Such zeal and obedience pleased me, and I smiled and nodded to him.  He showed his teeth at me, which I fancied was his mode of smiling.  But it was somewhat hideous, as his nose had been broken, and the unpleasant dent in it made horridly conspicuous by a gash of blood-red paint.

I buckled my belt and pack and picked up my rifle.  Captain Simpson shook hands with me.  At the same moment, the rifleman sent to our bush-hut to summon the Mohican returned with him.  And a finer sight I never saw; for the tall and magnificently formed Siwanois was in scarlet war-paint from crown to toe, oiled, shaven save for the lock, and crested with a single scarlet plume—­ and heaven knows where he got it, for it was not dyed, but natural.

His scarlet and white beaded sporran swung to his knees; his ankle moccasins were quilled and feathered in red and white; the Erie scalps hung from his girdle, hooped in red, and he bore only a light pack-slung, besides his rifle and short red blanket.

“Salute, O Sagamore!  Roya-neh!” I said in a low voice, passing him.

He smiled, then his features became utterly blank, as one by one the eyes of the other Indians flashed on his for a moment, then shifted warily elsewhere.

I made a quick gesture, turned, and started, heading the file out into the darkness.

And as we advanced noiselessly and swung west into the Otsego road, I was aware of a shadow on my right—­ soft hands outstretched—­ a faint whisper as I kissed her tightening fingers.  Then I ran on to head that painted file once more, and for a time continued to lead at hazard, blinded with tears.

And it was some minutes before I was conscious of the Mohican’s hand upon my arm, guiding my uncertain feet through the star-shot dark.

CHAPTER XI

 A scout of six

We were now penetrating that sad and devastated region laid waste so recently by Brant, Butler, and McDonald, from Cobus-Kill on the pleasant river Askalege, to Minnisink on the silvery Delaware—­ a vast and mournful territory which had been populous and prosperous a twelvemonth since, and was now the very abomination of desolation.

Cherry Valley lay a sunken mass of blood-wet cinders; Wyoming had gone up in a whirlwind of smoke, and the wretched Connecticut inhabitants were dead or fled; Andrustown was now no more, Springfield, Handsome Brook, Bowmans, Newtown-Martin—­ all these pretty English villages were vanished; the forest seedlings already sprouted in the blackened cellars, and the spotted tree-cats squalled from the girdled orchards under the July moon.

Where horses, cows, sheep, men, women, and children had lain dead all over the trampled fields, the tall English grass now waved, yellowing to fragrant hay; horses, barns, sheds—­ nay, even fences, wagons, ploughs, and haycocks had been laid in cinders.  There remained not one thing that could burn which had not been burned.  Only breeze-stirred ashes marked these silent places, with here and there a bit of iron from wagon or plough, rusting in the dew, or a steel button from some dead man’s coat, or a bone gone chalky white—­ dumb witnesses that the wrath of England had passed wrapped in the lightning of Divine Right.