My Indians, now all awake, were either industriously painting their features or washing their wounds and scratches and filling them with balsam and bruised witch-hazel, or were eating the last of our parched corn and stringy shreds of leathery venison.  All seemed as complacent as a party of cats licking their rumpled fur; and examining their bites, scratches, bruises, and knife wounds, I found no serious injury among them, and nothing to stiffen for very long the limbs of men in such a hardy condition.

The youthful Night Hawk was particularly proud of an ugly knife-slash, with which the Black Snake had decorated his chest—­ nay, I suspected him of introducing sumac juice to make it larger and more showy—­ but said nothing, as these people knew well enough how to care for their bodies.

Doubtless they were full as curious as was I concerning Madame de Contrecoeur—­ perhaps more so, because not one of them but believed her the Sorceress which unhappy circumstances had obliged her to pretend to be.  Pagan or Christian, no Indian is ever rid of superstition.

Yet, devoured by curiosity, not one of them betrayed it, forbearing, at least in my presence, even to mention the White Prophetess of the Senecas, though they voiced their disappointment freely enough concerning the escape of Amochol.

So we ate our corn and dried meat, and drank at the pretty rill, and cleansed us of mud and blood, each after his own fashion—­ discussing the scalping of the Eries the while, the righteous death of the Black-Snake, the rout of Butler’s army, and how its unexpected arrival had saved Amochol.  For none among us doubted that, another half hour at most, and we had heard the cracking signal of Boyd’s rifles across the hideous and fiery space.

We were not a whit alarmed concerning Boyd and his party.  Reconnoitring Catharines-town from the north, they must have very quickly discovered the swarm of partly crippled hornets, so unexpectedly infesting the nest; and we felt sure that they had returned in safety to watch and keep in touch with the beaten army.

Yet, beaten at Chemung, exhausted after a rapid and disorderly retreat, this same defeated Tory army was still formidable and dangerous.  We had seen enough of them to understand that.  Fewer men than these at Catharines-town had ambuscaded Braddock; fewer still had destroyed another British expedition; while in the north Abercrombie had been whipped by an enemy less than a quarter as strong as his own force.

No, we veteran riflemen knew that this motley army of Butler and McDonald, if it had indeed lost a few rattles, had however parted with none of its poison fangs.  Also, Amochol still lived.  And it had been still another Montour of the wily and accursed Frontenac breed—­ “Anasthose the Huron”—­ who had encompassed the destruction of Braddock.

That the night had passed without a sign of an enemy, and the dawn had heralded no yelling onset, we could account for either because no scouts from Catharines-town had as yet discovered the scalped bodies of the Eries in the glade, or because our own pursuing army was so close that no time could be taken by the Senecas to attack a narrow pass held by five resolute men.