He held out his hands, and the old chief looked somewhat embarrassed at the willingness and cheerfulness of the captive. Nevertheless, he produced deerskin cords and bound the boy's wrists, not so tightly that the cords hurt, but with ingenious lacings that Henry knew he could neither slip nor break. Then, as the captive sat down on a rush mat and leaned against the bark wall of the lodge, old Heno regarded him attentively. Thunder, old but brave warrior of the Wyandots, was a judge of promising youth, and he thought that in his sixty years of life he had never seen another so satisfactory as this prisoner, save perhaps the mighty young chief, known to his own people as Timmendiquas and to the settlers as White Lightning. He looked at the length of limb and the grand development of shoulders and chest, and he sighed ever so gently. He sighed because in his opinion Manitou should have bestowed such great gifts upon a Wyandot, and not upon a member of the white race. Yet Heno did not actually hate the prisoner. Coiled at the bottom of his heart, like a tiny spring in a watch, was a little hope, and this little hope, like the tiny spring, set all the machinery of his mind in motion. "You no like being captive, held in lodge, with arms tied?" he said gently. Henry smiled. "No, I don't enjoy it," he replied. "It's not the situation that I should choose for myself." "You like to be free," continued old Heno with the same gentle gravity. "You like to be out in the forest with Whoraminta?" "Yes," replied Henry, "I'd like to be free, and I'd like to be out in the forest, but I don't know about Whoraminta. I'm not acquainted with him, and he might not be a pleasant comrade." "Whoraminta! Whoraminta!" repeated Heno. "Cannot think of your word for it. It is this!" He threw himself into a firm attitude, held out one hand far, extended the other about half so far, shut his left eye, and looked with the right intently along the level of his two hands. Henry understood the pantomime perfectly. "I know," he said. "Whoraminta is a rifle. You're right, Thunder, I'd like mighty well to be out in the forest with my Whoraminta, one of the trustiest and best comrades I ever had." Heno's smile answered that of the captive. "And with plenty of Teghsto?" he said. "Teghsto?" said Henry. "That's new to me. Can't you think of the English word for it?" Heno shook his head, but closed his right hand until it formed approximately the shape of a horn, then elevated it and held it as if he were pouring something into the open palm of his left hand. "Use in Whoraminta," he said. "That's not hard," said Henry. "Powder you mean." "That right," said Heno, smiling again. "Teghsto go in Whoraminta, and Yeatara go in Whoraminta, too. You want plenty of Yeatara." "Lead! bullets!" said Henry at a guess. "Yes. That it. Yeatara is lead, and you snap with Taweghskera; fire spark jump out flash! bang! You want Taweghskera, too."