"Nai! Yengese!" whispered the Yellow Leaf.
The painted Tory was not ten yards from where we lay, and, as I gazed intently at those hideously daubed features, all at once I knew the man.
For this horrid and grotesque figure, all besmeared with ochre and indigo, and wearing Indian dress, was none other than an old neighbour of mine in Tryon County, one George Cuck, who lived near Jan Zuyler and his two buxom daughters, and who had gone off with Sir John last May.
As I stared at him in ever-rising astonishment and rage, comes another blue-eyed Indian—Barney Cane,—wearing Iroquois paint and feathers, and all gaudy in his beaded war-dress. And, at his belt, I saw a fresh scalp hanging by its hair,—the light brown hair of a white man!
I could hear Cane speaking with Cuck in English. Beacraft came down to the water; and Billy Newberry[22] and Hare[22] also came down, both wearing the uniform of the forester service. And I was astounded to see Henry Hare back again after his narrow escape at Summer House last autumn, the night I got my hurt.
But he wore no Valley militia disguise now; all these men were in green-coats, openly flaunting the enemy uniform in County Tryon,—save only those painted beasts Cuck and Cane.
It was a war party, and it had accomplished a clean job at Fish House; and now they all were coming down to the flooded hollow and looking across it where lay the short route west to Summer House.
Presently I heard a great splashing to our left, and saw a skiff and two green-coats and two Mohawk Indians in it pulling across the back-water.
And these latter were real Mohawks, stripped, oiled, their heads shaved, and in their battle-paint, who squatted there in the skiff, scanning with glowing eyes the bank where my Saguenay and I lay concealed.
It was perfectly plain, now, what they meant to do. Beacraft, Cane, and Cuck went back to the ruined redoubt, and presently returned loaded with packs. Baggage and rifles were laid in the skiff.