As we marched in single file, I leading with my Indians, I said aloud, in the Iroquois tongue: 

“If in this Battle of the Chemung the Mountain Snake be left writhing, yet unless we crush his head at Catharines-town, the serpent will live to strike again.  For though a hundred arrows stick in the Western Serpent’s body, his poison lies in his fangs; his fangs are rooted in his head; and the head still hisses at God and man from the shaggy depths of Catharines-town.  It is for us of the elect to slay him there—­ for us few and chosen ones honoured by this mandate from our commander.  Why, then, should the thunder of Proctor’s guns arouse in us envy for those who join in battle?  Let the iron guns do their part; let the men of New York, of Jersey, of Virginia, of New Hampshire, of Pennsylvania, do the great part allotted them.  Let us in our hearts pray God to speed them.  For if we do our part as worthily, only then shall their labour be not in vain.  Their true title to glory is in our keeping, locked inevitably with our own.  If we fail, they have failed.  Judge, therefore, O Sagamore, judge, you Yellow Moth, and you Oneidas—­ Grey-Feather, with your war-chief’s feather and your Sachem’s ensign, Tahoontowhee, chieftain to be—­ judge, all of you, where the real glory lies—­ whether behind us in the rifle smoke or before us in the red glare of Amochol’s accursed altar!”

They had been listening to every word as I walked beside them.  The Mohican made answer first: 

“It was hard for us to leave the Chemung, O Loskiel, my brother—­ with the dog-yelps at the Sinako and Mowawaks insulting our ears.  But it was wiser.  I, a Sagamore, say it!”

“It is God’s will,” said the Yellow Moth.  But his eyes were still red with his fierce excitement; and the distant cannonade steadily continued as we marched.

“I am Roya-neh!” said the Grey-Feather.  “What wisdom counsels I understand, He who would wear the scaly girdle must first know where the fangs lie buried....  But to hear the Antouhonoran scalp-yelp, and to turn one’s back, is very hard, O my friend, Loskiel.”

The Night-Hawk controlled his youthful features, forcing a merry smile as my eye fell on him.

“Koue!” he exclaimed softly.  “I have made promise to my thirsty hatchet, O Loskiel!  Else it might have leaped from its sheath and bitten some one.”

“A good hatchet and a good dog bite only under orders,” I said.  “My younger brother’s hatchet has acquired glory; now it is acquiring wisdom.”

Boyd came up along the line, his deerskin shirt open to the breastbone, the green fringe blowing in the hill wind.

Far below us in the river valley sounded the uproar of the battle—­ a dull, confused, and distant thunder—­ for now we could no longer hear the musketry and rifle fire, only the boom-booming of the guns and the endless roar of echoes.

Here on a high hill’s spur, with a brisk wind blowing in our faces, the heavy rumble of forest warfare became deadened; and we looked out over the naked ridge of rock, across the forests of this broken country, into a sea of green which stretched from horizon to horizon, accented only by the silver glimmer of lakes and the low mountain peaks east, west, and south of us.