ppose that a big
deer had been that way!

Enoch turned with sweating brow and shaking hands toward the Indian.
Crow Wing stood upright again and now held a second hoof, likewise
supplied with thongs, in his hand. They looked at each other.

"Umph!" grunted Crow Wing. "Now Harding know? See moose hoofs. Crow Wing
know where moose killed--see moose killed. Hawknose kill much that
winter; Hawknose hunt with Injins up north; then come back to crick.
Harding 'member what Crow Wing tell him when trapping on Otter Crick?
See Hawknose running; blood on clothes; blood on hands and on gun. Now
Harding know how father be killed."

Enoch's eyes blazed with wrath. "I know, Crow Wing. I believe what you
tell me. I see no other explanation of the affair. Give me those hoofs,
Crow Wing."

"Harding keep them till he punish Hawknose?" queried the Indian.

"Yes."

The young brave pulled his belt tighter and prepared to depart.
"Hawknose never Crow Wing's brother," he said. "Harding been brother.
But now the hatchet will be dug up. The Long-guns cannot get the Six
Nations to fight the red-coats. And the friends of my white brother will
be beaten. They will become the squaws of the red-coats and of the great
King across the sea. So my people will go north and join the red-coats."
He shook Enoch's hand gravely. "Crow Wing and Harding been brothers; but
when they meet again be enemies. Umph?"

"I hope we'll never meet again, then, Crow Wing," declared the white
youth. "I hope there will be no war. More than that, I hope your people
will not join the British if there is war."

But without further speech, or a glance behind him, the Indian brave
strode away into the forest and was quickly lost to view.

CHAPTER XVIII

"THE CROSS OF FIRE"

Having at length been assured beyond peradventure that his suspicions
were true, a desire for vengeance upon Simon Halpen sprang to life in
Enoch's heart. He forgot the momentous matter which had filled his mind
before the appearance of Crow Wing the evening before. He thought only
of his father's murderer, the man who had tried to injure them all, even
to the point of destroying their home and attempting to shoot himself.

As he tramped back to the house with the haunch of venison on his
shoulder, he determined to tell nobody there of the finding of the moose
hoofs which explained the mystery of his father's death. The hoofs he
saved to show Bolderwood, and for evidence against Simon Ha