“Tandakora has been here.  There is none other who wears so large a moccasin.  Here go his footsteps! and here! and here!”

“Doubtless they thought we were near, and were arranging with the other band to trap us,” said Willet.  “Daganoweda, it seems that you and your Mohawks came just in time.  Are the smoke rings from the second fire still rising?  We were too far away for them to hear our rifles.”

“Only one or two rings go up now,” replied Tayoga.  “Since they have received no answer in a long time they wonder what has happened.  See how those two rings wander away and dissolve in the air, as if they were useless, and now no more follow.”

“But the warriors may come here to see what is the matter, and we ought to be ready for them.”

Daganoweda, to whom they readily gave the place of leader, since by right it was his, saw at once the soundness of the hunter’s advice, and they made an ambush.  The second band, which was about the size of the first, approached cautiously, and after a short combat retired swiftly with two wounded warriors, evidently thinking the enemy was in great force, and leaving the young Mohawk chieftain in complete possession of his victorious field.

“Tayoga, and you, Great Bear, I thank you,” said Daganoweda.  “Without your aid we could never have overcome our enemies.”

“We were glad to do what we could,” said Willet sincerely, “since, as I see it, your cause and ours are the same.”

Tayoga was examining the fleeing trail of the second band as he had examined that of the first, and he beckoned to his white comrades and to Daganoweda.

“Frenchmen were here,” he said.  “See the trail.  They wore moccasins, but their toes turn out in the white man’s fashion.”

There was no mistaking the traces, and Robert felt intense satisfaction.  If hostile Indians, led by Frenchmen, were invading the territory of the Hodenosaunee, then it would be very hard indeed for Duquesne and Bigot to break up the ancient alliance of the great League with the English.  But he was quite sure that no one of the flying Frenchmen was St. Luc.  The chevalier was too wise to be caught in such a trap, nor would he lend himself to the savage purposes of Tandakora.

“Behold, Daganoweda,” he said, “the sort of friends the French would be to the Hodenosaunee.  When the great warriors of the Six Nations go to the vale of Onondaga to hear what the fifty sachems will say at their council, the treacherous Hurons and Caughnawagas, led by white men from Montreal and Quebec, come into their land, seeking scalps.”

The power of golden speech was upon him once more.  He felt deeply what he was saying, and he continued, calling attention to the ancient friendship of the English, and their long and bitter wars with the French.  He summoned up again the memory of Frontenac, never dead in the hearts of the Mohawks, and as he spoke the eyes of Daganoweda and his comrades flashed with angry fire.  But he did not continue long.  He knew that at such a time a speech protracted would lose its strength, and when the feelings of the Mohawks were stirred to their utmost depths he stopped abruptly and turned away.