“I will do my best, Tayoga.  No man can do more.”

“Dagaeoga’s best is very good indeed.  Remember that if they undertake to rush us we will use our rifles, but they are to be held in reserve.  Hark, the giant leader howls for the third time!”

The long, piercing note came now from a point not very distant.  Heard in all the loneliness of the black forest it was inexpressively threatening and evil.  Not until his own note died did the howl of his pack follow.  All doubts that Robert may have felt fled at once.  He believed everything that Tayoga had said, and he knew that the wolf-pack, reenforced by mighty timber wolves from the far north, was coming straight toward the cave for what was left of the moose meat and Tayoga and himself.  His nerves shook for an instant, but the next moment he put them under command, and carefully tested the bowstring.

“It is good and strong,” he said to Tayoga.  “It will not be any fault of the bow and arrow if the work is not done well.  The fault will be mine instead.”

“You will not fail, Dagaeoga,” said the Onondaga.  “Your great imagination always excites you somewhat before the event, but when it comes you are calm and steady.”

“I’ll try to prove that you estimate me correctly.”

As their eyes were used to the dusk they could see each other well, sitting on opposite sides of the cave mouth and sheltered by the projection of the rocks.  The great wolf howled once more and the pack howled after him, but there followed an interval of silence that caused Robert to think they had, perhaps, turned aside.  But Tayoga whispered presently: 

“I see the leader on the opposite side of the defile among the short bushes.  The pack is farther back.  They know, of course, that we are here.  The leader is, as we surmised, a huge timber wolf, come down from the far north.  Do not shoot, Dagaeoga, until you get a good chance.”

“Do you think I should wait for the leader himself?”

“No.  Often the soul of a wicked warrior goes into the body of a wolf, and the wolf becomes wicked, and also full of craft.  The leader may not come forward at first himself, but will send others to receive our blows.”

There was no yapping and snarling from the wolves such as was usual, and such as Robert had often heard, but they had become a phantom pack, silent and ghost-like, creeping among the bushes, sinister and threatening beyond all reckoning.  Robert began to feel that, in very truth, it was a phantom pack, and he wondered if his arrows, even if they struck full and true, would slay.  Nature, in her chance moments, touches one among the millions with genius, and she had so tipped him with living fire.  His vivid and powerful imagination often made him see things others could not see and caused him to clothe objects in colors invisible to common eyes.

Now the wolves, with their demon leader, were moving in silence among the bushes, and he felt that in truth he would soon be fighting with what Tayoga called evil spirits.  For the moment, not the demon leader alone, but every wolf represented the soul of a wicked warrior, and they would approach with all the cunning that the warriors had known and practiced in their lives.