"Why, we need a new canoe, brother; and the Shawnees have left two waiting for us on the river-shore."
Behind us Corlaer gave vent to a squeak of laughter.
"Ja, we put der choke on dem deer-hunters! Haw!"
We retraced our steps as rapidly as we had come, and because we now knew the way, we were able to cross the area of fallen timber in half the time we had taken formerly. But we were still within musket-shot of the forest-edge when the war-whoop resounded behind us, and a dozen Shawnees broke from cover.
"They are good warriors," approved Tawannears. "When they failed to pick up our trail again beyond the boulders they turned back."
"Shall we wait to welcome them?" I suggested.
"No, brother. We have nothing to gain by killing them. We need a canoe, not scalps."
So we ran on toward the river, although how Tawannears so unerringly picked his way I cannot say. 'Twas not so much that he knew the direction of the river. I could have done as much. But rather that he knew by instinct the shortest, most direct route to follow. We burst from the forest's edge a half-musket shot from where the canoes of the Shawnees were beached. Two men who had been left on guard over them, one the warrior Tawannears had shot in the leg in our first brush, rose to welcome us, at first, no doubt, thinking us to be their friends. But when they saw who we were they raised their bows and loosed a brace of arrows at us. Corlaer shot the wounded man offhand, and Tawannears bounded in to close quarters and brained the other with his tomahawk.
"Ha-yah-yak-eeeee-eeee-eee-ee-e!"
The scalp-yell of the Iroquois rolled from shore to shore with the dreadful, shrill vehemence of the catamount's bawl. A defiant answer came from our Shawnee pursuers not so far behind us. Tawannears stuffed his victim's scalp into his waist-belt, and flailed the bottom out of one of the canoes with his bloody tomahawk, then shoved the ruined craft out into the stream to sink.