“You speak as if they were human beings, Tayoga.”

“Such is my thought, Dagaeoga.”

“Very well.  I’ll bear in mind what you say, and I’ll pick an arrow for Tandakora’s brother.”

He chose a second arrow carefully and put it on the ledge beside him, where it required but one sweep of his hand to seize it and fit it to the string, when the first had been sent.  He now distinctly saw the creeping wolf, and again fancy laid hold of him and played strange tricks with his eyes.  The creeping figure changed.  It was not that of a wolf, but a warrior, intent upon his life.  A strange terror, the terror of the weird and unknown, seized him, but in an instant it passed, and he drew the bowstring.  When he loosed it the arrow stood deep in the wolf’s throat, but Robert did not see it.  His eyes passed on like a flash of lightning to a gigantic form that upreared itself from the rocks, an enormous wolf with red eyes, glistening fangs and slavering jaws.

“Now!” shot forth Tayoga.

Robert had already fitted a second arrow to the string and the immense throat presented a target full and fair.  Now, as always in the moment of imminent crisis, his nerves were steady, never had they been more steady, and his eyes pierced the darkness.  Never before and never again did he bend so well the bow of Ulysses.  The arrow, feathered and barbed, hummed through the air, going as straight and swift as a bullet to its mark, and then it pierced the throat of the wolf so deep that the barb stood out on one side and the feathers on the other.

The wolf uttered a horrible growling shriek that was almost human to Robert, leaped convulsively back and out of sight, but for a minute or two they heard him threshing among the rocks and bushes.  The whole pack uttered a dismal howl.  Their sliding sounds ceased, and the last dim figure vanished.

“I think it is all over with Tandakora’s brother,” said Robert.

Tayoga said nothing, and Robert glanced at him.  Beads of perspiration stood on the brow of the Onondago, but his eyes glittered.

“You have shot well tonight, O Dagaeoga,” he said.  “Never did a man shoot better.  Tonight you have been the greatest bowman in all the world.  You have slain the demon wolf, the leader of the pack.  Perhaps the wicked soul that inhabited his body has gone to inhabit the body of another evil brute, but we are delivered.  They will not attack again.”

“How do you know that, Tayoga?”

“Because Tododaho, Tododaho who protects us, is whispering it to me.  I do not see him, but he is leaning down from his star, and his voice enters my ear.  Our fight with the wolf pack and its terrible leader is finished.  Steady, Dagaeoga!  Steady!  Make no excuses!  The greatest of warriors, the hero of a hundred battles, might well sink for a few moments after such a combat!”

Robert had collapsed suddenly.  The great imagination driving forward his will, and attuning him for such swift and tremendous action, failed, now that the crisis had passed, and he dropped back against the ledge, though his fingers still instinctively clutched the bow.  Darkness was before his eyes, and he was weak and trembling, but he projected his will anew, and a little later sat upright, collected and firm.  Nevertheless, it was Tayoga who now took supreme command.