Chapter 14: Before Quebec

True to the predictions of Tayoga, they struck the trail of St. Luc and Tandakora far up in the province of New York and west of Lake Champlain. Ever since the white man came, hostile forces had been going north or south along well-defined passes in these regions, and, doubtless, bands of Indians had been traveling the same course from time immemorial; so it was not hard for them to come upon the traces of French and Indians going to Quebec to make a great stand against Wolfe and his fleet.

“It is a broad trail because many Frenchmen and Indians make it,” said the Onondaga. “As I have said, Sharp Sword and Tandakora do not like each other, but circumstances make them allies. They have rejoined and they go together to Quebec. Here is the trail of at least three hundred men, perhaps two hundred Frenchmen and a hundred warriors. The footsteps of Sharp Sword are unmistakable, and so are those of Tandakora. Behold their great size, Dagaeoga; and here are the prints of boots that belong to De Courcelles and Jumonville. I have seen them often before, Dagaeoga. How could you believe they might have been left by somebody else?”

“I see nothing but some faint traces in the earth,” said Robert. “If you didn’t tell me, I wouldn’t be even sure that they were made by a man.”

“But they are plain to us who were born in the woods, and whose ancestors have lived in the woods since the beginning of the world. It is where we are superior to the white man, much as the white man thinks of his wisdom, though there be those, like the Great Bear, the Mountain Wolf and Black Rifle, who know much. But the feet of the two Frenchmen who love not Dagaeoga have passed here.”

“It is true they do not love me, Tayoga. I wounded one of them last year, shortly before Ticonderoga, as you know, and I fancy that I’d receive short shrift from either if I fell into his hands.”

“That is so. But Dagaeoga will not let himself be captured again. He has been captured often enough now.”

“I don’t seem to be any the worse for it,” said Robert, laughing. “You’re right, though, Tayoga. For me to be captured once more would be once too much. As St. Luc doesn’t like Tandakora, I imagine you don’t see him walking with them.”

“I do not, Dagaeoga. Sharp Sword keeps by himself, and now De Courcelles and Jumonville walk with the Ojibway chief. Here are their three trails, that of Tandakora between the other two. Doubtless, the two Frenchmen are trying to make him their friend, and it is equally sure that they speak ill to him of St. Luc. But Sharp Sword does not care. He expects little from Tandakora and his warriors. He is thinking of Quebec and the great fight that Montcalm must make there against Wolfe. He is eager to arrive at Stadacona, which you call Quebec, and help Montcalm. He knows that it is all over here on Andiatarocte and Oneadatote, that Ticonderoga is lost forever, that Crown Point is lost forever, and that Isle-aux-Noix must go in time, but he hopes for Stadacona. Yet Sharp Sword is depressed. He does not walk with his usual spring and courage. His paces are shorter, and they are shorter because his footsteps drag. Truly, it was a dagger in the heart of Sharp Sword to give up Ticonderoga and Crown Point.”

“I can believe you, Tayoga,” said Willet. “It’s bitter to lose such lakes and such land and the French have fought well for them. Do you think there’s any danger of our running into an ambush? It would be like Tandakora to lie in wait for pursuers.”

“I am not sure, Great Bear. He, like the Frenchman, is in a great hurry to reach Stadacona.”

An hour or two later they came to a dead campfire of St. Luc’s force, and, a little farther on, a new trail, coming from the west, joined the Chevaliers. They surmised that it had been made by a band from Niagara or some other fallen French fort in that direction, and that everywhere along the border, Montcalm was drawing in his lines that he might concentrate his full strength in Quebec to meet the daring challenge of Wolfe.

“But I take it that the drawing in of the French won’t keep down scalping parties of the warriors,” said Willet. “If they can find anything on the border to raid, they’ll raid it.”

“It is so,” said Tayoga. “It may be that Tandakora and his warriors will turn aside soon to see if they cannot ambush somebody.”

“In that case, it will be wise for us to watch out for ourselves. You think Tandakora may leave St. Luc and lie in wait, perhaps, for us?”

“For anyone who may come. He does not yet know that it is the Great Bear, Dagaeoga, and I who follow. Suppose we go on a while longer and see if he leaves the main trail. Is it the wish of Great Bear and Dagaeoga?”

“It is,” they replied together.

They advanced several hours, and then the great trail split, or rather it threw off a stem that curved to the west.

“It is made by about twenty warriors,” said Tayoga, “and here are the huge footsteps of Tandakora in the very center of it. I think they will go northwest for a while, and then come back toward the main trail, hoping to trap anyone who may be rash enough to follow Sharp Sword. But, if the Great Bear and Dagaeoga wish it, we will pursue Tandakora himself and ambush him when he is expecting to ambush others.”

The dark eyes of the Onondaga gleamed.

“I can see, Tayoga, that you’re hoping for a chance to settle that score between you and the Ojibway,” said the hunter. “Maybe you’ll get it this time, and maybe you won’t, but I’m willing to take the trail after him, and so is Robert here. We may stop a lot of mischief.”

It was then about two o’clock in the afternoon, and, as Tayoga said that Tandakora’s trail was not more than a few hours old, they pushed on rapidly, hoping to stalk his camp that very night. The traces soon curved back toward St. Luc’s and they knew they were right in their surmise that an ambush was being laid by the Ojibway. He and his warriors would halt in the dense bush beside the great trail and shoot down any who followed.

“We’ll shatter his innocent little plan,” said Willet, his spirits mounting at the prospect.

“Tandakora will not build a fire tonight,” said Tayoga. “He will wait in the darkness beside Sharp Sword’s path, hoping that someone will come. He will lie in the forest like a panther waiting to spring on its prey.”

“And we’ll just disturb that panther a little,” said Robert, appreciating the merit of their enterprise, which now seemed to all three a kind of great game.

“Aye, we’ll make Tandakora think all the spirits of earth and air are after him,” said Willet.

They now moved with great caution as the trail was growing quite fresh.

“We will soon be back to Sharp Sword’s line of march,” said Tayoga, “and I think we will find Tandakora and his warriors lying in the bushes not more than a mile ahead.”

They redoubled their caution, and, when they approached a dense thicket, Robert and Willet lay down and Tayoga went on, creeping on hands and knees. In a half hour, he came back and said that Tandakora and his band were in the thicket watching the great trail left by St. Luc.

“The Ojibway does not dream that he himself is being watched,” said the Onondaga, “and now I think we would better eat a little food from our knapsacks and wait until the dark night that is promised has fully come.”

Tayoga’s report was wholly true. Tandakora and twenty fierce warriors lay in the thicket, waiting to fall upon those who might follow the trail of St. Luc. He had no doubt that a force of some kind would come. The Bostonnais and the English always followed a retreating enemy, and experience never kept them from walking into an ambush. Tandakora was already counting the scalps he would take, and his savage heart was filled with delight. He had been aghast when Bourlamaque abandoned Ticonderoga and Crown Point. Throughout the region over which he had been roaming for three or four years, the Bostonnais would be triumphant. Andiatarocte and Oneadatote would pass into their possession forever. The Ojibway chief belonged far to the westward, to the west of the Great Lakes, but the great war had called him, like so many others of the savage tribes, into the east, and he had been there so long that he had grown to look upon the country as his own, or at least held by him and his like in partnership with the French, a belief confirmed by the great victories at Duquesne and Oswego, William Henry and Ticonderoga.

Now Tandakora’s whole world was overthrown. The French were withdrawing into Canada. St. Luc, whom he did not like, but whom he knew to be a great warrior, was retreating in haste, and the invincible Montcalm was beleaguered in Quebec. He would have to go too, but he meant to take scalps with him. Bostonnais were sure to appear on the trail, and they would come in the night, pursuing St. Luc. It was a good night for such work as his, heavy with clouds and very dark. He would creep close and strike before his presence was even suspected.

Tandakora lay quiet with his warriors, while night came and its darkness grew, and he listened for the sound of men on the trail. Instead, he heard the weird, desolate cry of an owl to his left, and then the equally lone and desolate cry of another to his right. But the warriors still lay quiet. They had heard owls often and were not afraid of them. Then the cry came from the north, and now it was repeated from the south. There was a surfeit of owls, very much too many of them, and they called to one another too much. Tandakora did not like it. It was almost like a visitation of evil spirits. Those weird, long-drawn cries, singularly piercing on a still night, were bad omens. Some of his warriors stirred and became uneasy, but Tandakora quieted them sternly and promised that the Bostonnais would soon be along. Hope aroused again, the men plucked up courage and resumed their patient waiting.

Then the cry of the panther, long-drawn, wailing like the shriek of a woman, came from the east and the west, and presently from the north and the south also, followed soon by the dreadful hooting of the owls, and then by the fierce growls of the bear. Tandakora, in spite of himself, in spite of his undoubted courage, in spite of his vast experience in the forest, shuddered. The darkness was certainly full of wicked spirits, and they were seeking prey. So many owls and bears and panthers could not be abroad at once in a circle about him. But Tandakora shook himself and resolved to stand fast. He encouraged his warriors, who were already showing signs of fright, and refused to let anyone go.

But the forest chorus grew. Tandakora heard the gobble of the wild turkey as he used to hear it in his native west, only he was sure that the gobble now was made by a spirit and not by a real turkey. Then the owl hooted, the panther shrieked and the bear growled. The cry of a moose, not any moose at all, as Tandakora well knew, but the foul emanation of a wicked spirit, came, merely to be succeeded by the weird cries of night birds which the Ojibway chief had never seen, and of which he had never dreamed. He knew, though, that they must be hideous, misshapen creatures. But he still stood fast, although all of his warriors were eager to go, and the demon chorus came nearer and nearer, multiplying its cries, and adding to the strange notes of birds the equally strange notes of animals, worse even than the growl of a bear or shriek of a panther.

Tandakora knew now that the wicked spirits of earth and air were abroad in greater numbers than he had ever known before. They fairly swarmed all about him and his warriors, continually coming closer and closer and making dire threats. The night was particularly suited to them. The heavy black clouds floating before the moon and stars were met by thick mists and vapors that fairly oozed out of the damp earth. It was an evil night, full of spells and magic, and the moment came when the chief wished he was in his own hunting grounds far to the west by the greatest of the Great Lakes.

The darkness was not too great for him to see several of his warriors trembling and he rebuked them fiercely, though his own nerves, tough as they were, were becoming frayed and uneasy. He forgot to watch the trail and listen for the sound of footsteps. All his attention was centered upon that horrible and circling chorus of sound. The Bostonnais might come and pass and he would not see them. He went into the forest a little way, trying to persuade himself that they were persecuted by animals. He would find one of these annoying panthers or bears and shoot it, or he would not even hesitate to send a bullet through an owl on a bough, but he saw nothing, and, as he went back to his warriors, a hideous snapping and barking of wolves followed him.

The note of the wolf had not been present hitherto in the demon chorus, but now it predominated. What it lacked in the earliness of coming it made up in the vigor of arrival. It had in it all the human qualities, that is, the wicked or menacing ones--hunger, derision, revenge, desire for blood, and the threat of death. Tandakora, a veteran of a hundred battles, one of the fiercest warriors that ever ranged the woods, shook. His blood turned to water, ice water at that, and the bones of his gigantic frame seemed to crumble. He knew, as all the Indians knew, that the souls of dead warriors, usually those who had been wicked in life, dwelled for a while in the bodies of animals, preferably those of wolves, and the wolves about him were certainly inhabited by the worst warriors that had ever lived. In every growl and snap and bark, there was a threat. He could hear it, and he knew it was meant for him. But what he feared most of all was the deadly whine with which growl, snap, and bark alike ended. Perspiration stood out on his face, but he could not afford to show fear to his men, and, retreating slowly, he rejoined them. He would make no more explorations in the haunted wood that lay all about them.

As the chief went back to his men the snarling and snapping of the demon wolves distinctly expressed laughter, derision of the most sinister kind. They were not only threatening him, but they were also laughing at him, and his bones continued to crumble through sheer weakness and fear. It was not worthwhile for him to fire at any of the sounds. The bullet might go through a wolf, but it would not hurt him, it would merely increase his ferocity and make him all the more hungry for the blood of Tandakora.

The band pressed close together as the wolves growled and snapped all about them, but the warriors still saw nothing. How could they see anything when such wolves had the power of making themselves invisible? But their claws would tear and their teeth would rend just the same when they sprang upon their victims, and now they were coming so close that they might make a spring, the prodigious kind of spring that a demon wolf could make.

It was more than Tandakora and his warriors could stand. Human beings, white or red, would fight, but not the wicked and powerful spirits of earth and air which were now closing down upon them. The chief could resist no longer. He uttered a great howl of fear, which was taken up and repeated in a huge chorus by his warriors. Then, and by the same impulse, they burst from the thicket, rushed into St. Luc’s trail, and sped northward at an amazing pace.

Tayoga, Willet, and Robert emerged from the woods, lay down on the trail and panted for breath.

“Well, that’s the easiest victory we ever gained,” said Robert. “Even easier than one somewhat like it that I won on the island.”

“I don’t know about that,” gasped Willet. “It’s hard work being an owl and a bear and a panther and a wolf and trying, too, to be in three or four places at the same time. I worked hardest as a wolf toward the last; every muscle in me is tired, and I think my throat is the most tired of all. I must lie by for a day.”

“Great Bear is a splendid animal,” said Tayoga in his precise, book English, “nor is he wanting as a bird, either. I think he turned himself into birds that were never seen in this world, and they were very dreadful birds, too. But he excelled most as a wolf. His growling and snapping and whining was better than that of ninety-nine out of a hundred wolves, only a master wolf could have equaled it, and when I stood beside him I was often in fear lest he turn and tear me to pieces with tooth and claw.”

“Tandakora was in mortal terror,” said Robert, who was not as tired as the others, who had done most of the work in the demon chorus. “I caught a glimpse of his big back, and I don’t think I ever saw anybody run faster. He’ll not stop this side of the St. Lawrence, and you’ll have to postpone your vengeance a while, Tayoga.”