I made no reply but lay motionless, watching the tamaracks, ghostly in their cerements of silver fog. And I heard, through the low rhythm of her song, owls howling far away amid those spectral wastes, and saw the Oneida Dancers,[20] very small and pale above the void.
I stared with fierce satisfaction at Howell's house. There was no gleam of light visible behind the closed shutters; but I already had counted nine men who came creeping to that silent rendezvous. And now there arrived the tenth man, running and stooping low; and went in by the east side of the house.
I waited a full minute longer, then whistled the whitethroat's call.
"Now!" said I to Thiohero; and we rose and walked forward through the light mist which lay knee-deep over the ground.
We had not advanced ten paces when three men, whom I had not perceived, rose up on the ridge to our right.
One of these shouted and fired a gun, and all three dropped flat again before we could realize what they had been about.
But already, out of that shadowy house, armed men swarmed like black hornets from their nest, and we ran to cut them from the tamaracks, but could not mark their flight in the so great darkness.
Then Nick Stoner struck flint, and dropped his tinder upon the remnants of a hay-stack, where wisps of last year's marsh grass still littered the rick.
In the smoky glow which grew I saw that great villain, Simon Girty, fire his gun at us, then turn and run toward the water; and Dries Bowman took after him, shouting in his fear.
Very carefully I fired at Girty, but he was not scotched, and was lost in the dark with Dries.