heir 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