These my cousin followed, her horse at a canter, and I followed her, halting now and again to verify the white triangle on the solid flank of some forest giant, passing a sugar-bush with the shack still standing and the black embers of the fire scattered, until we came to a logging-road and turned into it, side by side.  A well-defined path crossed this road at right angles, and Dorothy pointed it out.  “The Iroquois trail,” she said.  “See how deeply it is worn—­nearly ten inches deep—­where the Five Nations have trodden it for centuries.  Over it their hunting-parties pass, their scouts, their war-parties.  It runs from the Kennyetto to the Sacandaga and north over the hills to the Canadas.”

We halted and looked down the empty, trodden trail, stretching away through the forest.  Thousands and thousands of light, moccasined feet had worn it deep and patted it hard as a sheep-path.  On what mission would the next Mohawk feet be speeding on that trail?

“Those people at Fonda’s Bush had best move to Johnstown,” said Dorothy.  “If the Mohawks strike, they will strike through here at Balston or Saratoga, or at the half-dozen families left at Fonda’s Bush, which some of them call Broadalbin.”

“Have these poor wretches no one to warn them?” I asked.

“Oh, they have been warned and warned, but they cling to their cabins as cats cling to soft cushions.  The Palatines seem paralyzed with fear, the Dutch are too lazy to move in around the forts, the Scotch and English too obstinate.  Nobody can do anything for them—­you heard what that Schell woman said when I urged her to prudence.”

I bent my eyes on the ominous trail; its very emptiness fascinated me, and I dismounted and knelt to examine it where, near a dry, rotten log, some fresh marks showed.

Behind me I heard Dorothy dismount, dropping to the ground lightly as a tree-lynx; the next moment she laid her hand on my shoulder and bent over where I was kneeling.

“Can you read me that sign?” she asked, mischievously.

“Something has rolled and squatted in the dry wood-dust—­some bird, I think.”

“A good guess,” she said; “a cock-partridge has dusted here; see those bits of down?  I say a cock-bird because I know that log to be a drumming-log.”

She raised herself and guided her horse along the trail, bright eyes restlessly scanning ground and fringing underbrush.

“Deer passed here—­one—­two—­three—­the third a buck—­a three-year old,” she said, sinking her voice by instinct.  “Yonder a tree-cat dug for a wood-mouse; your lynx is ever hanging about a drumming-log.”

I laid my hand on her arm and pointed to a fresh, green maple leaf lying beside the trail.

“Ay,” she murmured, “but it fell naturally, cousin.  See; here it parted from the stalk, clean as a poplar twig, leaving the shiny cup unbruised.  And nothing has passed here—­this spider’s web tells that, with a dead moth dangling from it, dead these three days, from its brittle shell.”