The Indians, however, were a hand-to-mouth nation. Subsisting on the chances of game in their long hunts and marches, enduring in its default incredible rigors of hunger as a matter of course, sustaining life and even strength when in hard luck by roots and fruits and nuts, they could not have realized the value of the provision train to civilized troops who must needs have beef and bacon, flour and tobacco, soap and medicine--or they cannot fight. There was but one explanation--French officers were among the Cherokees and directed these demonstrations. Their presence had been earlier suspected, and this, Ronald thought, was indisputable proof. The strange selection of the ground where in the previous year the Cherokees had massed in force and given battle to Colonel Montgomery’s troops had occasioned much surprise, and later the same phenomenon occurred in their engagements with Colonel Grant. It seemed to amount to an exhibition of an intuitive military genius. No great captain of Europe, it was said, could have acted with finer discernment of the opportunities and the dangers, could with greater acumen have avoided and nullified the risks. But Colonel Grant, who was always loath to accord credit to aught but military science, believed the ground was chosen by men who had studied the tactics of the great captains of Europe, and although he had learned to beware of the wily devices of the savage, and to meet his masked fire with skulking scouts and native allies, fighting in their own way, he preserved all the precise tactical methods in which he had been educated, and kept a sharp edge on his expectation for the warlike feints and strategy of the equally trained French officer. If he could only meet one now, Ronald MacDonnell was thinking. In case it should prove impossible to cross the river and rejoin his command, if he could only surrender to Johnny Crapaud!