"The belts we remember are red!" he said. "We Mohicans have never understood Iroquois wampum. Let the Lenape of the Kansonsionni bear Iroquois belts!"
"In the Long House," said I, "the light is dim. Perhaps the Canienga's ambassadors can no longer perceive the red belts in the archives of the Lenape."
It had so far been a careful and cautious exchange of subtlest metaphor between this proud and sensitive Mohican and me; I striving to win him to our cause by recalling the ancient greatness and the proud freedom of his tribe, yet most carefully avoiding undue pressure or any direct appeal for an immediate answer to Boyd's request. But already I had so thoroughly prepared the ground; and the Sagamore's responses had been so encouraging, that the time seemed to have come to put the direct and final question. And now, to avoid the traditional twenty-four hours' delay which an Indian invariably believes is due his own dignity before replying to a vitally important demand, I boldly cast precedent and custom to the four winds, and once more seized on allegory to aid me in this hour of instant need.
I began by saluting him with the most insidious and stately compliment I could possibly offer to a Sagamore of a conquered race—a race which already was nearly extinct—investing this Mohican Sagamore with the prerogatives of his very conquerors by the subtlety of my opening phrase:
"O Sagamore! Roya-neh! Noble of the three free clans of a free Mohican people! Our people have need of you. The path is dark to Catharines-town. Terror haunts those frightful shades. Roya-nef! We need you!
"Brother! Is there occasion for belts between us to confirm a brother's words, when this leathern girth I wear around my body carries a red wampum which all may see and read—my war axe and my knife?"
I raised my right arm slowly, and drew with my forefinger a great circle in the air around us:
"Brother! Listen attentively! Since a Sagamore has read the belt I yesterday delivered, the day-sun has circled us where we now stand. It is another day, O Roya-neh! In yonder fireplace new ashes whiten, new embers redden. We have slept (touching my eyelids and then laying my right hand lightly over his); we have eaten (again touching his lips and then my own); and now—now here—now, in this place and on this day, I have returned to the Mohican fire—the Fire of Tamanund! Now I am seated (touching both knees). Now my ears are open. Let the Sagamore of the Mohicans answer my belt delivered! I have spoken, O Roya-neh!"
For a full five minutes of intense silence I knew that my bold appeal was being balanced in the scales by one of a people to whom tradition is a religion. One scale was weighted with the immemorial customs and usages of a great and proud people; the other with a white man's subtle and flattering recognition of these customs, conveyed in metaphor, which all Indians adore, and appealing to imagination—an appeal to which no Huron, no Iroquois, no Algonquin, is ever deaf.
In the breathless silence of suspense the irritable, high-pitched voice of Colonel Sheldon came to my ears. It seemed that after all he had sent out a few troopers and that one had just returned to report a large body of horsemen which had passed the Bedford road at a gallop, apparently headed for Ridgefield. But I scarcely noted what was being discussed in the further end of the hall, so intent was I on the Sagamore's reply—if, indeed, he meant to answer me at all. I could even feel Boyd's body quivering with suppressed excitement as our elbows chanced to come in contact; as for me, I scarce made out to control myself at all, and any nether lip was nearly bitten through ere the Mohican lifted his symmetrical head and looked me full and honestly in the eyes.