But I said nothing, not choosing to share my conclusions with these young warriors who, though they had taken scalps at Big Eddy, were yet scarcely tried in war. * * * * * That night we lay near an old trail which I knew ran to Otsego and passed by Colonel Croghan's new house. And on this trail, early the following morning, we encountered two men whom my Indians, instead of taking as they should have done, instantly shot down. Which betrayed their inexperience in war; and I rated them roundly. The two dead men were _blue-eyed_ Indians in all the horror of their shameful paint and forest dress. I knew one of them, for when Tahioni washed their lifeless visages and laid them on their backs, there, to my hot indignation, I beheld young Thomas Hare, brother to Lieutenant Henry Hare and to Captain James Hare, of the Indian Service. Horror-stricken, bitterly mortified, I gazed down at the dead features of these two renegades who had betrayed their own race and colour; and my Indians, watching me, understood when I turned and spat upon the ground; and so they scalped both--which otherwise they had not dared in my presence. We found on them every evidence that they were serving as a scout for McDonald. Probably when we encountered them they had been on their way to Sir John at Stanwix with verbal intelligence. But now it was idle to surmise what they might have been able to tell us. We found upon their bodies no papers to shew where McDonald might be lurking; and so, as I would not trouble to bury the carrion, my Oneidas despoiled them, hid their weapons, pouched their money and ammunition, and left them lying on the trail for their more respectable relatives, the wolves, to devour. * * * * * Now, on the Otsego trail, which was but a vile one and nigh impassable with undergrowth, we beat toward the Mohawk like circling hounds cast out and at fault to find a scent. And at evening of that day, the seventh of August, I saw a man in the woods, and, watching, ordered my Indians to surround him and bring him in alive. Judge, then, of my chagrin when presently comes walking up, and arm in arm with my Oneidas, one Daniel Wemple in his militia regimentals, a Torloch farmer whom I knew. "Great God, John!" says he, "what are you doing here with your tame panthers and a pair o' raw scalps that smell white in my nostrils?" I told him, and asked in turn for news. "You know nothing?" he demanded. "Nothing, Dan, only that we heard cannon to the eastward yesterday." "Well," says he, "there has been a bloody fight at Oriska, John; and Tryon must mourn her sons.