It was a glorious day in early autumn. The soft balmy air was perfumed with the invigorating fragrance of the pines. The water sparkled in the sunshine. A smoky blue haze hung between the hills. The forest blazed with color. Spotted Deer looked about him with delight. A red-tail hawk circled slowly above his head. A woodpecker drummed its challenge upon a dead pine. Spotted Deer smiled at the sound as he recalled an occasion when his friend Running Fox had used it as a signal to fool his foes. Lost in reverie, Spotted Deer ceased paddling to watch the great black and white woodpecker hammering noisily on a bleached limb of the pine. Having found no evidence of foes in the Delaware hunting grounds, the young warrior felt secure.
"Hi, Papaches, you are making a big noise up there," he laughed, as he shook his bow at the bird.
The next moment he grew silent and alert. The call of Quiquingus, the loon, sounded somewhere behind him. Spotted Deer looked anxiously up the river. There was something about the call which made him suspicious. He searched the water with great care, but saw nothing of the loon. He became uneasy. Several disturbing questions rose in his mind. Was the call false? Was it a signal from his foes? Had he been discovered?
The latter possibility was alarming as he was more than a day's journey from the Delaware camp. Spotted Deer was undecided as to just what he should do. Many moments passed while he watched anxiously for the loon. The woodpecker had flown. The forest was silent. Spotted Deer hoped that the cry would be repeated. When he failed to hear it, his suspicions grew stronger. He wondered if some sharp-eyed scout were watching from the edge of the forest. The thought made him cautious. He paddled into the center of the river, where he was a long bow-shot from either shore. Then for a long time he waited and watched. However, as he neither saw nor heard anything further of the loon, he finally determined to continue on his way.
Spotted Deer had gone only a short distance when the call was repeated. Stopping his canoe, he again searched the water. The mysterious cry seemed to have come from somewhere along the west shore of the river—the side on which he had seen the woodpecker. Spotted Deer examined the shadows with infinite care, but his efforts were futile. The loon was nowhere in sight. His failure to discover it, and the significant fact that the call had been repeated when he started down the river, increased his uneasiness. He was almost convinced that the cry was counterfeit. Still he wished to be sure. He waited some time, watching for the conspicuous white breast of Quiquingus, the Laugher.
"It is not Quiquingus," he declared, at last.
Having decided that the call was an imitation, Spotted Deer wondered why the one who had made it had risked disclosing his hiding place. In a moment the truth flashed through his mind. He believed the call had been a signal to announce his approach to some one farther down the river. The thought caused him grave concern. He feared that he had blundered into a perilous predicament.
"I must watch out," Spotted Deer murmured, uneasily.
He permitted the canoe to drift slowly with the water while he meditated upon a plan of action. Feeling quite certain that he had encountered a company of his foes, his chief concern was to learn if they had canoes. In that event, he believed he would be in considerable peril. If, however, his enemies were hunting through the woods on foot, he believed there was little to fear while he kept to the middle of the river.
"I will go ahead," he said.