faces. "Listen!" I cried. "Chiefs, you are
traitors. You eat the bread of the French, yet you would betray them.
You plan an uprising to-night. Well, you will find us ready. I
whistled as I came to you. That was a signal. You think you can
overpower us. Try it. Seize me, if you like. If you do, I shall give
one more whistle, and my troops--the loyal Indians--will go to work.
You can see them gathering. Look."

I waved my hand at the murk around us. My words were brave but my
flesh was cold. I had told them to look, but what would they see?
Would my men be loyal? Then the signal,--it had been hastily agreed
upon,--would they understand it? I had to push myself around like a
dead body to face what I might find.

For a moment I thought that I had found nothing. But I looked again,
and saw that my eyes had been made blank by fear. For my men were
massed to east and west. They pressed nearer and nearer, and the moon
picked out points of light that marked knives and arquebuses. Some
wore uniforms, and some were naked and vermilion-dyed, but all were
watching me. I could not see their eyes, but I was conscious of them.

I pointed the chiefs to the prospect. "You see. I have only to
whistle, and we shall settle this question of who is master here.
Seize me, and I shall whistle. But I shall do nothing till you move
first. If we are to have war, you must begin it. Are you ready?"

Silence followed. It was a hard silence to me to get through calmly,
for I knew that my men were not so numerous as they appeared, and I
feared to be taken at my word. Pemaou glided up and spoke to his
father. I had not seen him since the night in the Seneca camp, and I
argued with myself to keep my head cool so that I should not spring on
him. His body was blackened with charcoal, and he wore a girdle of
otter skin with the body of a crow hanging from it. I had sometimes
been called the crow because of my many tongues, and I understood his
meaning. But I could only stand waiting, and the moments went on and
on.

It was a small thing that determined the issue. In the distance Pierre
began to whistle,--Pierre, the bridegroom of the morrow, the merry
bully of the night. He had a whistle in keeping with his breadth of
shoulder, and he used it like a mating cock. He whistled my tune, the
signal. It was not accident, I think, neither was it design. It was
his unconscious, blundering black art, his intuition that was