Onawa flashed out of the brush and waved her bow to him.
"She has painted her face and looks forth ready for battle," said the priest. "A comely maid, by St. Louis. What a figure is there, and what freedom! She has a trick of moving her head which would make a fashion at court."
"Come!" Onawa called. "Hasten!"
She spoke in English, and hope revived in the heart of the priest.
"English. I show you," she cried. "I have waited a long time. It is growing late," she went on in her own tongue, hoping vainly that he might understand.
"I commit my body to this adventure," said La Salle. "If these be the English who captured the Dutch vessel and mocked us, the reward of discovery shall be mine. A ship sails for home next week. Tidings from the New World carry apace throughout Europe. The first step. Ha, it is the first step that gives confidence. The rest is easy."
He followed Onawa along a trail which bewildered with innumerable twistings, and after an hour's sharp walking they reached an untrodden bed of sage brush glistening upon the flats. Onawa picked up a faint thread, which was invisible to La Salle's eyes, and led him on through bush where the spikes of dead pines snagged his feet. Then came a cold ravine down the sides of which quaking asps drooped and moss spread thickly. More forest, growing every pace denser, until the girl stopped and motioned her companion to enter what appeared to be a hole made in the centre of a thicket. She held back the rough bushes to allow him to pass ahead. For a moment La Salle hesitated. He was human enough to know that his manliness had made an impression upon Onawa, but at the same time he feared treachery. The Iroquois were sworn foes of the French, and here was a daughter of the chief of the Cayugas abetting a Frenchman. He looked at the girl. She smiled brilliantly and made an impatient movement, and he advanced boldly into the cold thicket.
The ground shelved, and under the arched branches a spring freshet, scarcely seven feet in width, ran hurriedly into the unseen. A canoe rocked upon the water, held to the crooked root of a pine by a knotted willow. Onawa motioned him into this canoe, and when he had taken his place after sundry lurchings and difficulties, the girl stepped in, unfastened the twig, and struck her paddle into the water. The canoe swept away under the low branches.
"I would I had Laroche with me," said La Salle, watching the cold trees and the pale rocks approaching and receding.
"English," said Onawa softly from time to time. "I show you."