“No,” smiled Pontiac. “You shall be guests in the lodge of Pontiac until your eyes are open and there are no English in them. Those two red-coats are the last of the English; soon they will be gone too.”
“Wah!” uttered the Buck. “The Ottawa will dance their scalps at Dekanawida?”
“The Ottawa will dance as many scalps as there are English, if the English come again,” laughed Pontiac. “But these two dogs are kept by the French until all the French that have been stolen by the Englishman Washington are sent back. This does not concern my young brothers,” Pontiac added, with a crafty look. “With the English they would be wet and hungry; but with the French they are dry and well fed. They have nothing to do with the English. The French have switched the English home like squaws; and Tanacharison and Scarouady will refuse to listen more to the false song of the little English bird in the woods.”
So the Ottawas and the Hurons cunningly bragged, flattered and pretended friendship, and promised great things at Fort Duquesne; and the Hunter noticed that his gun and the Buck’s were not given back, and that he was not permitted to move out of reach, or to get near Vanbraam or Captain Strobo; and it was plain that he and the Buck were in a trap. To the French fort they must go; and there, what?
“We shall be as wise as the bear,” said the Buck, at his first chance. “They will not harm us. They fill us with lies; and then they will tell the Mingo to come and get us. Let us pretend, too, and learn all we can. Already some of the Mingo are weak. Guyasuta has listened, and Joncaire has sent words and presents to Scarouady.”
“Scarouady will go to the French?” stammered the Hunter.
“No! He is true to Washington. But let us pretend and learn all we can, so that when we escape we shall have news to take.”
They each slept this night between two Ottawas. In the morning the French marched on, to the Monongahela at Redstone Creek. Here they burnt and pulled down the store-house and cabins of the Ohio Company. Canoes had been waiting; and they and the Ottawas and Hurons got in and down the Monongahela they all went, to Fort Duquesne.
What a tremendous welcome they got! The Ottawas and Hurons and many of the French Rangers fired their muskets in token of victory; the guns of the fort answered, the Indians there rushed for the bank, shooting and yelling; the canoes responded again, the men piled out, and were escorted by a mob into the clearing around the fort.
All the time up to now neither Robert nor the Buck had had a chance to speak with Captain Strobo or Vanbraam; but in the midst of the jostling and confusion the Hunter heard a voice in his ear.