anxious to match himself with the gigantic Ojibway, and since the war
was now active on the border it seemed that the opportunity might
come. But his attention must be occupied with something else for the
present, and he went toward the west for a full hour through the
primeval forest. Now and then he stopped to listen, even lying down
and putting his ear to the ground, but the sounds he heard, although
varied and many, were natural to the wild.

He knew them all. The steady tapping was a woodpecker at work upon an
old tree. The faint musical note was another little gray bird singing
the delight of his soul as he perched himself upon a twig; the light
shuffling noise was the tread of a bear hunting succulent nuts; a
caw-caw so distant that it was like an echo was the voice of a
circling crow, and the tiny trickling noise that only the keenest ear
could have heard was made by a brook a yard wide taking a terrific
plunge over a precipice six inches high. The rustling, one great
blended note, universal but soft, was that of the leaves moving in
harmony before the gentle wind.

The young Onondaga was sure that the forest held no alien
presence. The traces of Tandakora were hours old, and he must now be
many miles away with his band, and, such being the case, it was fit
time for him to choose a camp and call his friends.

It pleased Tayoga, zealous of mind, to do all the work before the
others came, and, treading so lightly and delicately, that he would
not have alarmed a rabbit in the bush, he gathered together dead
sticks and heaped them in a little sunken place, clear of undergrowth.
Flint and steel soon lighted a fire, and then he sent forth his call,
the long penetrating whine of the wolf. The reply came from the north,