They had been listening to every word as I walked beside them. The Mohican made answer first:
"It was hard for us to leave the Chemung, O Loskiel, my brother—with the dog-yelps at the Sinako and Mowawaks insulting our ears. But it was wiser. I, a Sagamore, say it!"
"It is God's will," said the Yellow Moth. But his eyes were still red with his fierce excitement; and the distant cannonade steadily continued as we marched.
"I am Roya-neh!" said the Grey-Feather. "What wisdom counsels I understand, He who would wear the scaly girdle must first know where the fangs lie buried.... But to hear the Antouhonoran scalp-yelp, and to turn one's back, is very hard, O my friend, Loskiel."
The Night-Hawk controlled his youthful features, forcing a merry smile as my eye fell on him.
"Koue!" he exclaimed softly. "I have made promise to my thirsty hatchet, O Loskiel! Else it might have leaped from its sheath and bitten some one."
"A good hatchet and a good dog bite only under orders," I said. "My younger brother's hatchet has acquired glory; now it is acquiring wisdom."
Boyd came up along the line, his deerskin shirt open to the breastbone, the green fringe blowing in the hill wind.
Far below us in the river valley sounded the uproar of the battle—a dull, confused, and distant thunder—for now we could no longer hear the musketry and rifle fire, only the boom-booming of the guns and the endless roar of echoes.
Here on a high hill's spur, with a brisk wind blowing in our faces, the heavy rumble of forest warfare became deadened; and we looked out over the naked ridge of rock, across the forests of this broken country, into a sea of green which stretched from horizon to horizon, accented only by the silver glimmer of lakes and the low mountain peaks east, west, and south of us.