Although Enoch had suggested this scheme upon his own responsibility he knew Lot would agree to it. Really, it was a good thing for all three. Crow Wing’s gun was useless, and his lame foot made traveling next to impossible for a while. But he could keep camp all right and look after the pelts. The traps the Indian had would be of much service to the white boys and would increase their own gains not a little. So upon this amicable basis the Indian joined the party and the next day Lot and Enoch, directed by Crow Wing, traveled to the Indian’s camp and packed back both the traps and the skins.
The boys learned that Crow Wing’s people now resided in New York colony, on the shores of Lake George, and that the young warrior had not been east of the Twenty-Mile Line since the raid of Simon Halpen upon the Widow Harding’s cabin. By patient questioning Enoch learned that Halpen had lived for months at a time with the tribe, but that he was not an adopted member of it, and was not altogether trusted by Crow Wing’s people.
“When burn cabin, old chief–my father–be told. Injins friends with Bennin’ton men; friends with York men, too. But Hawknose,” the Indian’s sobriquet for Simon Halpen, “sent away. He never come back.”
“You have hunted with him?” said Enoch, with some eagerness. “You were with him that day–you know–long ago; the day the Yorkers came up to James Breckenridge’s farm?”
Crow Wing made no reply for some time, gazing with gloomy eyes into the fire. Finally he said, speaking in an oracular manner, yet brokenly as he always did, for the English tongue was hard to him: “Jonas Harding not friend to Injin; Injin not friend to him. You friend to Crow Wing. You fight Crow Wing; fight ’um fair; when foot well we fight once more? Umph!”
Enoch laughed. “I’ll wrastle you any time you like, Crow Wing. But you can beat me running.”
The Indian, undisturbed, went on: “You not like father; you not speak Injin like he be slave-man; Injin free!” and he said it proudly, for the redskins looked down upon the negroes because they were the slaves of the colonists. “Hawknose no like Jonas Harding; he own your land; he buy it from Great Father of York and he buy it from Injin. All land Injin’s once,” he added, with a cloud upon his face. “Injin come with Hawknose to measure land; white man bring little thing to measure it; Jonas Harding throw Hawknose in creek and more white men beat him. White man, like Injin, feel he squaw when beat. Hawknose mad; tell Injin he kill Jonas Harding; drive you from land.”
“But father was killed by a buck in the forest,” said Enoch, carefully hiding the emotion he felt.
“Umph!” grunted Crow Wing, and would say nothing further at the time.
Lot, although he had been often a companion of the Indian when the latter lived near his uncle’s farm, looked upon him just as he did upon Sambo, Breckenridge’s slave boy. He had played with him, swam with him, learned to use the bow and arrow under Crow Wing’s instruction, and had gained something of forest lore from the Indian youth; but he had no respect for him, or for his peculiarities. He had not learned at ’Siah Bolderwood’s knee of the really admirable qualities of these people whom the whites were pleased to call “savages.” Lot made no objection to Crow Wing’s joining them, for his presence, and the use of his traps, was a very good thing for them. He patronized the Indian, however, and was not above suggesting that, as the redman was so ignorant, it would not really be necessary to divide the pelts in even thirds at the end of the season.