“The Mengwe were Sinako and Mowawak.  One has joined the Eel Clan.”

“The Red Wings saw him.  The Cat-People of the Sinako sat in a circle around that scalpless thing and sang like catamounts over their dead!”

It is impossible to convey the scorn, contempt, insult, and loathing expressed by the Mohican and the Oneida, unless one truly understand the subtlety of the words they used in speaking of their common enemies.

“The Red Wings came by the Charlotte River?” I asked.

“By the Cherry, Quenevas, and Charlotte to the Ouleout.  The Mengwe fired on me as I stood on a high cliff and mocked them.”

“Did they follow you?”

“Can my brother Loskiel trail feathered wings through the high air paths?  A little way I let them follow, then took wing, leaving them to whine and squall on the Susquehanna.”

“And Butler and McDonald?” I demanded, smiling.

“I do not know.  I saw white men’s tracks on the Charlotte, not two hours old.  They pointed toward the Delaware.  The Minisink lies there,”

I nodded.  “Now let the Red Wings fold his feathers and go to rest,” I said, “until I have read my letters and considered them.”

The Oneida immediately threw himself on the ground and drew his pouch under his head.  Before I could open my first letter, he was asleep and breathing quietly as a child.  And, on his naked shoulder, I saw a smear of balsam plastered over with a hazel leaf, where a bullet had left its furrow.  He had not even mentioned that he had been hit.

The first letter was from my General Clinton: 

“Have a care,” he wrote, “that your Indians prove faithful.  The Wyandotte I assigned to your command made a poor impression among our Oneida guides.  This I hear from Major Parr, who came to tell me so after you had left.  Remember, too, that you and your Mohican are most necessary to General Sullivan.  Interpreters trained by Guy Johnson are anything but plenty; and another Mohican who knows the truest route to Catharines-town is not to be had for whistling.”

This letter decided me to rid myself of the Wyandotte.  Here was sufficient authority; time enough had elapsed since he had joined us for me to come to a decision.  Even my Indians could not consider my judgment hasty now.

I cast a cold glance at him, where he stood in the distance leaning against a huge walnut tree and apparently keeping watch across the Ouleout.  The Grey-Feather was watching there, too, and I had no doubt that his wary eyes were fixed as often on the Wyandotte as on the wooded shore across the stream.

A second letter was from Major Parr, and said: 

“An Oneida girl called Drooping Wings, of whom you bought some trumpery or other, came to the fort after you had left, and told me that among the party in their camp was an adopted Seneca who had seen and recognized your Wyandotte as a Seneca and not as a Huron.