There was a long silence.  The old chief pondered with the massive certitude of God, and Chugungatte seemed to wrap himself in the mists of a great antiquity.  Keen looked with yearning upon the woman, and she, unnoting, held her eyes steadfastly upon her father’s face.  The wolf-dog shoved the flap aside again, and plucking courage at the quiet, wormed forward on his belly.  He sniffed curiously at Thom’s listless hand, cocked ears challengingly at Chugungatte, and hunched down upon his haunches before Tantlatch.  The spear rattled to the ground, and the dog, with a frightened yell, sprang sideways, snapping in mid-air, and on the second leap cleared the entrance.

Tantlatch looked from face to face, pondering each one long and carefully.  Then he raised his head, with rude royalty, and gave judgment in cold and even tones:  “The man remains.  Let the hunters be called together.  Send a runner to the next village with word to bring on the fighting men.  I shall not see the New-Comer.  Do thou, Chugungatte, have talk with him.  Tell him he may go at once, if he would go in peace.  And if fight there be, kill, kill, kill, to the last man; but let my word go forth that no harm befall our man,—­the man whom my daughter hath wedded.  It is well.”

Chugungatte rose and tottered out; Thom followed; but as Keen stooped to the entrance the voice of Tantlatch stopped him.

“Keen, it were well to hearken to my word.  The man remains.  Let no harm befall him.”

Because of Fairfax’s instructions in the art of war, the tribesmen did not hurl themselves forward boldly and with clamor.  Instead, there was great restraint and self-control, and they were content to advance silently, creeping and crawling from shelter to shelter.  By the river bank, and partly protected by a narrow open space, crouched the Crees and voyageurs.  Their eyes could see nothing, and only in vague ways did their ears hear, but they felt the thrill of life which ran through the forest, the indistinct, indefinable movement of an advancing host.

“Damn them,” Fairfax muttered.  “They’ve never faced powder, but I taught them the trick.”

Avery Van Brunt laughed, knocked the ashes out of his pipe, and put it carefully away with the pouch, and loosened the hunting-knife in its sheath at his hip.

“Wait,” he said.  “We’ll wither the face of the charge and break their hearts.”

“They’ll rush scattered if they remember my teaching.”

“Let them.  Magazine rifles were made to pump.  We’ll—­good!  First blood!  Extra tobacco, Loon!”

Loon, a Cree, had spotted an exposed shoulder and with a stinging bullet apprised its owner of his discovery.

“If we can tease them into breaking forward,” Fairfax muttered,—­“if we can only tease them into breaking forward.”