“Good.”
“Teganouan has been talking long with a runner of the Seneca nation.”
“Ah, he brings word of the fight?”
“Yes. The Senecas have suffered under the iron hand of the Great Mountain. A great army takes up the hatchet when he goes on the war-path, more than all the Senecas and Cayugas and Onondagas together when every brave who can hold in his hand a bow or a musket has come to fight with his brothers. There were white warriors so many that the runner could not have counted them with all the sticks in the Long House. There were men of the woods in the skins and beads of the redmen; there were Hurons and Ottawas and Nipissings, and even the cowardly Illinois 351 and the Kaskaskias and the Miamis from the land where the Great River flows past the Rock Demons. The Senecas fought with the strength of the she-bear, but their warriors were killed, their corn was trampled and cut, their lodges were burned.”
“Did the Great Mountain pursue them?”
“He has gone back to his stone house across the great lake, leaving the land black and smoking. The Senecas have come to the western villages of the Cayugas.”
“There are none in this village?”
“No. But the chiefs have sent blankets to their brothers, and as much corn as a hundred braves could carry over the trail. They have taken from their own houses to give to the Senecas.”
A few moments later two young men came with baskets of sagamity and smoked meat. Menard received it, and rising, knocked gently at the door.
“Yes, M’sieu,––I am not sleeping.”