"Time will show," said the trapper. "Do you know that even now a British fleet is holding the river, and an English army is encamped about Quebec?"
"Is it possible? How I should like to be there and to serve under Wolfe's flag; but how did you learn all this in the forest?"
"Even the forest can speak to those who have ears to listen. Why did the Algonquins depart so rapidly, and make no attempt to recapture me, when the price of fifty beaver-skins has been set upon my scalp by the Canadas during the past five years? They could not know then that the Iroquois were upon their trail."
"Why, indeed; unless they were summoned hastily back to their own country, or was it that they feared the wrath of the Senecas and the Cayugas, whose hunting-grounds they had invaded?"
"Partly that, perhaps, for the Senecas, like all the other tribes of the Six Nations, are a fierce and warlike race; but there was another reason."
"What was it?"
"Listen! The night before I escaped, a messenger, with a war-hatchet all covered with blood, entered the Algonquin camp. He also carried a broad belt of wampum, and the skin of a rattlesnake filled with arrows; while his tomahawk was stained a deep red, in token of war. He was received with great deference, and when he had handed the war-belt to the Algonquin chief, he declared that a fierce and bloody war had broken out between the French Father and the children of Miquon, and that the former needed all his red children to come and assist him. He promised them 'a great plenty' of paleface scalps if they would come; but if they refused, then, if the English won, they would take from the children of the Manitou all their hunting-grounds, and burn their wigwams and lodges to the ground, until the prints of their moccasins should no longer be found in the forests.
"When the messenger had finished speaking he showered the arrows upon the earth, and then flung the blood-red hatchet upon the ground, saying--
"'Even now the River of Canada is full of big canoes that carry the thunder and the lightning, and the paleface warriors from over the great Salt Lake, led by a mighty chieftain named Le Loup [Wolfe], have settled around the fortress of Canada, like a swarm of locusts. Come, my brothers! Who will take up the hatchet to fight for the Great Canada Father?'
"After a long pause, as if to give due weight and consideration to this important message, the Algonquin chief arose from his seat by the council fire, and made a brief but solemn speech, which, after extolling the prowess of his ancestors and himself, ended in a promise to return and assist the French, as soon as the scattered members of the party returned, and the scouts were called in. He then proceeded slowly to the spot where the hatchet was half buried, and solemnly took it up.