Mayaro, however, shook his crested head: 

“No, Loskiel,” he said.  “The Chinisee Castle stands now on the western shore.  The Great Town should stand here!”—­ placing his finger on an empty spot on the map.  “And here, two miles above, is another town.”

“And you had better tell that to the General when he comes,” remarked Boyd.  And to me he said:  “If we are to take Amochol at all, it will be this night or at dawn at the Chinisee Castle.”

“I am also of that opinion,” said I.

“I shall want twenty riflemen,” he said.

“If it can not be done with four, and my Indians, we need not attempt it.”

“Why?” he asked sullenly.

“The General has so ordered.”

“Yes, but if I am to catch Amochol I must do it in my own way.  I know how to do it.  And if I risk taking my twenty riflemen, and am successful, the General will not care how it was accomplished.”

I said nothing, because Boyd ranked me, but what he proposed made me very uneasy.  More than once he had interpreted orders after his own fashion, and, being always successful in his enterprises, nothing was said to him in reproof.

My Indians had made a fire, I desiring to let the enemy suppose that we suspected nothing of his ambuscade so close at hand; and around this we lay, munching our meagre meal of green corn roasted on the coals, and ripe apples to finish.

As we ended, the sun set behind the western bluffs, and our evening gun boomed good-night in the forest south of us.  And presently came, picking their way through the trail-mire, our General, handsomely horsed as usual, attended by Major Adam Hoops, of his staff, and several others.

We instantly waited on him and told him what we knew and suspected; and I showed him my map and warned him of the discrepancy between its marked places and the report of the Mohican Sagamore.

“Damnation!” he said.  “Every map I have had lies in detail, misleading and delaying me when every hour empties our wagons of provisions.  Were it not for your Indians, Mr. Loskiel, and that Sagamore in particular, we had missed half the game as it lies.”

He sat his saddle in silence for a while, looking at the unfinished log bridge and up at the bluffs opposite.

“I feel confident that Butler is there,” he said bluntly.  “But what I wish to know is where this accursed Chinisee Castle stands.  Boyd, take four men, move rapidly just before midnight, find out where this castle stands, and report to me at sunrise.”

Boyd saluted, hesitated, then asked permission to speak.  And when the General accorded it, he explained his plan to take Amochol at the Chinisee Castle, and that this matter would neither delay nor interfere with a prompt execution of his present orders.

“Very well,” nodded the General, “but take no more than four men, and Mr. Loskiel and his Indians with you; and report to me at sunrise.”