The officer made no answer, and they rode on into the woods, till they struck the blaze that Sir Francis had made with his sword, which they followed without much difficulty.
Once on the track, the partisan took the lead at a rapid pace. His keen and practiced eye read the signs of the forest with far more ease than the aid-de-camp, even though the latter was following his own trail. The length of time since the blaze was made, and the faint nature of the marks would have puzzled the officer not a little, but to the partisan the task was but child’s play.
On they went at a pace of seven or eight miles an hour, through the rapidly darkling woods, till they found themselves, at sunset, in a country broken by ravines, where the blaze abruptly ended before a thicket of wild raspberries, which hid the entrance to a narrow gorge in the side of a hill.
Here Butler dismounted, and examined the vicinity carefully, when he announced to the aid-de-camp that a party of Indians were in the vicinity, and that he was going to seek them out and call them to his assistance.
The marks of moccasins had not deceived him. When he sounded a peculiar call on his turkey-bone whistle, it was answered almost immediately, and, soon after, a war-party of Mohawks made its appearance.
CHAPTER XVI.
THE DEMON’S HAUNT.
The Mohawks proved to be a small party who had fled from Burgoyne, and when they were informed of the errand on which the white men had visited that lonely spot, one and all expressed unbounded terror. In coming into the wilderness they had hoped to escape the presence of the demon whose presence they associated with Vermont and Stillwater.
When they were told by Butler of the scene which he himself had witnessed on that very spot—the one described in the commencement of our tale—and learned that the Mountain Demon had frequently made his appearance in those very woods, had in fact been tracked thither, the bravest warriors trembled, and began to look apprehensively around them, to flee.
Butler checked them from flight with consummate craft.