"How is it they are able to exist here so close to the white man's country?" I called to Ta-wan-ne-ars.
He flung a haughty look cross his shoulder. Since we had identified the Cahnuagas a startling change had transformed him. The veneer of deferential courtesy which ordinarily he wore was cracked. He was all Indian. More than that, he was contemptuous of what was not Indian. Aye, of whatever was not Iroquois like himself, of the bone and sinew of the League.
"This is not the white man's country," he answered. "You are within the portals of the Long House."
"But the beaver's skin is no less valuable to the Indian than to the white man," I persisted.
"Yes," he agreed, "yet the Indian does not slay game only for gain. If it were not for the dam those beavers built the Great Trail we walk upon would be overflowed. So long ago in the time of my forefathers that tradition can not fix the date the forefathers of those beavers built that dam, and when the Founders drove the trail they decreed that the beavers should be safe forever—that the trail might be safe."
Twilight faded into dusk and still we kept on. Ta-wan-ne-ars had eyes like a cat's, and I, too, accustomed myself to perception of hanging branches and the unexpected turns and twists in the groove of the path. The stars were out in the sky overhead when we stepped from the shelter of the forest into a rocky dell divided by a tiny brook.
"We will camp here," said Ta-wan-ne-ars.
He rested his musket on a boulder and began to collect firewood.
"Why a fire?" I asked.
"The trailers must not think we suspect them," he replied curtly. "If we lit no fire they would know for certain that we were suspicious."