"Joseph Brant! Thayendanegea!" murmured Dorothy, aloud.
"A cousin of his," said the savage, carelessly. Then he turned sternly on me. "Tell that man who follows me that I could have slain him twice within the hour; once at the ford, once on Stoner's hill. Does he take me for a deer? Does he believe I wear war-paint? There is no war betwixt the Mohawks and the Boston people--yet! Tell that fool to go home!"
"What fool?" I asked, troubled.
"You will meet him--journeying the wrong way," said the Indian, grimly.
With a quick, guarded motion he picked up his rifle, turned short, and passed swiftly northward straight into the forest, leaving us listening there together long after he had disappeared.
"That chief was Joseph Brant, ... but he wore no war-paint," whispered my cousin. "He was painted for the secret rites of the False-Faces."
"He could have slain us as we sat," I said, bitterly humiliated.
She looked up at me thoughtfully; there was not in her face the slightest trace of the deep emotions which had shocked me.
"A tribal fire is lighted somewhere," she mused. "Chiefs like Brant do not travel alone--unless--unless he came to consult that witch Catrine Montour, or to guide her to some national council-fire in the North."
She pondered awhile, and I stood by in silence, my heart still beating heavily from my astonishment at the hideous apparition of a moment since.