Tayoga did not feel sorry for his enemy.  Tandakora was a savage and an assassin, and he deserved this new hurt.  He was a dangerous enemy, one who had made up his mind to secure revenge upon the Onondaga and his friends, but his fresh wound would keep him quiet for a while.  One could not have an arrow through his forearm and continue a hunt with great vigor and zest.

Tayoga marked twice the places where Tandakora had stopped to rest.  There the drops of blood were clustered, indicating a pause of some duration, and a third stop showed where he had bound up his wound.  Fresh leaves had been stripped from a bush and a tiny fragment or two indicated that the Ojibway had torn a piece from his deerskin waistcloth to fasten over the leaves.  After that the trail was free from the ruddy spots, but Tayoga did not follow it much farther.  He was sure that Tandakora would not return, as he had lost much blood, and for a while, despite his huge power and strength, exertion would make him weak and dizzy.  Evidently, the bullet in his shoulder, received when they were on their way to Quebec, had merely shaken him, but the arrow had taken a heavier toll.

Tayoga returned to the camp of the three.  All the fire had gone out, and Willet and Robert, wrapped in their blankets, still slept peacefully.  The entire combat between the bowmen had passed without their knowledge, and Tayoga, quietly returning the bow and quiver to their case, and taking his rifle instead, sat down with his back against a tree, and his weapon across his knees.  He was on the whole satisfied.  He had not removed Tandakora, but he had inflicted another painful and mortifying defeat upon him.  The pride of the Indian had been touched in its most sensitive place, and the Ojibway would burn with rage for a long time.  Tayoga’s white education did not keep him from taking pleasure in the thought.

He had no intention of going to sleep.  Although Tandakora would not return, others might come, and for the night the care of the three was his.  It had grown a little darker, but the blue of the skies was merely deeper and more luminous.  There in the east was the great shining star, on which Tododaho, mightiest of chiefs, lived with the wise serpents coiled in his hair.  He gazed and his heart leaped.  The vapors about the star were gathering again, and for a brief moment or two they formed the face of Tododaho, a face that smiled upon him.  His soul rejoiced.

“O Tododaho,” were his unspoken words.  “Thou hast kept thy promise!  Thou hast watched over me in the fight with Tandakora, and thou hast given me the victory!  Thou hast sent all his arrows astray and thou hast sent mine aright!  I thank thee, O, Tododaho!”

The vapors were dissolved, but Tayoga never doubted that he had seen for a second time the face of the wise chief who had gone to his star more than four hundred years ago.  A great peace filled him.  He had accepted the white man’s religion as he had learned it in the white man’s school, and at the same time he had kept his own.  He did not see any real difference between them.  Manitou and God were the same, one was the name in Iroquois and the other was the name in English.  When he prayed to either he prayed to both.