Tayoga returned to the camp of the three. All the fire had gone out, and Willet and Robert, wrapped in their blankets, still slept peacefully. The entire combat between the bowmen had passed without their knowledge, and Tayoga, quietly returning the bow and quiver to their case, and taking his rifle instead, sat down with his back against a tree, and his weapon across his knees. He was on the whole satisfied. He had not removed Tandakora, but he had inflicted another painful and mortifying defeat upon him. The pride of the Indian had been touched in its most sensitive place, and the Ojibway would burn with rage for a long time. Tayoga's white education did not keep him from taking pleasure in the thought.
He had no intention of going to sleep. Although Tandakora would not return, others might come, and for the night the care of the three was his. It had grown a little darker, but the blue of the skies was merely deeper and more luminous. There in the east was the great shining star, on which Tododaho, mightiest of chiefs, lived with the wise serpents coiled in his hair. He gazed and his heart leaped. The vapors about the star were gathering again, and for a brief moment or two they formed the face of Tododaho, a face that smiled upon him. His soul rejoiced.
"O Tododaho," were his unspoken words. "Thou hast kept thy promise! Thou hast watched over me in the fight with Tandakora, and thou hast given me the victory! Thou hast sent all his arrows astray and thou hast sent mine aright! I thank thee, O, Tododaho!"
The vapors were dissolved, but Tayoga never doubted that he had seen for a second time the face of the wise chief who had gone to his star more than four hundred years ago. A great peace filled him. He had accepted the white man's religion as he had learned it in the white man's school, and at the same time he had kept his own. He did not see any real difference between them. Manitou and God were the same, one was the name in Iroquois and the other was the name in English. When he prayed to either he prayed to both.
The darkness that precedes the dawn came. The great star on which Tododaho lived went away, and the whole host swam into the void that is without ending. The deeper dusk crept up, but Tayoga still sat motionless, his eyes wide open, his ecstatic state lasting. He heard the little animals stirring once more in the forest as the dawn approached, and he felt very friendly toward them. He would not harm the largest or the least of them. It was their wilderness as well as his, and Manitou had made them as well as him.
The darkness presently began to thin away, and Tayoga saw the first silver shoot of dawn in the east. The sun would soon rise over the great wilderness that was his heritage and that he loved, clothing in fine, spun gold the green forests, the blue lakes and the silver rivers. He took a mighty breath. It was a beautiful world and he was glad that he lived in it.
He awoke Robert and Willet, and they stood up sleepily.
"Did you have a good rest, Tayoga?" Robert asked.
"I did not sleep," the Onondaga replied.
"Didn't sleep? Why not, Tayoga?"