The Night-Hawk, who carried strapped to his back the quiver of an Oneida adolescent containing a boy’s short bow and a dozen game arrows, consulted with the Grey-Feather in a low voice.

Presently he wriggled off to where some sun-dried birch-bark fluttered in the river breeze, returned with it, shredded it with care, strung his bow, tipped an arrow with the bark, and held it out to me.

I struck flint to steel, lighted my tinder, and set the shred of bark afire.

Then the Night-Hawk knelt, bent his bow, and the blazing arrow soared whistling with flame, and fell behind the rock on the shelf.

Arrow after arrow followed, whizzing upward and dropping accurately; but the wet mosses of the cliff extinguished the flashes.

As the last arrow fell, flared a moment, then merely smoked, an insulting laugh came from aloft, and my Indians uttered fierce exclamations and cuddled their rifle-stocks close to their cheeks, fairly trembling for a shot.

“Dogs of Oneidas!” called the Erie.  “Go howl for your dead pig of a Stockbridge slave.”

“The Mole wears his scalp with Tharon!” retorted the Grey-Feather, choking with fury.  “But Tahoontowhee’s hatchet is still sticking in the Senecas’ heads!”

“For which the Night-Hawk shall burn at the Seneca stake, sobbing his death-song!” shouted the Erie, so fiercely that for a moment we lay silent, hoping that by some ungovernable movement he might expose himself.

“Taunt him!” I whispered; and the Mohican said with a derisive laugh: 

“Four scalp-tufts from the mangy Cats of Amochol trim my hatchet-sheath.  When the young men ask me what this sparse and sickly fur may be, I shall strip it off and cast it at their feet, saying it is but Erie filth to spit upon.”

“Liar of a conquered nation!” roared the Erie, “for every priest of Amochol who fell by Otsego under your cowardly butcher’s knife, a Siwanois Sagamore shall burn three days, and yet live to die the fourth!  The day that August dies, so shall the Sagamore die at the Festival of Dreams in Catharines-town!”

“I shall remember,” said I in a low voice to the Sagamore, “that the Onon-hou-aroria is to be celebrated in Catharines-town on the last day of August.”

He nodded, then: 

“A Mohican Sagamore insults a dirty priest of Amochol!  I do you honour by offering you battle, with knife, with hatchet, with rifle, with naked hands!  Choose, spawn of Atensi—­ still-born kitten of Iuskeha, choose!  Not one soul except myself will raise hand against you.  By Tharon, I swear it!  Choose!  And the victor passes freely and whither he wills!”

The Erie mocked him from his high perch: 

“Squirrels talk!  Long since has your Tharon been hurled headlong into Biskoonah by Atensi and her flaming grandson!”

At this awful blasphemy, the Mohican fairly blanched so that under his paint his skin grew ashy for a moment.