to pick a way by keeping
to the ridges and the south slopes from which the snow had melted. His
eyes and ears needs must be alert; no sharper woodsmen ever lived, than
the keen wolfish Iroquois.

At last, in the forest, he came upon Iroquois sign; next, peering and
listening and sniffing, he smelled wood smoke; and stealing on, from
tree to tree, he discovered the site of an Iroquois winter village, set
in a clearing amidst the timber.

For the rest of that day he hid out; that night, after all had quieted,
with war-club and knife ready he slipped like a shadow in among the
very lodges. Not even a dog sensed him as he stood questing about for
another hiding place.

Aha, he had it! Both the Hurons and the Iroquois laid in large stocks
of fire wood, by forming piles of logs slanted together on end; and in
one pile, here, was an opening through which he might squeeze into the
center space, there to squat as under a tent. The ground in the
village had been scraped bare of snow; he would leave no tracks.

Having thus experimented and arranged, Piskaret drew a long breath,
grasped his war-club, and stealthily pushing aside the loose birch-bark
door-flap of the nearest lodge, peeped inside. By the ember light he
saw that every Iroquois, man and woman, was fast asleep, under furs, on
spruce boughs around the fire.

Now Piskaret swiftly entered, without a sound killed them all, scalped
them, and fled to his wood-pile.

Early in the grayness of morning he heard a great cry, swelling louder
and louder until the forest echoed. It was a cry of grief and of rage.
The strangely silent lodge had been investigated and his bloody work
was known. Feet thudded past his wood-pile, hasty figures brushed
against it, as the best warriors of the village bolted for the timber,
to circle until they found the tracks of their enemy. But if they
found any snowshoe tracks made by a stranger, these led out, not in.

So that day the Iroquois pursued furiously and vainly, while Piskaret
crouched snug in his wood-pile, listened to the clamor, and laughed to
himself.

At evening the weary Iroquois returned, foiled and puzzled. Their
nimblest trailers had not even sighted the bold raider. This night
Piskaret again waited until all was quiet; again he ventured forth,
slipped inside a lodge, killed and scalped, and retreated to his
wood-pile.

And again, with the morning arose that shrill uproar of grief and
vengeance and the warriors s