Suddenly Walking Moose sprang to his feet and turned, his shield on his left arm and his bow in his right hand. His glance flashed to the overhanging fringe of spruce branches above his head. He saw a girl’s face looking timidly out, and a pair of dark eyes gazing shyly down upon him. He did not know the face. It was not that of any girl of his own village.
“What do you want?” he asked, watchful for some sight or sound to betray the presence of some hidden menace.
Hawk-in-the-Tree answered him in his own tongue, for she had learned it from a prisoner when she was a child. Until recently, the Mohawks had never lacked opportunity of acquiring the Maliseet language.
“I sometimes fish in that pool, chief. But I will go away and fish somewhere else,” she replied, modestly.
“Do not go,” he said. “Come down and fish here if you want to. The pools of the river are free to all honest Maliseets.”
Without more ado, the girl crawled forward, turned, and slid down to the flat rock beside Walking Moose. In her left hand she held a short coil of transparent fish-line made from the intestines of some animal. Her small face was flushed. She stood beside Walking Moose with downcast eyes. The young man gazed at her with frank interest.
“You are a stranger,” he said. “You do not belong to my village.”
She met his glance for a second.
“Have you ever seen me before, chief?” she asked.
“I am not sure,” he replied, puckering his brows in reflection. “But I know that you do not live in my village. You do not look like those young women.”