Laying Tayoga upon his face, he drew his keen hunting knife and cut boldly into the flesh of the shoulder until he reached the bullet.  Then he pried it out with the point of the knife, and threw it away in the bushes.  A rush of blood followed and Tayoga groaned, but Robert, rapidly cutting the Onondaga’s deerskin tunic into suitable strips, bound tightly and with skill both the entrance and the exit of the wound.  The flow of blood was stopped, and he breathed a fervent prayer of thankfulness to the white man’s God and the red man’s Manitou.  Tayoga would live, and he knew that he had saved the life of his comrade, as that comrade had more than once saved his.

Yet both were still surrounded by appalling dangers.  At any moment St. Luc’s savages might burst through the woods and be upon them.  As he finished tying the bandage and stood erect the flare of the fighting came from a point much nearer, though between them and the ranger band, forbidding any possible attempt to rejoin Rogers and Willet.  Tayoga opened his eyes, though he saw darkly, through a veil, and said in feeble tones: 

“They have closed again with the forces of St. Luc.  You would be there, Dagaeoga, to help in the fighting.  Go, I am useless.  It is not a time to cumber yourself with me.”

“If I lay there as you are, and you stood here as I am would you leave me?” asked Robert.

The Onondaga was silent.

“You know you wouldn’t,” continued Robert, “and you know I won’t.  Listen, the battle comes nearer.  St. Luc must have received a reenforcement.”

He leaned forward a little, cupping his ear with his right hand, and he heard distinctly all the sounds of a fierce and terrible conflict, rifle shots, yells of the savages, shouts of the rangers, and once or twice he thought he saw faintly the flashes of rifles as they were fired in the thickets.

“Go,” said Tayoga again.  “I can see that your spirit turns to the battle.  They may not find me, and, perhaps in a day, I shall be able to walk and take care of myself.”

Robert made no reply in words, but once more he lifted the Onondaga in his sinewy arms, settled his weight against his left shoulder and resumed his walk away from the battle.  Tayoga did not speak, and Robert soon saw that he had relapsed again into unconsciousness.  He went at least three hundred yards before resting, and all the while the battle called to him, the shots, the yells and the shouts still coming clearly through the thin mountain air.

He rested perhaps fifteen minutes, and he saw that, while Tayoga was unconscious, the flow of blood was still held in check by the bandages.  Resuming his burden, he went on through the forest, a full quarter of a mile now, and the last sound of the battle sank into nothingness behind him.  He was consumed with anxiety to know who had won, but there was not a sign to tell.

He came to a brook, and putting Tayoga down once more, he bathed his face freely, until the Onondaga opened his eyes and looked about, not with a veil before his eyes now, but clearly.