The Sagamore turned, the water swirling to his waist.  I followed.  We encountered nobody until the water began to shoal.  Then, in mid-stream, a dark figure loomed out of the night, confronting us, and I heard him say in the Seneca language: 

“Halt and turn.  You travel the wrong way!”

“Go forward and mind your business!” I said in English.

The shadowy figure seemed astounded, remaining motionless there in the ford.  Suddenly he bent forward as though to see my features, and at the same instant the Sagamore seized him and jerked his head under water.

But he could not hold him, for the fellow was oiled, and floundered up in the same instant.  No doubt the water he had swallowed kept the yell safe in his throat, but his hatchet was out and high-swung as the Sagamore grasped his wrist, holding his arm in the air.  Then, holding him so, the Mohican passed his knife through the man’s heart, striking with swiftness incredible again and again; and as his victim collapsed, he eased him down into the water, turned him over, and took his shoulders between his knees.

“God!” I whispered.  “Don’t wait for that!”

But the Siwanois warrior was not to be denied; and in a second or two the wet scalp flapped at his belt.

Rolling over and over with the current, the limp body slipped down stream and disappeared into deeper shadows.  We waded swiftly toward our own shore, crawled across the gravel, drew on our clothing, and stole up into the woods above.

“They’ll know it by sunrise,” I said.  “How many did you count?”

“Thirteen in that war-party, Loskiel.  And if Butler and McDonald be with them, that makes fifteen—­ and doubtless other renegades besides.”

“Then we had best pull foot,” said I. And I drew my knife and blazed the ford; and, as well as I might without seeing, wrote the depth of water on the scar.

I heard the Mohican’s low laughter.

“The Senecas will see it and destroy it.  But it will drive them frantic,” he said.

“Whatever they do to this tree will but mark the ford more plainly,” said I.

And the Mohican laughed and laughed and patted my shoulder, as we moved fast on our back trail.  I think he was excited, veteran though he was, at his taking of a Seneca warrior’s scalp.  “Had you not jerked him under water when he leaned forward over your shoulder to see what manner of man was speaking English,” said I, “doubtless he had awakened the forest with his warning yell in another moment.”

“Let him yell at the fishes, now,” said the Mohican, laughing.  “No doubt the eels will understand him; they are no more slippery than he.”

Save for the vague forms of the trees dimly discerned against the water, the darkness was impenetrable; and except for these guides, even an Indian could scarcely have moved at all.  We followed the bank, keeping just within the shadows; and I was ever scanning the spots of starlit water for that same canoe which I had learned was to go upstream to watch us.