It often seemed to Robert afterward that there was something unnatural about both time and place.  The darkness came down thicker and heavier, and to his imaginative ear it had a faint sliding sound like the dropping of many veils.  So highly charged had become his faculties that they were able to clothe the intangible and the invisible with bodily reality.  He glanced across at his comrade, whom his accustomed eyes could see despite the blackness of the night.  Tayoga was quite still.  So far as Robert could tell he had not stirred by a hair’s breadth in the last hour.

“Do you hear anything?” whispered the white youth.

“Nothing,” replied the Onondaga.  “Not even a dead leaf stirs before the wind.  There is no wind to stir it.  But I think the pack will be coming again very soon.  They will not leave us until you shoot their demon leader.”

“You mean Tandakora’s brother!  If I get a fair chance I’ll certainly send my best arrow at him, and I’m only sorry that it’s not Tandakora himself.  You persist in your belief that the soul of a wicked warrior is in the body of the wolf?”

“Of course!  As I have said, it is surely a brother of Tandakora, because Tandakora himself is alive, and, as it cannot be his own, it must be that of a monstrous one so much like his that it can be only a brother’s.  That is why the wolf leader is so large, so fierce and so cunning.  I persist, too, in saying that all the wolves of this pack contain the souls of wicked warriors.  It is natural that they should draw together and hunt together, and hunt men as they hunted them in life.”

“I’m not disputing you, Tayoga.  Both day and night have more things than I can ever hope to understand, but it seems to me that night has the more.  I’ve been listening so hard, Tayoga, that I can’t tell now where imagination ends and reality begins, but I think I hear a footfall, as soft as that of a leaf dropping to the ground, but a footfall just the same.”

“I hear it too, Dagaeoga, and it is not the dropping of a leaf.  It is a wolf creeping forward, seeking to stalk us.  He is on the right, and there are others on both right and left.  Now I know they are warriors, or have been, since they use the arts of warriors rather than those of wolves.”

“But if they should get in here they would use the teeth and claws of wolves.”

“Teeth and claws are no worse than the torch, the faggot and the stake, perhaps better.  I hear two sliding wolves now, Dagaeoga, but I know that neither is the giant leader.  As before, he keeps under cover, while he sends forward others to the attack.”

“Which proves that Tandakora’s brother is a real general.  I think I can make out a dim outline now.  It is that of the first wolf on the right, and he does slide forward as if he were a warrior and not a wolf.  I think I’ll give him an arrow.”

“Wait until he comes a dozen feet nearer, Dagaeoga, and you can be quite sure.  But when you do shoot snatch up another arrow quicker than you ever did before in your life, because the leader, thinking you are not ready, may jump from the shelter of the rocks to drive the rest of the pack in a rush upon us.”