A quarter of an hour passed, and then Black Rifle strode from the tent, his face dark as night.  His men followed him, and, almost without a word, they left the camp, plunged into the forest and disappeared.  Willet also came from the tent, crestfallen.

“What has happened, Dave?” asked Robert in astonishment.

“The worst.  I suppose that when unlike meets unlike only trouble can come.  I introduced Black Rifle and his men to General Braddock.  They did not salute.  They did not take off their caps in his presence,—­not knowing, of course, that such things were done in armies.  General Braddock rebuked them.  I smoothed it all over as much as I could.  Then he demanded what they wanted there, as a haughty giver of gifts would speak to a suppliant.  Black Rifle said he and his men came to watch on the front and flanks of the army against Indian ambush, knowing how much it was needed.  Braddock laughed and sneered.  He said that an army such as his did not need to fear a few wandering Indians, and, in any event, it had eyes of its own to watch for itself.  Black Rifle said he doubted it, that soldiers in the woods could seldom see anything but themselves.  There was blame on both sides, but men like General Braddock and Black Rifle can’t understand each other, they’ll never understand each other, and, hot with wrath Black Rifle has taken his band and gone into the woods.  Nor will he come back, and we need him!  I tell you, Robert, we need him!  We need him!”

“It is bad,” said Tayoga.  “An army can never have too many eyes.”

Robert was deeply disappointed.  He regretted not only the loss of Black Rifle and his men, but the further evidence of an unyielding temperament on the part of their commander.  His own mind however so ready to comprehend the mind of others, could understand Braddock’s point of view.  To the general Black Rifle and his men were mere woods rovers, savages themselves in everything except race, and the army that he led was invincible.

“We’ll have to make the best of it,” he said.

“They’ve gone and they’re a great loss, but the rest of us will try to do the work they would have done.”

“That is so,” said Tayoga, gravely.

At last the army moved proudly away into the wilderness.  Hundreds of axmen, going ahead, cut a road twelve feet wide, along which cavalry, infantry, artillery and wagons and pack horses stretched for miles.  The weather was beautiful, the forest was both beautiful and grand, and to most of the Englishmen and Virginians the march appealed as a great and romantic adventure.  The trees were in the tender green leafage of early May, and their solid expanse stretched away hundreds and thousands of miles into the unknown west.  Early wild flowers, a shy pink or a modest blue, bloomed in the grass.  Deer started from their coverts, crashed through the thickets, and the sky darkened with the swarms of wild fowl flying north.  Birds of brilliant plumage flashed among the leaves and often chattered overhead, heedless of the passing army.  Now and then the soldiers sang, and the song passed from the head of the column along its rippling red, yellow and brown length of four miles.