looked in every direction. But his instincts were baffled. He stole forward across the clearing with musket poised. At that distance all we could see of his costume was the clump of feathers that bristled from his scalp-lock.

He followed Peter into the trail on our side of the clearing, and there was a second and briefer pause. Then as silently as ghosts a string of figures flitted into the clearing. There were six of them, each with musket in the hollow of his arm, each with bristling feather headdress. They walked one behind the other, with a peculiar effect, even at that distance, of stealth and watchfulness.

Ta-wan-ne-ars emitted a guttural grunt, quite unlike his usual rather musical utterances.

"Cahnuagas!" he exclaimed, and spat.

"What?" I answered.

"Down!" he rasped. "Down! The time is scant!"

All the way during our descent he was muttering to himself in his own tongue, and a black scowl covered his face. At the foot of the pine he snatched up his musket without a word, and turned into the green tunnel that debouched upon the screen of the trail.

As we stepped into the worn slot Peter came into view.

"Well!" he said phlegmatically.

"Cahnuagas," answered Ta-wan-ne-ars.

The Seneca's face became convulsed with fury.

"Cahnuaga dogs! They dare to invade territory of the Long House!"

"We can cross der Mohawk to der south branch of der trail," proposed Corlaer. "They wouldt not dare to follow us there."

"No," snarled Ta-wan-ne-ars; "we shall not step aside for them. We will attend to them ourselves."

"Hafe you a plan?" inquired the Dutchman amicably.

He never lost his temper when other people did.

"Yes," said the Seneca briefly. "And now we will go along as if we did not know they were near us."

"Are they not likely to attack?" I interposed.

"No, they will not attack unless they have to for we are still near the Mohawk Castle, although 'tis upon the opposite bank of the river. They will leave us alone until night."

"But why can not we attack them!"

A look of ferocity which was almost demoniac changed his usually pleasant features into an awful mask.

"In an ambuscade one might escape. No, my brother Ormerod, we will wait until they attack us. Then----"

He paused significantly.

"Not one of the Keepers shall return to tell Murray how his brothers died."

We took up the march. 'Twas already mid-afternoon, and shortly the dimness of twilight descended upon the trail, as the level rays of the setting sun were turned aside by the interlacing masses of vegetation.

Once, I remember, we passed along the edge of a swampy tract, and I saw for the first time that industrious animal, the beaver, whose pelt was the principal stake for which France and England contended in the great game upon the issue of which depended the future of a continent. They had erected a dam across one end of a stream to make a pond, and their engineers were busily at work floating trees into place to reënforce a weak point in the structure. Other trees a few feet from the trail were gnawed in preparation for felling.

"How is it they are able to exist here so close to the white man's country?" I called to Ta-wan-ne-ars.

He flung a haughty look cross his shoulder. Since we had identified the Cahnuagas a startling change had transformed him. The veneer of deferential courtesy which ordinarily he wore was cracked. He was all Indian. More than that, he was contemptuous of what was not Indian. Aye, of whatever was not Iroquois like himself, of the bone and sinew of the League.

"This is not the white man's country," he answered. "You are within the portals of the Long House."

"But the beaver's skin is no less valuable to the Indian than to the white man," I persisted.

"Yes," he agreed, "yet the Indian does not slay game only for gain. If it were not for the dam those beavers built the Great Trail we walk upon would be overflowed. So long ago in the time of my forefathers that tradition can not fix the date the forefathers of those beavers built that dam, and when the Founders drove the trail they decreed that the beavers should be safe forever--that the trail might be safe."

Twilight faded into dusk and still we kept on. Ta-wan-ne-ars had eyes like a cat's, and I, too, accustomed myself to perception of hanging branches and the unexpected turns and twists in the groove of the path. The stars were out in the sky overhead when we stepped from the shelter of the forest into a rocky dell divided by a tiny brook.

"We will camp here," said Ta-wan-ne-ars.

He rested his musket on a boulder and began to collect firewood.

"Why a fire?" I asked.

"The trailers must not think we suspect them," he replied curtly. "If we lit no fire they would know for certain that we were suspicious."

I helped him, whilst Corlaer crouched by the opening of the trail on watch. We soon had a respectable pile of wood, but before kindling it the Seneca bade us strip off our leathern shirts and stuffed them with underbrush into a semblance of human shapes. A third figure to represent himself he contrived out of the packs and several branches.

The three dummies were then disposed to the satisfaction of Ta-wan-ne-ars and, striking flint and steel to some rotten wood, a bright blaze sent the shadows chasing each other around the confines of the glade.

"Peter," he said, "you had best take post by that boulder on the other side of the fire, Ormerod and Ta-wan-ne-ars will lie together upon this side."

"You need not think it necessary to keep me by your side," I said indignantly. "'Tis not the first time I shall have heard musketry."

A gleam of humorous intelligence chased the gloomy ferocity from the Seneca's face.

"Ta-wan-ne-ars does not doubt the valor of his brother," he said, "but Ormerod has never fought with Cahnuagas. They are dogs, but they are skilled in forest war."

He did not give me a chance to answer, but putting his fingers to his lips to enjoin silence sank down behind a boulder next to the one by which I stood. Corlaer had been swallowed by the dancing shadows beyond the fire.

I dropped beside Ta-wan-ne-ars, and like him dusted fresh powder into the pan of my musket, drew tomahawk and knife from their sheaths and laid them on the ground within reach.

How long we waited I can not say, but the suspense which had racked me in the swaying branches of the pine that afternoon was nothing compared to the agony of the hours that followed. For it must have been at least two hours after we had taken cover that Ta-wan-ne-ars touched my arm, and the light from the glowing bed of coals revealed a feathered head crouching forward where the trail entered the glade.

It hovered around the edge of the firelight like a monstrous reptilian fiend, body bent nearly double, a glint of steel showing whenever the hands moved. Presently he withdrew into the trail, and it seemed that two more hours dragged by on leaden feet, although it was probably less than half that time.

The fire was lower, but Ta-wan-ne-ars did not need to warn me when the Keepers reappeared. It was as if a mist of evil preceded them. My senses were alert, and I saw the first feathered head emerge from the trail and each one of the six who followed their leader. I counted every step of their approach until the yellow paint which streaked the ribs of the one nearest to me glimmered in the light of the embers.

"_Hah-yah-yah-eeee-eee-ee-e!_"

Ta-wan-ne-ars sounded the war-whoop as he fired, and instinctively I aimed my piece at those ocher-tinted ribs and pressed the trigger. The report of my musket carried on the echoes which had been roused by the Seneca's. Corlaer's discharged as I bounded to my feet.

The Cahnuagas yelled in surprize; three of them were thrashing out their lives on the rocks. But the four survivors did not hesitate. The French called them "Praying Indians," and perhaps they did pray occasionally for Black Robe, to placate him sufficiently in order that they might practise their own horrid rites in secret. They fought now like the devils they really were.

One of them was on me immediately, bounding over the boulders with screeches that split the night. His knife and hatchet cut circles around my head--then chopped at my bowels. His activity was extraordinary, and he fought better than I, for he knew his weapons and they were strange to me.

It was the realization of this which saved me. Fending awkwardly with knife or hatchet against a foe whose handling of them was the result of lifelong training, I was at a disadvantage. I could not hope to beat him by his own methods.

So I changed the tomahawk to my left hand, and grasped the knife by the hilt as if it were a sword, thrusting with it point first instead of slashing as the Indian did. And now my skill at fence was in my favor.

The Cahnuaga's knife was no longer than mine. We were on equal terms--or rather the advantage inclined toward me. Bewilderment showed in the Indian's face. He did not understand this fighting with passes and parries and swift, stabbing assaults. I touched him in the thigh, and he struck at my knife-arm with his hatchet; but my tomahawk was ready to meet him.

He side-stepped to attack me from a new quarter, but I pivoted on my heel as I had often done in the _salle des armes_, and he retreated, circling warily in search of an opportunity to return to the style of fighting he preferred. My chance came the next time he charged me, goaded into desperation by these strange tactics. I aimed a smashing blow at his head with the tomahawk, and, as he lifted his own hatchet to guard, I thrust for his belly, parried his knife and ripped him open.

His death-yell was in my ears as I leaped over his body and looked to see how my comrades were doing. Ta-wan-ne-ars had just knifed his man and was running to the help of Peter, who had two assailants on his hands. As Ta-wan-ne-ars came up, the Dutchman closed with one, dashed the defending weapons aside and grasped the struggling savage in his powerful arms. The last Cahnuaga turned to flee, but Ta-wan-ne-ars did not even attempt to pursue him. Without any appearance of haste the Seneca balanced his tomahawk, drew back his arm and hurled it after the fugitive. The keen blade crushed the man's skull before he had passed from the circle of firelight, and Ta-wan-ne-ars sauntered across and scalped him.

"That time Ta-wan-ne-ars did not miss, brother," he observed to me as I watched with fascinated horror the bloody neatness with which he dispatched his task.

"But why do you scalp your enemies, Ta-wan-ne-ars?" I answered. "Surely----"

"I am an Indian, not a white man."

"Yet you----"

"I have forgotten what the missionaries taught me," he replied impatiently. "All except what I think may be useful to my people."

Peter brought up his captive and tossed the man down in front of us.

"Oof, that was a goodt fight!" he commented placidly.

"Why a prisoner, Peter!" asked Ta-wan-ne-ars.

"We will ask him of der Doom Trail," returned Corlaer.

He jerked the man to his feet.

"Where is der Doom Trail?" he demanded.

The Cahnuaga, badly shaken though he was, drew himself erect and folded his arms across his painted chest.

"The Rat can go to the torture-stake and not answer that question, Corlaer," he said quite simply.

"We will take you to the nearest village and let you make good your boast," threatened Ta-wan-ne-ars.

The Cahnuaga smiled.

"If I told you, none the less should I suffer at the stake," he said, "for the Ga-go-Sa Ho-nun-as-tase-ta[1] knows all. Do your worst, Chief of the Long House."

[1] Mistress of the False Faces.

A tinge of mockery colored his voice.

"Be sure that whatever you do you can not equal the ingenuity of the Ga-go-sa. Yes, I think you will come to know more about them some day, Iroquois. I seem to see pictures in the firelight of a stake, and a building with a tower and a bell that rings, and many of the Ga-go-sa dance around you, and your pain is very great. Aye, you are shrieking like a woman; you----"

He sprang, not at the Seneca but at me. His hands were around my throat before I could move. His eyes blazed into mine. His teeth gnashed at my face. A gout of blood, thick and warm, deluged me. The next thing I remembered was seeing Ta-wan-ne-ars bending over me.

"My brother is whole?" he asked anxiously.

The ferocity was gone from his face, and his fingers prodded me tenderly in search of hurts.

"Yes," I said, sitting up and rubbing a very sore throat, "except that I shall not be able to swallow for a time."

"You were choked, brother."

"And the Cahnuaga?"

"That dog is dead. Do you sleep now, for the dawn grows near and we must be upon our way."

XIV

ALONG THE GREAT TRAIL

I stirred to wakefulness when the first pink light of morning was in the eastern skies. A pungent whiff of wood-smoke filled my nostrils, and I turned over to watch Corlaer frying bacon and maize cakes--only to lose my appetite at the spectacle of Ta-wan-ne-ars stretching scalps on little hoops of withes to dry by the fire.

He went about it in a very business-like way, yet he indulged in an amiable grin over my look of interested aversion.

"What does my brother find that is so horrible in a scalp?" he inquired, extending a particularly gory one for my inspection. "'Tis no more than the crown of a man's head--and that man an enemy."

"I like not the idea of mutilating a body," I retorted. "If you have slain a man, 'tis sufficient. Why, you might as well cut off his arm or his head!"

He considered my point while he made another hoop and adjusted a scalp to it.

"Yes," he agreed; "that is what the English do, I am told."

"What?" I protested indignantly. "'Tis absurd!"

"To be sure, Ta-wan-ne-ars knows no more than what the missionaries and his other white friends have told him," he answered. "But they say that when a man in England is condemned to die, if he is an enemy of the King, his head is chopped off and put on a high place, and sometimes his arms and his legs are hacked off, too, and shown elsewhere."

For an instant I was nonplussed.

"That may be so," I said finally, "but in battle we do not cut off the heads or limbs of our foes."

"It is not your custom to do so," rejoined the Seneca equably. "It is the custom of my people to scalp their foes. Then when a warrior returns to his village and recounts his exploits nobody can deny his proof."

I was at a loss to reply, and Corlaer averted further argument by announcing that the bacon and maize were cooked. But I was somewhat amused to notice that Ta-wan-ne-ars was careful to wash his hands before eating. So much, at least, the missionaries had dented the armor of his innate barbarism.

"And what of these?" I asked, pointing to the distorted bodies of Murray's emissaries, as we adjusted our packs for the day's march.

Corlaer raised his cupped hand to his ear.

"Do you hear?" he said.

I followed his example, and through the clashing of the branches overhead there sounded a prolonged, exultant howling.

"Der wolfs," he explained.

There was no disputing his stolid acceptance of the situation, and I fell into my place between the Dutchman and Ta-wan-ne-ars. In five minutes the forest had closed around us. The glade of last night's adventure was shut off as completely as if it existed in another world. There remained no more than the bare groove of the trail and the encompassing walls of underbrush and overhead the roof of tree-boughs. But at intervals a faint echo of yelps and snarls was borne to our ears by the forest breeze.

That afternoon we forded the Mohawk to the southern side some distance above Ga-ne-ga-ha-ga,[1] the Upper Mohawk Castle. And now for the first time we began to meet other travelers. Several Mohawk families shifting their abodes on account of poor crop conditions in their old villages; a party of Oneidas of the Turtle Clan journeying on a visit of condolence to the Mohawk Turtles, one of whose _roy-an-ehs_ had just died; a band of Mohawk hunters returning from the Spring hunt. By these latter Ta-wan-ne-ars sent word to So-a-wa-ah, the senior _roy-an-eh_ of the Mohawk Wolf Clan, charged with the warding of the Eastern Door, of our encounter with the Cahnuagas and its result.

[1] Near Danube, N.Y.

We continued up the valley of the Mohawk all of that day and the next. As we advanced westward the country became less settled. Game was more plentiful. Once a deer trotted into the trail and stared at us before plunging on its way. The second day, as we made camp and I set out to gather firewood, a pile of sticks which I approached moved with a dry, whirring rattle, and a mottled flat head rose menacingly from restless coils.

"Be careful, brother," shouted Ta-wan-ne-ars.

I jumped back in bewilderment.

"What is it?" I gasped.

"Death," he said grimly. "'Tis the Snake Which Rattles, and its bite is fatal. Yet it is an honorable foe, for it always gives warning before it strikes. So let us permit it to depart in peace."

The evening of the third day we camped in the Oneida country at the base of a hill, which the trail encircles and which for that reason was called Nun-da-da-sis.[2] Here we had a stroke of what turned out afterward to be rare good luck. Whilst we were making camp a group of five canoes of the birch-bark which is used by other nations than the Iroquois[3] approached from up-stream, and their occupants camped beside us.

[2] "Around the Hill;" present site of Utica, N.Y.

[3] There were very few birches in Iroquois territory. They employed instead red elm and hickory bark, which were much heavier.

These Indians were Messesagues, whose country lay between the two great inland seas, the Erie and Huron Lakes. They were on their way to Fort Orange or Albany to trade their Winter catch of furs, which lay baled in the canoes. Ta-wan-ne-ars, as Warden of the Western Door, had held intercourse with these people before and understood their language.

They told him that they had had trouble with the Sieur de Tonty, commander of the French trading-post of Le De Troit,[4] which had been established in their country; and that in consequence de Tonty had been obliged to flee and they had decided to shift their trade to the English.[5] Ta-wan-ne-ars encouraged them in this design and described to them the high quality and quantity of the goods they might expect to get in exchange for their furs at Albany.

[4] Detroit, Mich.

[5] De Tonty was obliged to abandon his post temporarily about this time.

On the fourth day the trail abandoned the head-waters of the Mohawk, fast shallowing in depth, and headed westward across the mile-wide divide of land which separates the waters flowing into the Mohawk and Hudson's River from those flowing into Lake Ontario and the St. Lawrence River of Canada. This passage or carrying-place between the waters was called Da-ya-hoo-wa-quat,[6] and we met several parties of Indians carrying their canoes and packs from one stream to the other.

[6] "Place for Carrying Boats;" present site of Rome, N.Y.

I had my first view of the long houses of the Iroquois at the Oneida Castle, Ga-no-a-lo-hale,[7] which was situated on the Oneida Lake. They were impressive buildings, sixty, eighty, one hundred and sometimes one hundred and twenty feet in length and from twelve to fifteen or twenty feet wide. We went as a matter of course to the lodgings of the Oneida Wolves; of whom Ta-wan-ne-ars, according to the Iroquois code, was a blood-brother; and they placed at our disposition a guest-chamber, the first next to the entrance of the Ga-no-sote,[8] together with all the firewood and food which we required and an aged squaw to cook and wait upon us.

[7] "A head on a pole."

[8] Bark house.

Our chamber was perhaps twelve or fourteen feet in length and twelve feet across. On each side there was a shelf or bunk of bark placed on wooden sticks, raised about two feet from the beaten-clay floor and covered with skins, more or less infested with vermin.[9] Above these bunks again were other shelves for holding clothing, weapons or provisions. The passageway between the bunks was the common entry to the house.

[9] I am obliged to confess I had lice throughout my stay amongst the Indians. 'Twas impossible to be clean.--H.O.

In the middle was a fire-hole where our squaw cooked. In the remainder of the length of the house there was a fire for every four families, and when all were cooking at once--as was frequently the case--the smoke that escaped through the vents in the roof was negligible.

On the other hand, the houses were stanchly constructed and weather-proof, and they demonstrated strikingly the clannishness and community spirit which were the outstanding characteristics of the Iroquois. They thought, not as families or individuals, as most savage or barbarous people do, but as a people, as a clan, a tribe or a confederacy.

In this, as Ta-wan-ne-ars remarked in our many talks on this and kindred subjects, lay the secret of their political and military success. It enabled them to concentrate, when they wished, an overwhelming force against any other tribes, and a force which could be directed in the joint interests of the League. Only the French or English could withstand them, and their aid must tip the balance in favor of the white nation whose cause they espoused.

From the Oneida Castle the Great Trail bore westward past De-o-sa-da-ya-ah,[10] which lay on the boundaries of the Onondagas, whose beautiful valley, with its mirror lake, was the fairest country I have ever seen unless it be the matchless home of the Senecas. The trail led us through the three villages of the tribe, which were scattered along the banks of the Onondaga River northward of the lake.

[10] Deep Spring.

At Ka-na-ta-go-wa burned the sacred Council-Fire of the Long House which their traditions claimed had been lighted by the godlike Founders of the League, the two _roy-an-ehs_, Da-ga-no-weda and Ha-yo-wont-ha, whose places in the Ho-yar-na-go-war[11] have never been filled because the Great Spirit can not create again men worthy to hold their titles.

[11] Literally, Counselors of the People--the ruling body of the League.

Ordinarily, Ta-wan-ne-ars would have halted on his way to pay due reverence to the shrine and to To-do-da-ho, the senior of all the fifty _roy-an-ehs_ of the League, whose wisdom and prestige are inherited from the first of the name, him who made practical by his deeds the conceptions of the Founders. But we were in haste; Ta-wan-ne-ars was anxious that no news of our journey should escape; and he pressed on, sending word by a brother Wolf to To-do-da-ho of the circumstances which governed his action.