e
among the blackened logs, and cooked venison. They had also brought from
Fort Penn a little coffee, which Long Jim carried with a small coffee
pot in his camp kit, and everyone had a small tin cup. He made coffee
for them, an uncommon wilderness luxury, in which they could rarely
indulge, and they were heartened and strengthened by it.

Then they went again up the valley, as beautiful as ever, with its
silver river in the center, and its green mountain walls on either side.
But the beauty was for the eye only. It did not reach the hearts of
those who had seen it before. All of the five loved the wilderness, but
they felt now how tragic silence and desolation could be where human
life and all the daily ways of human life had been.

It was mid-summer, but the wilderness was already reclaiming its own.
The game knew that man was gone, and it had come back into the valley.
Deer ate what had grown in the fields and gardens, and the wolves were
everywhere. The whole black tragedy was written for miles. They were
never out of sight of some trace of it, and their anger grew again as
they advanced in the blackened path of the victorious Indians.

It was their purpose now to hang on the Indian flank as scouts and
skirmishers, until an American army was formed for a campaign against
the Iroquois, which they were sure must be conducted sooner or later.
Meanwhile they could be of great aid, gathering news of the Indian
plans, and, when that army of which they dreamed should finally march,
they could help it most of all by warning it of ambush, the Indian's
deadliest weapon.

Everyone of the five had already perceived a fact which was manifest in
all wars with the Indians along the whole border from North to South,
as it steadily shifted farther West. The practical hunter and scout was
always more than a match for the Indian, man for man, but, when the raw
levies of settlers were hastily gathered to stem invasion, they were
invariably at a great disadvantage. They were likely to be caught in
ambush by overwhelming numbers, and to be cut down, as had just happened
at Wyoming. The same fate might attend an invasion of the Iroquois
country, even by a large army of regular troops, and Henry and his
comrades resolved upon doing their utmost to prevent it. An army needed
eyes, and it could have none better than those five pairs. So they went
swiftly up the valley and northward and eastward, into the country of
the Iroquois. They had