not now, and I'll choose where and when."

He spoke so positively that Robert did not pursue the topic, knowing
that if the hunter wished to avoid it he had good reasons. Yet he felt
anew that David Willet, called the Great Bear by the Iroquois, had not
spent his whole life in the woods and that when the time came he could
tell a tale. There was always the fact that Willet spoke excellent
English, so unlike the vernacular of the hunters.

The afternoon was waning fast. The sun was setting in an ocean of fire
that turned the blue line of the mountains in the east to red. The slope
of the land made the current of the river much swifter, and Robert and
Willet drew in their paddles, leaving the work to Tayoga alone, who sat
in the prow and guided their light craft with occasional strokes,
letting the stream do the rest.

There was no more expert canoeman than Tayoga in the whole northern
wilderness. A single sweep of his paddle would send the canoe to any
point he wished, and apparently it was made without effort. There was no
shortening of the breath nor any sudden and violent movement of his
figure. It was all as smooth and easy as the flowing of the water
itself. It seemed that Tayoga was doing nothing, and that the canoe once
more was alive, the master of its own course.

The ocean of fire faded into a sea of gray, and then black night came,
but the canoe sped on in the swift current toward the St. Lawrence. It
was still the wilderness. The green forest on either side of the stream
was unbroken. No smoke from a settler's chimney trailed across the sky.
It was the forest as the Indian had known it for centuries. Robert,
sitting in the center of the canoe, quit dreaming of great cities and