“I look upon you, Boyd.”

Then something extraordinary happened; I saw Boyd make a quick sign; saw poor Parker imitate him; realized vaguely that it was the Masonic signal of distress.

Brant remained absolutely motionless for a full minute; suddenly he sprang forward, pushed away the Senecas who immediately surrounded the prisoners, shoving them aside right and left so fiercely that in a moment the whole throng was wavering and shrinking back.

Then Brant, facing the astonished warriors, laid his hand on Boyd’s head and then on Parker’s.

“Senecas!” he said in a cold and ringing voice.  “These men are mine; Let no man dare interfere with these two prisoners.  They belong to me.  I now give them my promise of safety.  I take them under my protection—­ I, Thayendanegea!  I do not ask them of you; I take them.  I do not explain why.  I do not permit you—­ not one among you to—­ to question me.  What I have done is done.  It is Joseph Brant who has spoken!”

He turned calmly to Boyd, said something in a low voice, turned sharply on his heel, and marched forward at the head of his company of Mohawks and halfbreeds.

Then I saw Hiokatoo come up and stand glaring at Boyd, showing his teeth at him like a baffled wolf; and Boyd laughed in his face and seated himself on a log beside the path, coolly and insolently turning his back on the Seneca warriors, and leisurely lighting his pipe.

Parker came and seated himself beside him; and they conversed in voices so low that I could not hear what they said, but Boyd smiled at intervals, and Parker’s bruised visage relaxed.

The Senecas had fallen back in a sullen line, their ferocious eyes never shifting from the two prisoners.  Hiokatoo set four warriors to guard them, then, passing slowly in front of Boyd, spat on the ground.

“Dog of a Seneca!” said Boyd fiercely.  “What you touch you defile, stinking wolverine that you are!”

“Dog of a white man!” retorted Hiokatoo.  “You are not yet in your own kennel!  Remember that!”

“But you are!” said Boyd.  “The stench betrays the wolverine!  Go tell your filthy cubs that my young men are counting the scalps of your Cat-People and your Andastes, and that the mangy lock of Amochol shall be thrown to our swine!”

Struck entirely speechless by such rash effrontery and by his own fury, the dreaded Seneca war-chief groped for his hatchet with trembling hands; but a warning hiss from one of his own Mountain Snakes on guard brought him to his senses.

Such an embodiment of devilish fury I had never seen on any human countenance; only could it be matched in the lightning snarl of a surprised lynx or in the deadly stare of a rattlesnake.  He uttered no sound; after a moment the thin lips, which had receded, sheathed the teeth again; and he walked to a tree and stood leaning against it as another company of Sir John’s Royal Greens marched up from the river bank and continued northwest, passing between the tree where I lay concealed, and the log where Boyd and Parker sat.