ped that the underbrush might hide him, advanced over
the trail, and Robert was close behind. The thickets were very still.
All the small wild creatures, usually so numerous in them, had
disappeared, and there was no wind. Tayoga saw that the imprints of the
moccasins were growing firmer and clearer, and he knew that Tandakora
and his men were but a short distance ahead. Then he stopped suddenly
and he and Robert crouched low in the thicket.

They had heard the faint report of rifles directly in front, and they
believed that Tandakora had come into contact with a party of rangers or
Mohawks. As they listened, the sound of a second volley came, and then
the echo of a faint war whoop. Tayoga rose a little higher, perhaps
expecting to see something in the underbrush, and a rifle flashed less
than forty yards away.

The Onondaga fell without a cry before the horrified eyes of his
comrade, and then, as Robert heard a shout of triumph, he saw an Indian,
horribly painted, rush forward to seize what he believed to be a Mohawk
scalp.

Young Lennox, filled with grief and rage, stood straight up, and a
stream of fire fairly poured from the muzzle of his rifle as his bullet
met the exultant warrior squarely in the heart. The savage fell like a
log, having no time to utter his death cry, and paying no further
attention to him, feeling that he must be merely a stray warrior from
the main band, Robert turned to his fallen comrade.

Tayoga was unconscious, and was bleeding profusely from a wound in the
right shoulder. Robert seized his wrist and felt his pulse. He was not
dead, because he detected a faint beat, but it was quite evident that
the wound from a big musket bullet had come near to cutting the thread
of life.

For a moment or two Lennox was in despair, while his heart continued to
swell with grief and rage. It was unthinkable that the noblest young
Onondaga of them all, one fit to be in his time the greatest of
sachems, the very head and heart of the League, should be cut down by a
mere skulker. And yet it had happened. Tayoga lay, still wholly
unconscious, and the sounds of firing to the eastward were increasing. A
battle had begun there. Perhaps the full forces of both sides were now
in conflict.

The combat called to Robert, he knew that he might bear a great part in
it, but he never hesitated. Such a thought as deserting his stricken
comrade could not enter his mind. He listened a moment longer to the
sounds of th