As far as we rode with them, we saw a dozen of their riders fall either dead or wounded from their horses, and saw their comrades lift them into one of the wagons.  Also we saw our dragoons and militia take three prisoners and three horses before we finally turned bridle after our last long shot at their rear guard.

For our business here lay not in this affair, and Boyd had disobeyed his orders in not avoiding all fighting.  He knew well enough that the bullets from our three rifles were of little consequence to our country compared to the safe accomplishment of our mission hither, and our safe return with the Siwanois.  Fortune had connived at our disobedience, for no one of us bore so much as a scratch, though all three of us might very easily have been done to death in the mad flight from the Meeting House, amid that plunging hell of horsemen.

Fortune, too, hung to our stirrup leathers as we trotted into Poundridge, for, among a throng of village folk who stood gazing at the smoking ashes of the Lockwood house, we saw our Siwanois standing, tall, impassive, wrapped in his blanket.

And late that afternoon we rode out of the half-ruined village, northward.  Our saddle-bags were full; our animals rested; and, beside us, strode the Sagamore, fully armed and accoutred, lock braided, body oiled and painted for war—­ truly a terrific shape in the falling dusk.

On the naked breast of this Mohican warrior of the Siwanois clan, which is called by the Delawares “The Clan of the Magic Wolf,” outlined in scarlet, I saw the emblem of his own international clan—­ as I supposed—­ a bear.

And of a sudden, within me, vaguely, something stirred—­ some faint memory, as though I had once before beheld that symbol on a dark and naked breast, outlined in scarlet.  Where had I seen it before?  At Guy Park?  At Johnson Hall?  Fort Johnson?  Butlersbury?  Somewhere I had seen that symbol, and in that same paint.  Yes, it might easily have been.  Every nation of the Confederacy possessed a clan that wore the bear.  And yet—­ and yet—­ this bear seemed somehow different—­ and yet familiar—­ strangely familiar to me—­ but in a manner which awoke within me an unrest as subtle as it was curoius.

I drew bridle, and as the Sagamore came up, I said uneasily: 

“Brother, and ensign of the great bear clan of many nations, why is the symbol that you wear familiar to me—­ and yet so strangely unfamiliar?”

He shot a glance of lightning intelligence at me, then instantly his features became smoothly composed and blank again.

“Has my brother never before seen the Spirit Bear?” he asked coldly.

“Is that a clan, Mayaro?”

“Among the Siwanois only.”  “That is strange,” I muttered.  “I have never before seen a Siwanois.  Where could I have seen a Siwanois?  Where?”

But he only shook his head.

Boyd and Mount had pricked forward; I still lingered by the Mohican.  And presently I said: