"It is cold for an owl to leave his tree-hole."
He threw back his head, and I started at the fidelity of the repetition.
"Too-whoo-oo! Too-hoo!"
We listened, but there was no answer. Instead, after a brief interval, the howl of a wolf resounded.
A few yards farther on the owl hooted again. The line halted, and the warrior in front of him whispered that Ta-wan-ne-ars wished to speak with me. I passed by him and several others and came to where the chief stood, peering, or trying the peer, into the night.
"There was something strange about the owl, brother," he said. "The warriors told me that the Otter answered it, yet it did not reply. And then the wolf——"
A yell as of fiends from hell shattered the mantle of silence. Flames spurted through the firs, and in the gleam of the discharges and of torches thrown into our midst I had a fleeting glimpse of hideous masked figures bounding between the tree-trunks.
"Keep your hearts strong, brothers of the Long House," shouted Ta-wan-ne-ars. "They are only Cahnuaga dogs. Stand to it."
He fired as he spoke. I imitated him. Our men shot off a scattering volley. Then the False Faces were amongst us, coming from all sides, springing out of the ground, dropping from the very branches overhead and wielding their ga-je-was, or war-clubs, with dreadful effect.