He paused and looked once more around the whole length of the circle. A deep murmur of approval broke forth, but the forest orator quieted it with a single lift of his hand.
"The white man," he resumed, "respects no land but his own. If it does not belong to himself he thinks that it belongs to nobody, and that Manitou merely keeps it in waiting for him. He is here now with his women and children in the land that we and our fathers have owned since the beginning of time. Many of the white men have fallen beneath our bullets and tomahawks. We have burned their new houses and uprooted their corn, but they are more than they were last year, and next year they will be more than they are now."
He paused again and looked over the circle of his auditors. His eyes were flashing, and his great figure seemed to swell and grow. Like so many men of the woods he was a born orator, and practice had increased his eloquence. A deep, angry murmur came from the crowd. The passion in their hearts responded to the passion in his voice. Even the white men, the renegades, black with treason and crime, were moved.
"They will be more next year than they are now," resumed Timmendiquas, "if we do not drive them back. Our best hunting grounds are there beyond the Beautiful River, in the land that we call Kain-tuck-ee, and it is there that the smoke from their cabins lies like a threat across the sky. It is there that they continually come in their wagons across the mountains or in the boats down the river.
"The men of our race are brave, they are warriors, they have not yielded humbly to the coming of the white man. We have fought him many times. Many of the white scalps are in our wigwams. Sometimes Manitou has given to us the victory, and again he has given it to this foe of ours who would eat up our whole country. We were beaten in the attack on the place they call Wareville, we were beaten again in the attack on the great wagon train, and we have failed now in our efforts against the fort and the fleet. Warriors of the allied tribes, is it not so?"
He paused once more, and a deep groan burst from the great circle. He was playing with the utmost skill upon their emotions, and now every face clouded as he recalled their failures and losses to them, failures and losses that they could not afford.
"He is a genius," said Simon Girty to Braxton Wyatt. "I do not like him, but I will say that he is the greatest man in the west."
"Sometimes I'm afraid of him," said Braxton Wyatt.
The face of Timmendiquas was most expressive. When he spoke of their defeats his eyes were sad, his features drooped, and his voice took on a wailing tone. But now he changed suddenly. The head was thrown back, the chin was thrust out fiercely and aggressively, the black eyes became coals of fire, and the voice, challenging and powerful, made every heart in the circle leap up.
"But a true warrior," he said, "never yields. Manitou does not love the coward. He has given the world, its rivers, its lakes, its forests, and its game, to the brave man. Warriors of the allied tribes, are you ready to yield Kain-tuck-ee, over which your fathers have hunted from the beginning of time, to the white man who has just come?"