“Watch the Wea and the one with whom he talks,” responded the renegade, “and when that one leaves the Wea’s lodge, seize him without noise, bind him, bring him to the Panther’s nest, an’ watch him until I return. On no account make any noise that will rouse the warriors, for, in the trouble, the one who talks with Vulture-eyes may escape. To the White Whirlwind[3] he is worth a thousand rifles.” The brothers’ eyes flashed at the last sentence, and, true to the Indian character, without a question, they glided away in the starlight. A low and triumphant chuckle came from the renegade’s heart as he turned to his mission again, and his lips parted in low speech: “To-morrow Mad Anthony will have one thunderbolt less, fur ef I hevn’t seen through that young fellar’s paint an’ stuff, then ye kin put Joe Girty down fur an old blind fool. Yes’r, thet chap what’s tappin’ Vulture Eyes, the drunken old Wea, ar’ one ov Wayne’s spies, an’ ef his friends ’u’d call ’im Mark Morgan he’d answer to the handle. Ha! ha! ha! a fox can enter the roost a thousand times without gettin’ his foot in the trap; but at last his time comes.” Presently the renegade reached the end of his nocturnal journey--Turkey-foot’s lodge, the nearest construction of the kind to the river. He heard a confused murmur of voices before he entered the structure, and when he crossed the threshold, he found that he was a trifle late. His appearance was greeted with grunts of satisfaction, not unmingled with surprise, and Girty was not prepared to recognize the formidable chiefs whom Turkey-foot had seemingly enlisted in his revengeful enterprise. Foremost among them towered the giant leader of the league, Turkey-foot, who now was animated with a truly diabolical project to avenge the death of his son. Then came Leather-lips, the famous sorcerer of the Wyandots, than whom a more cunning and revengeful Indian never played the prophet; then Wacomet, Effie St. Pierre’s red lover, tall and, for an Indian, extremely handsome, somewhat of a dandy among the belles and beaux of the forest, but a tornado in battle, a lynx on the trail. Besides the three already described, as many more noted red-men completed the league, into which but a single pale-face was to be admitted. When Girty entered Turkey-foot’s lodge, he found its tenants grouped around a large, flat stone, placed on the earth in the lodge’s center. On this stone lay a piece of tanned deerskin, upon which Stomah, one of the league, and quite an untaught artist, was tracing the totems of the chiefs. In silence the totems were completed, and the voice of Turkey-foot greeted the assembly. “We are here to take the oath that makes the Manitou shudder. Let those who will not swear walk into the light of his fires.” Not a figure stirred. “By his totem, and the heart of the Manitou, shall each swear, and beneath our totems shall we write our marks in the warm blood that gushes from our hearts!”