I rose from my cover, my rifle in the hollow of my left arm. Nick came from his bed of juniper and stood looking very hard at the Oneidas across the stream.
Save for the girl, all were naked except for breech-clout, sporran, and ankle moccasins; all were oiled and in their paint, and their heads shaven, leaving only the lock. There could be no doubt that this was a war party. No doubt, also, that they could have slain me very easily where I sat, had they wished to do so.
There was, just below us, a string of rocks crossing the stream. I sprang from one to another and came out on their bank of the creek; and Nick followed, leaping the boulders like a lithe tree-cat.
The Oneidas, who had been seated, rose as I came up to them. I gave my hand to each of them in turn, until I faced the girl. And then I hesitated.
For never anywhere, among any nation of the Iroquois Confederacy, had I seen any woman so costumed, painted, and accoutred.
For this girl looked more like a warrior than a woman; and, save for her slim and hard young body's shape, and her full hair, must have passed for an adolescent wearing his first hatchet and his first touch of war paint.
She, also, was naked to the waist, her breasts scarce formed. Two braids of hair lay on her shoulders, and her skin was palely bronzed and smooth in its oil, as amber without a flaw.
But she wore leggins of doe-skin, deeply fringed with pale green and cinctured in at her waist, where war-axe and knife hung on her left thigh, and powder horn and bullet pouch on her right. And over these she wore knee moccasins of green snake-skin, the feet of which were deer-hide sewn thick with scarlet, purple, and greenish wampum, which glistened like a humming-bird's throat.
I said, wondering: "Who is this girl in a young warrior's dress, who wears a disk of blue war-paint on her forehead?"
But Nick pulled my arm and said in my ear: