He plunged ahead through the woods, bearing away from the open shore and cliffs, since he knew well that the sole hope of success lay in absolute surprise, and he dared not risk being seen by settlers or hunters. Bose and the men could follow his trail plainly enough, and might come along whenever they were able. Crawford was for the moment glad to be rid of them and unhampered.
No trace of smoke broke the blue sky. After an hour, Crawford knew that somewhere not far ahead must lie Old Perlican, yet he searched for it in vain. No slightest indication of human habitation was to be seen anywhere in this world of white snow, upon which the sunlight broke with dazzling splendour. The trees were bowed beneath their load of snow, and there was something terrible about the deathly stillness, for the frost was not intense and the trees were not cracking. This absolute silence of the wilderness was hard on the nerves of one unused to it; the only sound among the thickly clustering trees was the faint creak and sluff of Crawford’s shoes in the crust. Then, with a sudden savagery that brought him to gaping and incredulous halt, a voice lifted out of the dark trees to his left.
“Sassakouay!” The gleeful, blood-gloating note thrilled Crawford more than the whoop itself—thrilled him with a sense of frightful things afield.
The Mohawk war whoop—here in this place! It was absurdly out of all reason. Despite his surprise, Crawford knew well enough that his own presence was unsuspected, or that whoop would never have been lifted. He went forward cautiously, working his way over a crest of higher ground among thick pines, and so came abruptly upon a road that lay below him. Biding there in cover, he scrutinized it.
It was a road beaten deeply through the snow, marked with the wheels of carts and the runners of sleds; since it ran from east to west, it must be a road from Bay de Verde to Old Perlican. Yet who had uttered that Mohawk whoop, here in this solitude? That was a thing inexplicable.
Only for a moment, however. Off to the left appeared a moving shape—a man, bareheaded, running clumsily, casting frightened glances over his shoulder, tearing off a heavy coat as he ran. A sobbing cry burst from him, directed apparently at high heaven, since it was impossible that he could imagine any one to be near at hand.
“Help! Help! The red devils are on us—help! Ha’ mercy——”
Crawford stiffened in a momentary paralysis of utter amazement. From the trees opposite him, and ahead of the English settler, glided a figure which cut off the flight of the settler. The figure was cloaked in long blanket-coat and wide beaver hat, but from beneath the brim of the hat peered out hideously painted features grinning at the wretched fugitive.
Here was the source of that Mohawk whoop! Incredible as it was, the thing was true. Crawford saw the redskin deliberately whip out tomahawk and poise for the throw, while the settler, plunging blindly along the road, was ignorant of his doom. Crawford gripped his own axe and, with a swift motion, hurled it—but too late. The other had flung, and even as one blade hit home, the second followed suit. Each man was destroyed by an unseen enemy. Crawford’s axe struck through wide hat to brain, and the woods rover plunged forward into the road, without a cry. The hapless fugitive, struck glancingly, but no less fatally, dropped in his tracks and the tomahawks spun in the icy road beyond him.
For a moment Crawford waited, searching the farther trees with keen scrutiny, appalled by what had just happened; that the Mohawk could be raiding this country was beyond belief. No sign of any one else could be descried and, as he looked back to the two figures, came the explanation. The rover’s wide hat had fallen away to disclose reddish hair. He was no redskin, but a white man, a Canadian—one of those voyageurs and coureurs-de-bois who had adopted Indian habits, wives and appearance. This explained the Mohawk cry, for many of that clan had settled above Montreal and took the French part against the English and Iroquois.